By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Powerful, charismatic, isolated and bored, President Clinton fits the profile of a man ripe for sexual compulsion, according to therapists who treat this disorder.

Called sexual addiction, sexual compulsion, success syndrome or even the "Clinton syndrome," men who suffer from it are driven more by a desire for risk and an inability to deal with emotions than by a hunger for sex, the therapists said.

While none of the therapists cited have personal knowledge of Clinton's case, they agreed that his behavior is in line with the disorder.

Jerome Levin, a New York based psychotherapist who has treated addiction for two decades, wrote the book "The Clinton Syndrome" about the disorder that he claims drove the president into a risky affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

"Clinton's affair with Lewinsky was not primarily about sex," Levin wrote. "Rather, it was about an insecure man seeking reassurance and validation of his worth."

Levin cited factors in Clinton's background that may have nudged him toward sexual addiction: an early family life filled with addictive behavior -- an alcoholic stepfather, a brother who developed a drug problem and a mother who loved to gamble -- as well as the trauma of never knowing his biological father and living without his mother for long periods.

These factors, added to the stress of the presidency, may have pushed Clinton into a series of dangerous situations, including the Lewinsky affair, Levin said in a telephone interview.

Al Cooper, a psychologist who is clinical director of the San Jose Marital and Sexuality Center south of San Francisco, also felt that Clinton fit the mold of the powerful man driven by destructive sexual compulsion.

"I see it as a kind of disorder of intimacy," Cooper said by telephone. "Men often have sex when they don't know how to be intimate, as a substitute for closeness ... It's not devoid of emotional content, but it's also full of stress relief, an ego boost and sometimes there's an angry component."

Sexual compulsion can run the gamut from obsessive masturbation to serial sexual affairs to rape and pedophilia, Cooper said.

As likely to ruin a person's life as alcoholism, drug addiction or compulsive gambling, sexual compulsion affects both men and women, but more men act out their desires in damaging ways.

Sexual compulsives almost never seek treatment voluntarily, Cooper said, but among those who do get treatment -- often a mixture of anti-depressant drugs and individual and group therapy -- only 20 percent return to destructive patterns.

Cooper, who tracks statistics on the disorder, estimated that between 5 percent and 8 percent of American men suffer from sexual compulsion, with the fastest-growing category being men in power in politics or business.

Steve Berglas, a Boston-based psychologist who specializes in treating this disorder, agreed that it may be more prevalent among the powerful. Of the 1 percent of men in the upper echelons of their fields, one in five suffer from what Berglas calls the success syndrome.

"His problem is not sex," Berglas said of Clinton. "If you look at all men who are lame duck politicians, they all have to answer one question: what am I going to do for an encore? The only thing left is daring the devil and beating him."

In Clinton's case, the urge to beat the devil may have led him into the affair with Lewinsky, a woman of his daughter's generation who has reportedly told a grand jury about trysts with the president in a room off the Oval Office.

Berglas coined the term success syndrome to describe a knot of problems that can attend the attainment of success, particularly in politics and business.

The syndrome affects more men than women, he said in a telephone interview, and symptoms can include a sense of aloneness, a need to seek adventure, arrogance, anger, adultery and addiction. All these urges can be addressed through sex, Berglas said.

If these theories were correct, therapists say Clinton could probably be successfully treated. But could he effectively serve out his term?

"If he were to go to the American public and say, 'I come from a background of addiction ... I've had a problem with sex all my adult life and I'm going into rehab' ... I think the country would really respect that," Levin said.

Clinton could hand over the reins to Vice President Al Gore for a month at the intensive start of his therapy, then return to the White House, according to Levin's scenario. Other powerful men have followed this path, he said.

"They did the job when they were actively addicted and impaired," Levin said, suggesting that there is no need to remove powerful men from power while they seek treatment.

REUTERS