I was hoping for more psychology and fewer descriptions of people's fantasies. It reads more like "porn by way of science" than "why people have the fantasies they do and how the subconscious processes desires." I mean, there's some of that in the beginning, but then it's just fantasy descriptions.

Also, Kahr is a Freudian, and I am not into Freud at all. The guy's been thoroughly debunked, except for a couple of ideas. And seeing someone in modern times who actually falls for all the old ideas annoys the hell out of me. Oh well, another one for the discard pile... ( )

The first half of this book was really interesting. The fantasies themselves, how the study was set up, etc....all fascinating. However, you get to the last third of the book and you get Freudian analysis of the fantasies. While he may have been able to reach back in time for some sort of trauma that people are eroticizing, it didn't always work. Some were such a stretch that I call bullshit. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar dude. ( )

The parts that were people listing their favourite fantasies were quite hot and interesting, but the parts that were Kahr laying Freudian analysis on them were pretty uniformly bullshit. ( )

Brett Kahr is a psychotherapist and a couples' counselor. During the course of his practice he became interested in things his clients had to say about their (sometimes troubling) sexual fantasies. and curious as to how normal such fantasies are and what kind of effect they have on people's lives. So he did a study on the subject, surveying many thousands of English and American adults via the internet and conducting extensive interviews with a small subset of individuals.

This is, I maintain, an intriguing and worthwhile topic. I'm always interested in the question of what makes human beings tick, and sex is, after all, a remarkably large part of our psychologies. And the way in which our sexual imaginations can incorporate so many odd elements that have little or nothing to do with the basic reproductive act is wonderfully bizarre. I also think there are some genuinely important questions in this area that it would be great if psychology could answer. For instance, are sexual fantasies which incorporate violent elements generally harmless, or do they indicate an increased likelihood of violent sexual behavior? And is it better. when attempting to treat someone with pedophilac tendencies, to encourage them to channel their impulses into fantasy scenarios in which no actual children are harmed, or is indulging those kinds of thoughts just more likely to result in them being acted on?

So I did find a lot of what this book as to say interesting. However, Kahr is a Freudian psychotherapist, a school of thought I am, to say the least, highly skeptical of, and his results are very much filtered through a Freudian lens. Which means that even his most reasonable and believable-sounding conclusions are almost all speculation, rather than science. Most particularly, his attempts to discover the origins and meaning of specific fantasies provided by his interviewees, while thoughtful and well-meaning, often display a logic that is extremely tenuous, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. It does provide a very useful look at the Freudian mindset, though, and has given me a much clearer understanding of how it works and what people see in it.

And, yes, OK, I will admit to a certain amount of prurient as well as scientific interest. Come on, who isn't at least a little curious about the contents of other people's private sexual imaginations? It turns out, though, that reading other people's sexual fantasies can get boring surprisingly quickly. Well, except for the really disturbing and/or depressing ones, anyway. And speaking of surprising, I am deeply bemused by the fact that so many British people seem to have sexual fantasies about the Royal Family. I truly had no idea. ( )

Not unlike gripping reality tv - sick making but oddly compelling. ( )