Why do we have Sexual Fantasies and What do they Mean?
Artemisia de Vine offers a new and original theory: Sexual fantasies are the exact story that your ego needs to hear in order to let go and surrender into the vulnerability of pleasure and/or connection.
Your fantasies may be make-believe but the effect they have on your mind, feelings and body are not!
Understanding the psychological mechanisms contained in your fantasies means you can deliberately craft sexual experiences that trigger the same effect - without necessarily defaulting to role play at all.
If you know how to hear and act on their symbolism, sexual fantasies are psychological portals to an array of valuable, pleasurable and potentially profound transformative states of consciousness.
That is, they not only turn you on but they can take you to places inside yourself that you can only access if your ego temporarily blurs or dissolves.
This explains why sexual fantasies contain subconscious symbolism centered on resolving the three concerns of ego:
- Self - worth (self-esteem and how you value yourself)
- Self -Identity (i.e. I am a masculine man who does not wear pink. Or I am a considerate person who is not self-focused).
- Status (Power and social rank. Concern about what others think about us and not losing face.)
Sexual fantasies tell stories designed to make sense to the logic our egos, not our everyday awareness. It is like a subconscious part of us is having a direct conversation with our ego in ways that would only make sense to egos.
They contain narrative structures that powerfully engage and resolve our ego's specific fears. They are designed to help us navigate our inner world, not our outer world.
That is, sexual fantasies include what our egos fear most (poison) and find a symbolic resolution (antidote). In so doing, a sort of alchemical transformation takes place and we are able to let our egos temporarily dissolve and let our guards down.
This is different to the dominant theories about why we have sexual fantasies in important ways.
Until now, the dominant theories about what sexual fantasies are have been centred on these premises:
- Sexual fantasies are ways in which we process unfinished childhood and adolescent business.
- They result from abuse or trauma.
- They compensate for inadequacies in our relationships and lives.
- They are happy brain farts that make us feel good so we shouldn't think about them too much and just enjoy them in the privacy of our own minds.
My ego dissolution theory differs in important ways.
While I agree all the above things can be processed through sexual fantasies, I don't think it is the central reason we have sexual fantasies. My theory offers an important difference. It shifts the center from something that needs healing or fixing to normal and healthy ego functions.
1. It takes away shame for having bizarre fantasies about things we would not want to experience in real life.
2. Creates greater clarity around what should be lived out literally and what is better lived out symbolically in play.
3. De-pathologizes fantasies: making it clear we would still have the full spectrum of sexual fantasies, from romantic to taboo, even if we lived perfect lives with no unresolved issues or relationship problems. Having taboo sexual fantasies is not necessarily a sign we need "healing" or therapy.
4. Improves our sex lives: It gives us the opportunity to be able to engage these same psychological mechanisms within our real-life sexual experiences to powerful effect.
If you want to find out what really turns your sexual partner on even when they don't know how to tell you - and be able to communicate those nameless yearnings you sense in yourself - then take a closer look at each other's sexual fantasies.
Make sense of your innermost thoughts and learn the art and psychology of bringing sexual fantasies out of your head and into your bed in my Sexual Fantasy Coaching Program.
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