Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasy

published	February 4th 2008 by Perseus Books Group
binding	Hardcover
isbn	0465037666 (isbn13: 9780465037667)
ebook
pages	304
description	A renowned psychoanalyst offers a sneak peek into our sexual fantasies--and surprising revelations about the impact they have on our lives. Base...more [close] A renowned psychoanalyst offers a sneak peek into our sexual fantasies--and surprising revelations about the impact they have on our lives. 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 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 those fantasies affect our lives. Kahr reveals the astonishing truth behind secrecy, shame and taboo, and demonstrates how sex fantasies exert a more powerful influence on our emotions, behavior, and relationships than we ever imagined. Kahr's insights are liberating. He tells us the story of Margaret, who, in mining early sexual abuse for arousing and satisfying sexual fantasies: "succeeded brilliantly in turning a childhood trauma into an adult triumph." He explains how he helped a young man who couldn't get turned on by his beautiful girlfriend but only by dominatrix-themed porn, and how numerous men and women used fantasy to become more intimate with their partners--or to be unfaithful or even cruel to them instead. Ultimately, by unmasking the myths and destroying the guilt and ignorance surrounding sexual fantasy, Kahr offers readers a chance to lead richer and less conflicted lives. [close]
date added	05-14-07 edit book

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Erika rated it:

03/19/08

Read in March, 2008

My review that ran on March 8, 2008 in the Los Angeles Times:
There’s something about reading almost five hundred pages of sexual fantasy that throws the doors of perception a little off their hinges. Just knowing that 90% of humanity is out there screening some kind of porn film in their heads, makes, say, the lunch crowd at Fudrucker’s more interesting to observe. Does that waitress serving chili fries dream of being wrapped in cellophane and spanked? Does the bus boy want to be lick...more My review that ran on March 8, 2008 in the Los Angeles Times:
There’s something about reading almost five hundred pages of sexual fantasy that throws the doors of perception a little off their hinges. Just knowing that 90% of humanity is out there screening some kind of porn film in their heads, makes, say, the lunch crowd at Fudrucker’s more interesting to observe. Does that waitress serving chili fries dream of being wrapped in cellophane and spanked? Does the bus boy want to be licked by Keanu Reeves? Does that businessman chipmunking on his Blackberry dream of being cavity searched by terrorists?
At least, that’s how it seems after reading Brett Kahr’s “Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies. ” Kahr, a Freudian psychotherapist with over twenty years in the field, sensed there was therapeutic gold in the undulating hills of our erotic imaginings. Kahr’s interest was far from prurient, he suspected fantasies don’t exist for purely recreational purposes, that they are in fact “psychological fingerprints’ that can help us unravel the mystery of our deepest, darkest selves. “Our sexual fantasies remain, by and large, an unprocessed, unsynthesized area of the mind, crying out for explanation.” P. 61
“Inspired by the psychological insights of Sigmund Freud, the large-scale methodological rigor of Alfred Kinsey, and by the brave public dissemination of Nancy Friday, I decided that I would attempt my own research, a “Kinsey of the mind,” so that I could begin to answer some basic questions,” Kahr asserts. Chief among those questions was, “Do our fantasies represent just a bit of private fun, or do they have more profound implications for how we lead our lives?”
Thus he began The British Sexual Fantasy Research Project, culling statistical data from a combined group of 20,153 British and American adults p. 67 and conducting exhaustive, five hour interviews with several hundred subjects.
This monumental undertaking offers for the first time, an anecdotal adjunct to the bigger game of sexual activity itself. Kahr makes it clear that to ignore sexual fantasy is to miss a large piece of the puzzle in human psychology. The discrete, methodical and clearly sensitive Kahr approached his interviews less like a Sherlock Holmes and more of a Dr. Watson, asking questions, listening with his “third ear” (the one that hears not only what the subject is saying, but what he isn’t saying) and being careful not to jump to conclusions. The book provides a nice insight into the point of view of the therapist. “We must approach each fantasy rather like a giant jigsaw puzzle or mystery story. At the end of the analysis, every piece must fit in order that we may gain a clear picture of the contents of the mind of the fantasist.” P. 338 Sure enough, Kahr discovers that sexual fantasies “have developed as both a means of gratifying wishes and of conquering intrusive memories of early traumatic experiences.” In other words, we use fantasy to turn that which haunts us into something we have psychic mastery over, or as Kahr calls it, “equilibration of the self.”
This is all very interesting and highly worthwhile, but for the, er, layperson, the best parts of this book are the dirty parts. Kahr has done a great job of culling and organizing his respondents’ fantasies, and they are repeated verbatim, often to unintentional comedic effect. Grouped into categories like “Bisexual Fantasies,” or “Fantasies of Celebrities” the narratives flow with blunt, artless logic. Some fantasies are related in coy shorthand, and others are elaborate, describing antics in language that would make Susie Bright blush.
Kahr warns us, “On first reading, many people become either sexually aroused by the private fantasies of others or embarrassed by them.” Indeed, the erotic reveries are arousing, embarrassing, shocking, boring and most surprisingly, hilarious. There’s the woman who wants to be squeezed between Serena Williams’ thighs, and the guy who fantasizes about watching an episode of Lost with a girl, then duct taping her to a counter so he can “change her views forever about how many orgasms are acceptable in an evening’s encounter.” Senior citizen, “Isadora” has been fantasizing about Gregory Peck for decades: “Gregory is the mainstay of my fantasy. Yummy. I think he is dead now. “ p.146 Then there’s “Berger” who thinks Seth Green and Topher Grace “would be one hot man-on-man action. “Sancho” fantasizes about a week in Vegas with a harem of chorus girls; “All of the showgirls are tall and beautiful and their job is to be nice to me all week – laugh at my jokes, tell me what a great guy I am, massage my neck, dance with me at nightclubs, etc. –- and of course, have sex with me and with each other like crazed weasels in every possible position in the Kama Sutra.”
Many of the choicest fantasies are so laden with coprolalia (“dirty talk”), they cannot be reprinted here, but they amply illustrate the full, quirky spectrum of human sexuality, which appears also to include a large subset of people who are turned on by Margaret Thatcher.
Of course, there’s a dark side to all this. The book has many accounts of people who are so damaged that their fantasy lives drip either with cruel sadism, or heart-wrenching masochism. Most of these erotic reveries are what Kahr calls “the ordinary sadism of everyday life,” and for the most part these people are harmless. But Kahr encountered enough disturbing material to ask himself “should these individuals be tolerated, or should they be treated?” He admits, honestly, to not having a clear answer, though he is sure that his interviews were not the appropriate context for real therapeutic intervention.
But for most of us, sexual fantasy is a pretty healthy indulgence, allowing us to find an outlet for desire, and turn past trauma into a source of pleasure, rather than pain.
There is a prescriptive element to “Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head?” Fantasy research can be used in a diagnostic-predictive manner, to protect society from dangerous sexual predators. Another practical application Kahr suggests is using fantasy data to match up potential partners through dating services. As Kahr points out, “Such factors may prove to be much more pertinent to compatibility than whether one enjoys films, eating out, and country walks.” Now there’s something to fantasize about.

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