The psychology of nymphomania So this is a question that requires maturity and discretion.  I present it as an authentic point of research for a class I am taking.  I understand the basic principles of mania, psychomania, and manic episodes.  However one thing that pops into question are possible explanations for nymphomania.  To the scientific community I ask:


Is the condition of nymphomania coupled as a symptom of mania?  
Or is it some kind of hormonal/biochemical imbalance that presents itself as it's own issue?  
Or is it just some addiction to the hormones released via copulation?


I am not referring to women or men with high sex drive, clearly nymphomania is in it's own class.  I personally have postulated to my class that it is something that is coupled together with mania, or as a symptom of bipolar/mood disorder in patients that are not well controlled on their medications.  My professor then instructed me to post it up here to gather knowledge and present it to my class at some point.  Any thoughts and/or opinions must be clean and professional, any nasty/vulgar language will be reported.
::: It seems like you're trying to get to the root cause as either organic or functional? Maybe a bit of both. They jury will forever be out thus we have the stress-diathesis model for comfort. Here is some interesting discussion on the norm-referencing in assessment of manic behavior such as hypersexuality and the implications of various factors like gender. OOhh - this is a good one too actually- a very large study on the whole range of abnormal sexual activity. 

In working with individuals who are hypersexualized, i've found that it's learned, it's reactive attachment gone awry...co-occurring borderline meets cyclic dysthmia.... it's never just hormone or just addiction. I have not looked at extreme cases really, though...