Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head kindle ½ 493 pages É Brett Kahr

mobi Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head

Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head kindle ½ 493 pages É Brett Kahr É Based on the largest ever survey of sexual fantasies and drawing on the author’s twenty five years of clinical practice this “anatomy of secret desire” does for sexual fantasy what Kinsey did for sexual behavior However unlike KinseyBased on the largest ever survey of sexual fantasies and drawing on the author’s twenty five years of clinical practice this “anatomy of secret desire” does for sexual fantasy what Kinsey did for sexual behavior However unlike Kinsey’s books which were almost unreadably dense and data driven Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head features narrative accounts of sexual fantasies and the author’s own insightful interpretations of how I've marked this as containing spoilers largely because this is an open site and the subject matter may offend some Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head is a bit of a departure for me Most of my nonfiction reading tends toward the historical or the hard sciences astronomy evolutionary biology etc but one of my GoodReads friends marked this as a to read I read the publisher's blurb and a few of the reviews and it looked intriguing Fortunately one of my libraries possessed a copy and the inevitable ensued I obtained and read itBrett Kahr is a Freudian psychoanalyst who's realized that there is a dearth of studies of what constitutes sexual fantasies what's normal if that can be measured and what's perverse also a slippery concept and how those fantasies might affect people in their livesBeing a Freudian Kahr believes that most if not all of our fantasies arise from childhood traumas Trauma here does not necessarily mean something horrible like being raped by your father when you're 10 years old or having a group of boys sodomize you in the public restroom when you're 13 It can mean relatively unfortunate events or circumstances in an otherwise good childhood Circumstances like an emotionally distant father or an overbearing mother or as in the case of one woman the loss of an older brother in a car accident Kahr argues that trauma functions as a key ingredient in the genesis of adult sexual fantasies p 393 and that these fantasies help master trauma through eroticization rendering the terrifying and unprocessable into something sexy and manageable p 383A perverse fantasy is one that eroticizes hatred p 418 and that reuires sustained perpetration of sadism toward oneself or one's 'love object' and becomes so all engrossing it prevents one from forging intimate relationships p 420There are a number of conclusions he arrives at if some are only tentative1 What is a sexual fantasy An image thought drama usually thought about during sex coital or masturbatory and that results in orgasm This makes it a different phenomenon than the sexual dream2 What is a normal fantasy There is no normative fantasy People who appear uite normal might have some of the most sadistic misogynistic bestial fantasies but as long as they avoid the two criteria for perversion I mention above they're no abnormal than fantasizing about making love to one's partner that never departs from the missionary position3 Why fantasize Kahr doesn't really know From an evolutionary point of view it may help arousal and hence propagation In terms of human psychology it eroticizes and makes harmless traumas in our lives4 Does everyone have fantasies Despite some negative responses in Kahr's survey he feels that everyone has a fantasy of some sort even if they don't recognize it as such5 Should we share fantasiesact them out with our partners Maybe He recounts cases where exposing andor acting out a fantasy did wonders for a relationship; alas sometimes they torpedoed a relationship6 Are fantasies dangerous Sometimes See above about what a perverse fantasy is Actually in relation to this subject Kahr gets into some potentially scary Big Brother stuff where he envisions mental health experts tagging potential rapists pedophiles etc based on their sexual fantasies sort of a Minority Report world without the ESP7 If we don't fantasize about our partner is that a bad sign Maybe; maybe not Since a fantasy is a defense mechanism from past trauma the absence of one's current partner is not unusual8 If we fantasize about something illegal ie rape pedophilia incest murder etc will we eventually act it out Probably not Most the overwhelming majority even if their fantasies involve raping the cheerleading suad or murdering their partner don't go through with it As Kahr wants to emphasize even the most vile fantasy is a defense mechanism against some childhood trauma Now fantasizing about gang rapes or murder probably indicates a fairly serious trauma and the person should seek some form of therapy and it may make a person's intimate relationships ultimately unsatisfying but it doesn't mean we have a future Ted Bundy on our hands9 Can we control our fantasies Always a good Freudian Kahr doesn't believe so At least not to any great extentOne of the best aspects of this work is that Kahr doesn't try to create an all encompassing theory of sexual fantasy He tries to identify some broad generalizations but doesn't apply them to explain fantasyThough I don't have the background to assess just how valid psychoanalysis is or what competing theories may be out there I found this book fascinating and interesting