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

508 Pages·2008·2.29 MB·English

by  Brett Kahr

0465037667-Kahr 11/28/07 9:06 AM Page i
Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head?
0465037667-Kahr 11/28/07 9:06 AM Page ii
Also by Brett Kahr
D. W. Winnicott: A Biographical Portrait (1996)
Forensic Psychotherapy and Psychopathology:
Winnicottian Perspectives (2001)
Exhibitionism (2001)
The Legacy of Winnicott: Essays on Infant and
Child Mental Health (2002)
0465037667-Kahr 11/28/07 9:06 AM Page iii
Who’s Been Sleeping
in Your Head?
The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies
BRETT KAHR
A MEMBER OF THE
PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP
NEW YORK
0465037674-Kahr.qxd:Layout 1 11/3/08 4:59 PM Page iv
Copyright © 2007, 2008 by Brett Kahr
Hardcover first published in 2008 by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Paperback first published in 2009 by Basic Books
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For infor-
mation, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810.
Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk pur-
chases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations.
For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the
Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103,
or call [phone], ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].
Designed by Timm Bryson
Set in 10.5 point Sabon
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover as follows:
Kahr, Brett.
Who’s been sleeping in your head? : the secret world of sexual fantasies / Brett
Kahr.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: Sex and the psyche.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-465-03766-7 (alk. paper)
1. Sex (Psychology). 2. Sexual fantasies. I. Kahr, Brett. Sex and the psyche. II.
Title.
BF692.K27 2008
155.3'1—dc22
2007042050
Paperback: ISBN 978-0-465-03767-4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
0465037667-Kahr 11/28/07 9:06 AM Page v
Dedicated to Kim
“Half a prayer, half a song”
—nulli secundus.
0465037667-Kahr 11/28/07 9:06 AM Page vi
What a man’s mind is, that is what he is.
—SAMUEL PEPYS
*
I guess we all like to know other people’s secrets so that
we can live with our own.
—JONATHAN AMES, WAKE UP, SIR!
0465037667-Kahr 11/28/07 9:06 AM Page vii
Contents
A Note on Caution and Confidentiality xi
Introduction
On the Couch at 7:00 A.M. 1
PART ONE
THE SECRET CINEMA IN OUR MINDS
1 Why We Make Love with the Lights Out 15
2 The Science of Psychological Fingerprints 25
3 The Intra-Marital Affair
Staging Our Private Theater 69
PART TWO
A CORNUCOPIA OF FANTASIES
4 Fantasy 101
Tales of Ordinary Explicitness 111
5 Group Formations
Threesomes, Foursomes, and Moresomes 123
6 Cheating
When the Intra-Marital Meets
the Extramarital 134
vii
0465037667-Kahr 11/28/07 9:06 AM Page viii
viii Contents
7 I’m Ready for My Close-Up
Fantasies of Celebrities 143
8 Is Your Wife a Lesbian?
Is Your Husband Homosexual?
Is Your Gay Lover Really Straight? 164
9 On Genital Exhibitionism 186
10 The Erotic Smorgasbord
Fetishism, Transvestism, Homeovestism,
and Other Forms of Object-Love 194
11 Humiliation and the Infliction of Shame 201
12 Incest
Do We Really Fancy Our Family? 222
13 Can I Be Arrested for My Fantasies?
Extreme Sexual Violence 242
14 Teenagers and Children 253
15 Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice 260
PART THREE
THE ORIGINS OF SEXUAL FANTASY
16 The Underbelly of the Normal Fantasy
Erotic Freedom or Sublimated Sadism? 269
17 “They’ve Scraped Out My Soul”
Struggling with Shame and Humiliation 289
18 Case History
Paris and the Ginger Pubic Hair 312
19 The Traumatic Roots of Sexual Fantasy 330
20 The Fourteen Functions of Sexual Fantasy 356
0465037667-Kahr 11/28/07 9:06 AM Page ix
Contents ix
21 The Mysterious Boxing Gloves, Or,
Can Fantasies Be Trauma-Free? 378
PART FOUR
SEXUAL FANTASIES AND THE
OUTSIDE WORLD
22 Do Fantasies Ruin Relationships? 399
23 Normality and Perversion in the Bedroom
and the Boardroom 417
24 Sanctum Sanctorum, Or, Probing
the Unprobable 430
Appendix: The Sexual Fantasy Research
Questionnaire 453
Acknowledgments 477
Announcement: The Sexual Fantasy
Research Project 484
Index 485