“Life is spent entirely to be desired”, wrote Jean de la Bruyère in Les Caractères, from 1688. The author, by suggesting this, insisted in filigree on the essential role, in our lives, of fantasies, these imaginary representations which translate our desires. Such as, for example, the fact of inventing unfulfilled scenarios, or a sexual desire that one has not, or not yet, fulfilled. Some people come to terms with their fantasies. Others prefer to control them. Others, satisfy them. What if, ultimately, experiencing them in real life makes them disappointing? What if, by keeping them envious, they also help keep us alive?

“Fantasies do not rule sex life, they are its food”, affirmed the French psychiatrist Henri Barte. Production of the imagination through the prism of which the ego can seek to escape the grip of reality, the fantasy, precisely as imaginary, also designates the false, or the unreal. Etymologically, it comes from the Greek phantasma which means “appearance”.

A sexual fantasy consists, for example, in imagining scenarios, sexual scenes that were hitherto unfulfilled. David Lodge, in The world of education, thus estimated that “Everyone’s sex life is partly made up of fantasies, partly inspired by literary models, myths, stories as well as images and films”. Thus, the characters of the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, the two protagonists of the famous epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, could, for example, nourish multiple fantasies… The fantasy is in a way the psychological aspect of sexuality.

There are sexual fantasies, but also narcissistic fantasies, which then concern the ego. On the other hand, some fantasies can be conscious, and these are daytime reveries and plans, and others are unconscious: in this case they are expressed through dreams and neurotic symptoms. Sometimes the fantasy can lead to excessive acts. 

The singularities that are fantasies are therefore formations of the imagination. They have, in this sense, provided the royal road for the exploration of the manifestations of the unconscious. Let us not forget what the saying goes, “Forbidden thing, desired thing”…

“Fantasized love is much better than lived love. Not taking action, it’s very exciting ”, wrote Andy Warhol. Conversely, Oscar Wilde affirmed: “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give in to it. Resist, and your soul becomes ill by dint of languishing what it forbids itself ». What to do, then, when one is seized by a fantasy? Perhaps, quite simply, have in mind that, if you experience them in real life, they will certainly be disappointing?

Or, can we perhaps also achieve it through the prism of poetry and literature? Poetry, which is, for Pierre Seghers, “The pivot of the one who seeks himself in his contradictions, in the imbalance of his forces, the voice of an insane call, presence in spite of the fantasies”.

Is it possible to imagine them, too, only if they are consistent with oneself? Like Françoise Dolto, who, for example, was only interested in someone’s theory if she could make it her own? That is, if she could “Find there, expressed differently than she would have done, her fantasies, her discoveries, her experience”. And, then, she struggles to drop everything else, everything that, in the theory of the other, hardly sheds light on what she feels or what she experiences.

Can we get any idea of ​​the effect of religious sentiment on fantasies? The American psychologist Tierney Ahrold tried to assess the impact that the type of religiosity of each person had on his attitude towards sexuality and fantasy. He thus found that high levels of inner religiosity predict more conservative sexual attitudes, both in men and in women. On the contrary, a high level of spirituality predicts less conservative sexual attitudes in men, but more conservative in women.

Religious fundamentalism also has a clear impact on sexual fantasies: these are greatly reduced among its followers. Another point to note: high levels of paranormal belief and spirituality, added to a lesser importance of traditional religion, translates, in women, in a much higher tendency to be prone to various sexual fantasies.

Finally, if we listen once again to Françoise Dolto, who had practiced putting the Gospels and faith in the face of the risk of psychoanalysis, perhaps “The only sin is not to risk yourself to live your desire”…

We will be given the cold to love the flame, we will be given hatred and we will love love, sang Johnny… Desire and fantasy are intimately linked to passion. However, the author Malebranche suggests that these passions are not free, they would be “In us without us, and even in spite of us since sin”.

However, following Descartes, once we have perceived that the passions are produced in the soul without the will being part of it, we will then understand that it will be useless to seek to reduce them to the silence by a simple effort of concentration. For Descartes, in fact, “The passions of the soul are like perceptions, or feelings of the soul, strengthened by some movement of the spirits.”

Without however ceasing to keep this “Want to want”, which Johnny proclaimed so rightly, we can also, as an accomplished disciple of Descartes, help reason to regain its rights … Without forgetting in the same spirit to keep us alive. And then, we will follow in this direction the writer Frédéric Beigbeder, who advises: “Let us bless our unfulfilled desires, cherish our unattainable dreams. Envy keeps us alive “.