What kind of fantasies are we talking about? Most often about scenarios built in the imagination, which should cause sexual arousal. However, for psychoanalysis, sexual fantasies do not come down to this. They arise primarily as a result of the work of our unconscious and express our desires.
“What kind of fantasies are we talking about? Most often about scenarios built in the imagination, which should cause sexual arousal. However, for psychoanalysis, sexual fantasies do not come down to this. They arise primarily as a result of the work of our unconscious and express our desires. Then, if we allow ourselves to do so, they can be transformed into conscious scenarios.
But “conscious” does not mean realized in reality! Take, for example, the common fantasy of a stranger slipping into a woman’s bed to have sex with her. What does it mean? I have a desire, I don’t know about it, but the other does. He reveals my desire to me, so I am not responsible for it. In real life, this woman does not seek such a situation at all, the imaginary scene simply alleviates her guilt caused by the desire for sex. Fantasies precede sexual intercourse. Therefore, they do not change, even if our partners change.
Our thoughts belong only to us. Where does guilt come from? Its source is in the love-fusion that we felt in infancy for our mother: she, as it seemed to us, knows better than we do what is happening to us. Little by little we separated from it, we now have our own secret thoughts. What a pleasure it is to elude the all-powerful, in our opinion, mother! Finally, we can belong to ourselves and accept the fact that it does not exist to satisfy all our needs. But with the advent of this distance, we begin to fear that we have stopped loving, that there will be no more of the care on which we depended. That is why we are afraid to betray a loved one when we see someone else in our fantasies. There are always two poles in a love relationship: the desire to be yourself and the desire for love-fusion in order to fully satisfy your needs.