Sexual
Fantasies
The following books attempt to understand in their
various ways
just what sexual fantasies
are and how they arise.
They are reviewed by James Park.
These books are arranged in order of their quality,
beginning with the best.
The red comments are the
opinions and responses of this reviewer.
1. Brett Kahr
Who's Been Sleeping in Your
Head?
The Secret World of Sexual
Fantasies
(New
York: Basic Books: www.basicbooks.com,
2008) 493 pages
(ISBN: 978-0-465-03766-7; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: BF692.K27 2008)
A British psychotherapist who has studied sexual
fantasies
on both side of the Atlantic Ocean—in
the UK and the USA—
takes us on a fascinating tour of the hidden parts of the human mind.
This book is based on extensive interviews with
several hundred subjects
plus surveys of several thousand others.
Almost all of the subjects were recruited from the general public.
The subjects were not psychotherapy clients.
As such, it might be the most extensive study of human sexual fantasies.
No dramatic new information is uncovered,
but this book does explore all of the most common sexual fantasies.
The author is a Freudian, but this does not distort
his data.
He spends many pages trying to find the causes of sexual fantasies
in the childhood experiences of the subjects.
And in many cases, traumatic events from childhood
do seem to be the
basic causes of adult sexual fantasies.
Many of the subjects had never shared
their sexual
fantasies with anyone else.
No general
theory of sexual fantasies emerges from this study.
But the gathered data could be
used by future researchers
who might be able to develop
comprehensive explanations.
The author's research also continues.
This would be a
good place to begin reading about sexual fantasies.
2.
Michael Bader
Arousal:
The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies
(New
York: St. Martin's Press: www.stmartins.com,
2002) 293 pages
(ISBN: 0-312-26933-1; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ31.B185 2002)
This psychoanalyst has seen many patients
with troublesome sexual
fantasies.
Because of his Freudian
orientation,
he seeks the background for fantasies
in the dynamics of the patient's
family-of-origin.
What are the unconscious origins of rape fantasies, for example?
Women who have such fantasies do
not want to be raped.
But they discover that being overwhelmed by a man
or surrendering to a powerful man 'really turns them on'.
This reviewer
agrees that troublesome sexual fantasies
were not consciously chosen by the
person possessed by these sex-scripts.
We simply discover such fantasies
to be a deep part of our psyches.
But unpacking the Freudian
unconscious will probably not explain them.
Rather, unchosen sexual fantasies
were imprinted at random
at critical periods in the first
two decades of life.
See the last book in this
bibliography for a full exposition
of the hypothesis of imprinted
sexual fantasies.
Some women find
that they are 'turned on'
by ruthless and even violent men.
However, if their sexual responses depend on such dynamics,
they are left cold by really kind and considerate men.
In other words, the sorts of men
whom they might like to live with and possibly marry
are not the ones who create sexual passion.
In their emotional depths, they want tender love and romance,
but macho men are the ones who get them sexually aroused.
They experience a disjunction within themselves between love and lust.
Of course,
women with other kinds of imprinted sexual fantasies
do find romantic courting
sexually arousing.
Soft music and quiet conversation
without any hint
of being 'taken' against their
will is what causes sexual arousal.
They find themselves sexually
interested in men (or women)
who would never think of raping
them
or who might even resist their
sexual advances.
Women with such imprinted sexual responses
would probably never take their worries to a therapist.
Rather, they want to marry
the romantic men,
not consort with rough
strangers.
When men find female breasts in their fantasies,
does this have anything to do with breast-feeding in infancy?
It seems to this reviewer
that many of the psychoanalytic interpretations are far-fetched.
Men and women do in fact have sometimes-puzzling sexual fantasies,
but the search for causes in 'the unconscious' seems doomed to failure.
Bader does
recognize that sexual fantasies sometimes
seem out-of-character
for the person who has them.
The new person that the client is trying to become
has nothing to do with the sexual fantasies discovered deep within.
Some couples were encouraged to play ruthless games
in bed
because that helped their sexual satisfaction,
even tho it was not the kinds of persons they were.
Bader seems so focused on making
sex 'better'
that he does not even consider
getting beyond the fantasies.
The most he does is help clients to understand
the possible family dynamics that lie behind their sexual fantasies.
A paragraph on page 220 summarizes this book:
"The pages of this book are filled with stories
of people who grew up with martyred mothers
and moody or absent fathers
and as a result reaped feelings of guilt, worry, shame,
and helplessness, feelings that inhibited their capacity
for sexual pleasure and had to be overcome by sexual fantasies.
To some extent, such feelings
—and
therefore the fantasies that correct them—and
universal."
This reviewer
admires Bader's very serious attempt
to understand sexual fantasies
by looking at childhood family
dynamics.
But it seems to this reviewer that
the case has not been made.
If all family problems were
prevented or solved,
would sexual fantasies disappear?
I do not think so.
People who have few psychological
problems
still have elaborate imprinted
sexual fantasies.
And the most
psychologically-fragile people
do not necessarily have the most
bizarre fantasies.
Bader could probably benefit from
reading
the last book in this bibliography:
Imprinted
Sexual Fantasies: A New Key for Sexology.
{last}
James Park
Imprinted
Sexual Fantasies:
A
New Key for Sexuality
(Minneapolis,
MN: Existential Books,
2008) 176 pages
(ISBN: 978-0-89231-561-7; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ21.P37 2008)
This book offers a new
hypothesis for
explaining human sexuality:
Each human person is imprinted
with specific sex-scripts
or sexual fantasies during our first 20 years of life.
Our first sexual responses are created
not by nature, not by nurture, but by mental imprinting.
If this hypothesis proves substantially correct,
it could revolutionize modern sexology.
The four-page comprehensive
outline appears here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website-jamesleonardpark---freelibrary-3puxk/SS.html
This outline will
allow you to read about 60 pages
from Imprinted
Sexual Fantasies.
This book is available for publication by a major
publisher.
Here is an Open
Letter to Agents and Publishers.
Created
August 29, 2008; Revised 3-20-2009; 4-24-2009; 4-29-2009; 3-7-2010;
4-20-2018;
Related
Bibliographies
This
bibliography is related
to several others in sexology.
Here is the complete list:
Sexual
Fantasies
B-SX-FAN
Sexology
B-SEXOLO
Sex-Script
Hypothesis
B-SEX-SC
Variations of
Sex and Gender B-V-SG
I. Intersex
B-CRIT
II. Transsexualism
B-TS
Transsexual
Autobiographies B-TS-AB
III. Sex-Roles
B-ROLE
IV. Gender-Personality
B-GEND
V. Sexual
Orientation
B-ORNT
VI. Cross-Dressing
B-TV
Return to the SEXOLOGY
page.
Go to the Book
Review Index
to discover 350 other reviews
organized into more than 60 bibliographies.
Go to
the beginning of this website
James
Leonard Park—Free
Library