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.
Author(s): Kahr, Brett
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: Basic Books
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 493
City: New York
Tags: Библиотека;Соблазнение, любовь, секс, отношения;Для двоих;Секс;
Content: A note on caution and confidentiality --
Introduction : on the couch at 7:00 a.m. --
pt. 1. The secret cinema in our minds --
1. Why we make love with the lights out --
2. The science of psychological fingerprints --
3. The intra-marital affair : staging our private theater --
pt. 2. A cornucopia of fantasies --
4. Fantasy 101 : tales of ordinary explicitness --
5. Group formations : threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes --
6. Cheating : when the intra-marital meets the extramarital --
7. I'm ready for my close-up : fantasies of celebrities --
8. Is your wife a lesbian? Is your husband homosexual? Is your gay lover really straight? --
9. On genital exhibitionism --
10. The erotic smorgasbord : fetishism, transvestism, homeovestism, and other forms of object-love --
11. Humiliation and the infliction of shame --
12. Incest : do we really fancy our family? --
13. Can I be arrested for my fantasies? : extreme sexual violence --
14. Teenagers and children --
15. Sugar and spice and everything nice --
pt. 3. The origins of sexual fantasy --
16. The underbelly of the normal fantasy : erotic freedom or sublimated sadism? --
17. "They've scraped out my soul" : struggling with shame and humiliation --
18. Case history : Paris and the ginger pubic hair --
19. The traumatic roots of sexual fantasy --
10. The fourteen functions of sexual fantasy --
21. The mysterious boxing gloves, or, can fantasies be trauma-free? --
pt. 4. Sexual fantasies and the outside world --
22. Do fantasies ruin relationships? --
23. Normality and prevention in the bedroom and the boardroom --
24. Sanctum sanctorum, or, probing the unprobable --
Appendix. The sexual fantasy research questionnaire --
Acknowledgments --
Announcement : the sexual fantasy research project.
