Bader - Arousal: the secret logic of sexual fantasies

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Contents

For Margot

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many people who have provided inspiration and support during the writing of this book. My agent, Amy Rennert, was the first to see the potential of a book in my writings on sexuality and guided me through the proposal stage. I also had the good fortune to have had several excellent readers who helped me clarify my argument and refine my voice: Benji Hewitt, Dr. Vin Dunn, Carl The Hammer Sommers, Chris Bigelow, Larry B. D. McNeil, Denny Zeitlin, Renate Stendhal, Lillian Rubin, Kim Chernin, and Michael Lerner. Kim Chernin and Michael Lerner were particularly supportive in helping me overcome self-doubts about the value of my ideas and my ability to express them in a book-length form.

If these friends and colleagues helped me strengthen my argument, my amazing editor, Alison Owings, helped me strengthen my prose. She helped me become a better writer and did it with a gentle, honest, and humorous touch.

I was trained as a psychoanalyst and have been shaped by this tradition. Owen Renik and Robert Wallerstein are two analysts who mentored me and were role models of critical thinking and clinical integrity. In the area of sexuality, however, there are but a few psychoanalytic thinkers whose work has inspired my own. Robert Stoller, Ethel Spector Person, and Otto Kernberg are three who were important to me in this regard. Interestingly, the writer whose thinking about sex is most similar to my own and whose books have been a rich source of validation and inspiration to me is not a psychoanalyst at all. Nancy Friday has been writing about sex for over twenty-five years. Her collections of sexual fantasies are amazing sources of material for anyone interested in the meaning of sexual desire. Although I rarely quote her ideas directly, while reading her books I found myself repeatedly startled by how many of my own theoretical conclusions she had already anticipated.

Closer to home, my exposure to what is called Control-Mastery theory, a theory of the mind and psychotherapy first developed by the psychoanalyst Joseph Weiss and empirically tested by Weiss and Harold Sampson, has been the primary theoretical soil in which my ideas have grown. Hal Sampson, a teacher of mine for over twenty-five years, has been a nurturing mentor whose constant support has been what psychoanalysts call a corrective emotional experience, counteracting my harsh internal critic time and time again. Most of all, however, it has been my twelve-year association with Joe Weissmentor, confidant, supervisor, and role modelthat is primarily responsible for this book. Not only are my ideas about sexuality an extension of Joes highly original theory of the mind, but he has tirelessly fostered my intellectual and emotional growth in areas unrelated to this particular project about sexuality.

Finally, I want to thank my wife, Margot Duxler. She not only edited and critiqued the content of this book, but has been there as my emotional anchor and my continual inspiration. Although friends tease me that Margots contribution to my ideas about sexuality transcends the theoretical, I suppose that they are ultimately right. Margot has been the source of my passion for life in every area. This book is both about passion and a product of it. For that, I owe her my undying gratitude.

Introduction

There is a boundary to mens passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

John Barrymore

Sex: The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.

Lord Chesterfield

A woman I was treating in psychotherapyIll call her Janreported that she frequently had this fantasy while making love with her husband. She imagines a large man sexually dominating her in an extremely rough and aggressive way. The man is a stranger, and he doesnt care at all about her pleasure. He holds Jan down and treats her body as a thing to be used for his own satisfaction. He fondles her in a harsh and painful manner and never looks her in the eye. He is exactly the type of man Jan loathes in her real life. However, this fantasy is very exciting to her. She finds that she needs it to have an orgasm with her husband.

Now, unless youre someone who has similar fantasies, the fact that pain, helplessness, and degradation can be sexually arousing is surely bewildering. Even if you do share similar fantasies of domination, or even practice them, the reason that they excite you is still probably equally mysterious. The fact is, most of us know what turns us on but not why. We may know what kinds of bodies we find attractive but not why. We may know how we like to have sex or imagine having sex, but not really why we prefer doing it this way and not some other way. We may know that sex is better in hotels or in public places, that leather pants or spiked heels are sexually arousing, or that group sex is an exciting fantasy, but we rarely know the real reasons behind these preferences.

My aim in this book is to draw back the veil of mystery surrounding sexual arousal and throw a bright light into those shadowy corners of our minds that determine what turns us on or off. This knowledge, I hope, will change forever our relationship to our own sexuality. No longer will we regard our fantasy life as a source of embarrassment or as abnormal. Rather than critically judging our sexual desiresand those of our partnersas appropriate or inappropriate, healthy or unhealthy, we will be able to see these desires as windows into the deepest levels of our psyches. By understanding the logic and purpose of our fantasies, we also will understand the bedrock of our personalities. Sexual fantasies are the keyhole through which we will be able to see our true selves.

I will offer a theory of sexual arousal that explains both the most theatrical scenarios of bondage and fetishism and the mildest preferences about sexual positions in the bedroom. The power of this theory is evident in the very fact that it is able to explain such an immense range of phenomena. Not only will it illuminate the meaning of our private fantasies and preferences, but it will make explicable the mystery of sexual chemistrywhat ignites it and what extinguishes it. Couples will suddenly be able to understand the causes of their sexual compatibility or their sexual boredom. Instead of suffering in silence, couples who are frustrated in their sex lives will become better equipped to explore and communicate their true feelings to each other.

My theory about the causes of sexual arousal is grounded in my clinical experience as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. But while it draws from the work of many other workers in the field, it stakes out new ground. It draws from psychoanalysis, but it is not strictly psychoanalytic. It borrows from the field of cognitive therapyan approach that emphasizes changing bad thought patternsbut is not a cognitive theory. It is sensitive to the concerns of sociologists and feminists, but it is not a social theory. For readers who are currently in psychotherapy, it will open up new avenues of exploration. For therapists whose patients talk to them about sex, it will offer a new model of listening and understanding. But this book is not only for professional use. It is a book for anyone who is curious about their sexuality or that of others or who has felt secretly aroused in ways that feel shameful.