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

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to London psychotherapist and clinical researcher Kahr, virtually every sexually mature adult generates sexual fantasies that fulfill a wide variety of often unconscious psychological needs. What is the stuff of British and American erotic fantasies? Rape, infidelity, homosexuality, pedophilia, incest and, apparently for some Brits, kinky sex with the queen and Margaret Thatcher. For a 2005 British television documentary on the subject, Kahr collected data from 13,000 adults via a computer-administered questionnaire, supplemented with 122 face-to-face interviews. In 2006, he also surveyed approximately 3,000 American men and women. A building contractor's strip-poker masturbatory fantasy, says Kahr, signifies hostility toward women, tracing back to a father who quickly remarried a hottie after his young wife's death. A heterosexual woman's lesbian fantasies represent an attempt to recreate a family unit in which parents wield a more benign sexuality than her own abusive parents did. A happily married costume designer's fantasies turn unpleasant memories of sexual abuse by a learning-disabled older brother into a highly arousing experience. Some will no doubt find the subject matter titillating, but Kahr approaches his interviewees with respect and decorum. His prose is unabashedly enthusiastic and sometimes overwritten, and although his analyses are perceptive, the material is mostly familiar and unsurprising. (Feb. 4)
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Product Description

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (February 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465037666
• ISBN-13: 978-0465037667
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #536,326 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This title is good, but may not be exactly what you expect, January 29, 2008

By	Patrick D. Goonan "www.meaningful-life.us" (Pleasanton, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a lengthy and informative look at both the psychology of sexual fantasies and a compilation of common fantasies by category. It is very readable, interesting and sheds light on the unconscious processes that give rise to all kinds of sexual fantasies.

While I didn't count the actual pages, I would estimate that approximately 100 pages is on underlying psychology with the remainder of the book comprised of the fantasies themselves. If you have ever wondered whether what you are thinking is typical, normal or unusual... you may get a lot out of reading this.

I have done psychological research in this area and I also have a graduate background in biology. In my opinion, the best concise book on this topic is The Erotic Mind: Unlocking the Inner Sources of Passion and Fulfillment. I found this title complementary and ideally for a topic as complete as this you would almost certainly want to read both.

Although this book... The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating is NOT directly about this area, it provides context, more information on some of the underlying evolutionary hardwiring and is also complementary to this title.

If you have read Nancy Friday's books. You will find the general format of this book familiar. However, this author goes more in-depth and this is certainly a bit heavier, but equally interesting and perhaps more interesting than the many books by Nancy Friday. In fact, I would classify Nancy Friday's titles as primarily erotica with a secondary focus on underlying psychology.

Given the breadth of the research by this author, I give the book as solid nod in terms of its significance. I didn't always agree with the interpretation of the data, but the interpretations were reasonable and always had some merit.

In summary, this is a medium light read accessible to layperson's and professionals. It is primarily a book of sexual fantasies with a respectable amount of explanatory material. It is fascinating, well written and lacks a strong academic tone. It is readable and sometimes titillating as well as informative.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scientifically Analyzing Sexual Secrets, April 4, 2008

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I think that most people have sex lives that they are fairly happy with, and it surprises me to learn that 90% of the people out there are sexual fantasists, routinely screening some sort of interior porn film in their heads just for the sake of getting off. If you ever feel ashamed of having such fantasies, prepare to have an uplifting experience in reading _Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head? The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies_ (Basic Books) by Brett Kahr. The author is a psychotherapist working for over twenty years in a fairly classical Freudian tradition, but in 2003 he began to add to his clinical experience of fantasies by means of the British Sexual Fantasy Research Project, which eventually included American subjects as well, some twenty thousand subjects in total. Some of the research was done by exhaustive five-hour interviews and some was done on-line; the project is continuing, and the book includes the web address for participation if you'd like to help with some interesting research. And it is interesting. Many pages in this big book are devoted to verbatim reports of fantasies, which Kahr warns will cause in readers either sexual arousal or embarrassment; he could also have included shock and also laughter, for no one else has fantasies like your own, and the fantasies of those _other_ people, well, they can be downright weird. That so many people participate in this hidden activity must mean that it does something for our species, and for our sex lives, and besides commenting on the general purpose of fantasies, Kahr analyzes their purpose and meaning for individuals in many cases. His explanations are generally Freudian, of course, but explained with a minimum of jargon and with a high degree of humane concern and with good humor that makes the book delightful as well as instructive reading.

The fantasies are broken into categories for chapters, devoted to subjects like group sex, infidelity, sex with celebrities, homosexual encounters, violence, humiliation, and so on. These are fantasies held by people who are not psychiatric patients or prisoners, just regular folks. Not all the fantasies can be described in a family-friendly review like this one, but here is a quick description of some of them. A woman imagines that her boss declares that today is Sex Friday, and everyone can have sex with whoever seems desirable. Another woman imagines Saddam Hussein having her "really really hard and just treated like a piece of meat". Another wants to be squeezed between the thighs of Serena Williams. Many fantasies are almost rated PG: "Seeing my wife naked" or "Being alone without the children." Others involve specific X-ratings, for they have been borrowed from porn: "About being in a porn film and being watched whilst I am made to perform sexual acts." There are plenty of distressingly violent fantasies here, but more of them are simply odd. "After nearly a quarter of a century of clinical practice," writes Kahr, "I sometimes believe that I have heard every possible fantasy imaginable, until of course the next patient comes along and reveals an erotic fantasy that I never knew existed." Even with all this data, he has plenty of puzzling questions, like whether it is we who control our fantasies or vice versa. He admits that there is controversy over the issue, but thinks that generally we cannot control fantasies, especially since he has seen many people who try but cannot get rid of fantasies brought on by religious or parental prohibitions or sexual abuse.

Learning more about fantasies might even have practical application; I think Kahr is not half joking when he suggests that matchmaking services might incorporate potential partners' sexual fantasies as a criterion for a match's fitness. "Such factors may prove to be much more pertinent to compatibility than whether one enjoys films, eating out, and country walks." This humane, erudite, and thoughtful book, however, ought to have even more practical value in allowing us to regard our fellow creatures with increased sympathy and understanding. Think, for instance, of the twenty-year-old woman who blushed when she told Kahr that she had a "very perverse" fantasy that she knew would disgust him. Kahr says he braced himself, but found that she was talking about her fantasy of making love to a lecturer at her university. "Isn't that awful?" she explained. "I'm trying to get over it, but he's just so cute." Kahr gently wonders, along with the reader, if she might read this volume and, seeing how perverse (whatever that might mean) some fantasies truly are, whether she might come to view her own as a little more acceptable, playful, and fun. His explanations of the kinkiest of these visions provide a unique service in showing that all we fantasists are not so different from one another, and that it's a good bet that all of us are at least a little kinky.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cracking the erotic code!, June 4, 2009

By	Joe Kort "www.joekort.com" (Royal Oak, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies (Paperback)

I loved this book as it normalizes the sexual fantasies we have in our head by helping to understand the nonsexual narrative it reveals about ourselves. Sexual fantasies are not separate from who were are--they are stories which are coded erotically. Cracking the code helps us reveal our innermost selves.

If you struggle with sexual fantasies and thoughts and/or wish to understand what they say about you, then this is the book!