Taking the Lid off Sexual Fantasies

Dr. Sahib; A Question

I am of the opinion that wet dreams in boys are actually nature`s training videos for their sexual life cycle later. On the other hand Freud contends that dreams are merely a manifestation of our daily observations and experiences and how sub-conscience registers them. In this case, theoretically, if a boy is kept from any and all sexual stimulants, he should not have wet dreams. I want to know if there is a scientific study on this subject that proves any of the two points.

I am also of the opinion that male testes are required to be ``unloaded`` frequently to replenish the fresh production of sperms. So a wet dream may be mechanism to fulfil this very purpose as well. But then question is why it has to be accompanied by a ``dream``. Which again leades us to my original question.

Re: # 24
Dear Zeena....Thank you for your detailed comments. I agree with you that sexuality is

one aspect of human personality and fantasy is another aspect of human mind.

People can fanyasize about many things other

than sexual or loving relatioships. My interest is those particular fantasies that are

sexual and how they are related to behaviour and lifestyle. My hypothesis in this article is

that people behave in a way that is socially acceptable depending upon the families and

communities people live in but in their fantasy life they are FREE to fantasize about

anything. In fantasy life people have freedom that they do not have in their real life. You

discussed homosexuality with another interacter. That is a good example. In some families

and communities homosexuality is accepted as normal in others it is considered...

unnatural....unethical....immoral....even illegal. So if a homosexual is living in such a family

and community he / she is afraid to express his/her sexuality as he/she is afraid to be

penalized and persecuted. So he/she starts living a lifestyle that is not congruent with

his/her natural self and that causes emotional and social conflicts. As the conflict escalates

the person can have emotional problems and can be labeled as mental patient. For me

human suffering is more important than what diagnosis a person gets. Diagnosis changes

with different classifications. Homosexuality was considered a mental illness in 1960s but

was accepted normal in 1990s. What I am trying to highlight is that many of us still live in

traditional and conservative families and communities where we can not share and live our

truth and can only express our truth in our fantasies. I hope we see a day when sex will

not be considered sin and it will not be taboo to talk about it. I think then people will be

healthier and have to see therapists less often. Thank you once again for your thoughtful

comments. I have come to chowk so that we can have an open dialogue and learn from

each other. I hope I keep on learning till the day I die. sincerely sohail

their heart desires.

Re: # 10
I hope I will always have a supervisor for therapy-although I guess it will get harder as I grow older.

Zeena #24

While i don`t agree with almost anything you say (refer unplugged for details)...

...you are right when you object to the writer ``applying his psych. knowledge on everyone in general population without delineating the boundaries who to label as psych patient and who to be called just healthy people?``. It`s amazing that chowk allows his sort of pop pyschology ( remember the green pills?) to be paraded on chowk; if anything, it belongs in the self-publish section where people can form their own opinions. By publishing this quack`s BS on FP- and to compound this folly, turning up on the interacts thread and defending the punk as well- chowk editor is endorsing the stuff he peddles here as science! What next, a treatise on energy production from djinns? (oh wait that`s already been done)

Dear Zeena (# 27)

Thank you for free advice. And yes, you post 24 does answer my question while Dr Khalid Sohail`s essay, which should have, didnt.

I am homosexual because i like guys ??? I didnt say I ``only`` like guys. But never mind. One label is as good as another and i will happily accept ``homosexual``.

And now that i know what ``fantasy`` is, I will start spinning a rather delicious one for myself.

#26 wasif2 sahib
If you read my post # 24 and #25 you will be more clear what is fantasy and what is sexuality. As I stated earlier, Both are different entities.

In your case, it is not your fantasy. It is your sexual identity that you are exploring and experiencing. Your identity is being formed and it looks like you are homosexual. This is another normal expression of your sexuality . Remember to love someone is not fantasy. This is normal emotion which your are expressing.

Now, if you are comfortable with this emotion then you don`t need psychotherapy. You just go ahead and release your emotional chemical and electric energies. This is called ego-syntonic emotion(means collaborative with yourself as normal for you)

Now, if you are uncomfortable , disturbed, and rather chaotic/confused about your emotions, this is called ego dystonic emotion(means non collaborative with yourself as foreign body).

You need to sit back, and relax, ask questions from your own inner self. Possibility is you will come up with a positive conclusion which will help you deal with these emotions and you will be able to chanalise them in appropriate direction(appropriate according to your needs), this is called self therapy to get in touch with your insight, or insight oriented cathrasis. Or you can discuss it with your close family and friends or you can share it with the same group of people, called group therapy, which is the most comfortable way to deal with it.

Remember, the main key is acceptance who you are ? once you accept , you will enjoy your life to the fullest.

Thank you

What is ``fantasy`` ?

I am sexually and emotionally attracted to guys my age.... is that a ``fantasy`` ?

There are several things I would like to do in sex (which sometimes I can and sometimes I cant) and several I wouldnt (which sometimes I still have to).... are the ones I would like to do my ``fantasies`` ?


Or is fantasy something I would like to do but never get to do because the people i want to do it with are so stuck up about sex (or is it just me ?).

Whatever....the question is how do i know if I am ``fantastic`` ???

On side note:-
I strongly believe Fantasy and Sexuality are two completely different entities.

Being hetrosexual/homesexual/bisexual/a-sexual is about who you love absoltuely not who you have sex with. Sexuality means whole lots of different dimensions. Fantasy is even more multidimensional.

reference:-bouchard TJ, Philips KA,silverman JM, Perkins(sexuality and fantasy)

Dear writer

Your article is not clear if it is sexuality you wish to discuss, or if it is fantasy you are dealing with? Also, you are not clear about if this article is about your patients and(when I say patients I mean mentally sick people by definitive criteria of psychiatry) or you are talking about Non-sick or healthy people (as you clearly see the difference I did not use the term patients for people, what I mean people is who do not fit in to any criteria of psychiatry as being sick).

If, we are dealing with fantasies which is the headline of your article, then this article has big flaws b/c fantasies by no definition are exclusively about sexuality. Another big hole that I am seeing in this article is writer is applying his psych. knowledge on everyone in general population without delineating the boundaries who to label as psych patient and who to be called just healthy people?

Fantasy is the defense mechanism used by affected individuals, which most commonly come under the cluster of odd or eccentric group of patients and it includes paranoid, schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders. And, I am sure being a famous psychotherapist, the writer of this article must be well aware of such personality disorders but, clearly missed them in his article. Which was another big flaw?

Fantasy is the creation of an imaginary life by which the patient deals with loneliness. A fantasy can be quite elaborate and extensive. Now it is clear fantasy is the defense used by patients, not by healthy people.

Fantasies are a royal road to the unconsciousness of the patients, such fantasies can be about future like if, the patient could make any change in his or her life, what would it be? What are the patient`s most common or favorite fantasies? Does the patient experience daydreams as well? Are the patient`s fantasies grounded in reality, or is the patient unable to tell the difference between fantasy and reality and daydreams?

Now, it is psychotherapist who has to inquire about the patient`s system of values-both social and moral-including values about work, money, play, children, parents, friends, sex, community concerns, and cultural issues. For instance, are children a burden or a joy? Is work a necessary evil, an avoidable entity, or an opportunity? The most important aspect of fantasy is to inquire, what is the patient`s concept of right and wrong?

Patients who are labeled as schizoid they are eccentric, lonely or frightened-seek solace and satisfaction within themselves by creating imaginary lives, especially imaginary friends. In their extensive dependence on fantasy, these patients often seem to be strikingly aloof.

Fantasies shouldn`t be mixed with daydreaming,b/c they are diagnostic criteria for the patient population, NOT for the healthy people population. Author has totally confused the idea of sexuality with misconception of fantasies, exclusively attaching them with sexuality.

Sexuality is a totally different entity, it has got nothing to do with being sick or healthy and also sexuality cannot be loosely attached with fantasies, it is very tangential approach.

As a matter of fact sexuality has very solid grounds, are absolutely not roofed by fantasies. Whoever is heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual or A-sexual knows very well what he/she is. These terms do not apply to being mentally sick to fantasize themselves. No, they are all normal terms and different forms of sexual expressions. They are not dependent upon fantasies. Yes, if they start having fantasies about their confused sexuality then that is the point where chaotic disturbed personality erupts and where they are labeled as patients. Absolutely not healthy people.

Echoboom sahib,

You are quite pleased it seems that many Westerners are turning to islam. You wouldn`t mind offcourse if an Afghan or two decided to take the reverse course.

Regards

Re: # 21
Echo, religion is the sex of the new millenium. Nothing says orgasm like a few cartoon induced KFC burnings or casting aspersions on heathens in protestant revivals. Fuck God-Literally!!

The Sunday Times April 09, 2006

If you have liberal parents, getting religion is the only way to go, says Kira Cochrane


‘When I look back, I suppose that Ben’s conversion to Christianity was quite gradual really, but he’s definitely fallen hook, line and sinker now,” says Ellen Parker, a teacher from Surrey and a lifelong agnostic. Her son Ben is in his mid-twenties and has been a devout evangelical Christian for a few years. It is a situation about which Parker feels deeply ambivalent.
“On the one hand,” she says, “he was quite aimless when he joined the church and I can see that it’s given him a real sense of purpose: he went from being someone who had literally never read a book for pleasure, to studying the Bible for hours each day. But it also makes me sad because none of the rest of the family shares his beliefs and it excludes us from a massive part of his life. Sometimes I think that the gulf between the values of his church and my own liberal values might be impossible to bridge.”



Parker is not alone. More and more baby boomer parents are watching as their children turn their backs on the secular, liberal values that they were brought up with, instead embracing Islam and evangelical Christianity. In the past few years at least 15,000 Britons are estimated to have made the shahadah (the formal declaration of faith in Allah and the prophet Muhammad), although many believe that this is an underestimation, given the numbers who convert in secret. And evangelical churches win far more converts than anywhere else in the Christian sphere.

Among those who have converted are the offspring of a number of Establishment figures, including Michael Howard’s son Nick, who worked with the homeless while studying at Oxford and is now training to become a priest, and Jonathan Birt, the son of John Birt, former director-general of the BBC, who has become a Muslim scholar and changed his name to Yahya.

Last week Lewis Wolpert, the scientist, wrote an article in the New Statesman referring to a conversation with Matthew, his evangelical Christian son. Matthew, he wrote, declared himself envious of his father.

“I beamed,” writes Wolpert, “and asked what he envied. The reply was, ‘You are going to die soon, certainly before me’. I was shocked. Why was this so desirable? It was because he was still unhappy and wanted to die so that he could go, as he strongly believed, to heaven.”

Wolpert nonetheless fully accepted his son’s religion. For others their child’s move towards religion creates a generational gulf as significant as that of the 1950s and 1960s, when rebellion was all about breaking boundaries. Now, it seems, the tables have thoroughly turned and there is a genuine thirst among many young people to establish strong moral codes and rules, to give up the alcohol, drug taking and casual sex synonymous with many of their parents’ western culture.

Myfanwy Franks, an author who has interviewed many British converts to Islam and Christianity, notes that “more and more it seems that becoming highly religious is the ultimate form of rebellion, because secularity is really our society’s main religion now. A lot of people utterly despise religion, don’t they? To convert to Islam or Christianity is really the punk rock of the modern age”.

The extent to which some parents worry about their child’s new-found faith cannot be underestimated. “When I was lecturing in Hull,” says Yvonne Ridley, the journalist who was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 before she converted to Islam, “I met a young man who had just become a Muslim and had brought his parents with him. He said to me, ‘I honestly think they would have found it easier if I’d become an alcoholic or a crack dealer’ .”

Part of this, of course, is borne of fear. Most parents want their children to have the easiest possible ride through life and, given the antipathy or even aggression that many people feel towards organised religion — and especially Islam — it is understandable that parents might be concerned about a child who converts. This applies even for older converts. Ridley’s mother is accepting of her faith but “on July 7 last year”, says Ridley, “she called me up and said, ‘Get that bloody hijab off and go home’. I didn’t take the hijab off, but I have to say that it was a really scary day to be out as a Muslim”.

Joe Ahmed-Dobson, son of the former health minister Frank Dobson, converted to Islam in his early twenties, a move that was immediately accepted by his parents. “I think people need to be sensible,” he says. “It’s probably best not to walk into the front room one day and say, out of the blue, ‘Hey, Mum and Dad, I’ve found religion!’ and I think maybe, subconsciously, that’s part of the reason why it took me so long to convert. I first read the Koran when I was 16 and I immediately accepted it philosophically, but I wanted my parents to notice that interest so that my decision didn’t come as a big shock to them.”

As Ahmed-Dobson sees it, it’s the secular world that is becoming outmoded, rather than the religious one. Every generation needs some faith and “for my parents’ generation”, he continues, “I think that they had a real belief in conventional politics and government: whether it was the socialism of the 1970s, or the conservative liberalism that came along later. There was a real sense back then that those movements would solve all the world’s ills, but they didn’t. I think it’s maybe as a result of that that young people are now more open to religion, and particularly Islam, which allows for science and logic”.

good that u have a column doctor sohail........did u ever feel sexy urself when listening to ur patients?

Dullabhatti: I think your smoke and beer laced psychoanalysis was not an uncommon punishment. I too went through the same trial wihtin Mr. Kulharee`s exalted company.

As far as the age of the subject d`amor in fantasies, I think I am still attacted to older women. Although the age difference between us is getting shorter and shorter. Now the maximum age cap is 7 years. And before you jump...abhi toh mein javaan hoon.

I found the sexual fascinations of religious folks in the article quite intriguing. It poses the dilemma of what is a motivated suicide bomber to do when he knows he won;t be able to perform with his 72 houris. :-) (j/k)

Re# 16

When in adolescent age, boys tend to act ``adult``, and go for older women. One more reason might be to the attraction towars more developed bodies, just like their mothers`.

In mid-life, they fall for easy-to-please young girls. Mature women r nasty and demanding, as y`all know :)

why this noise about patient privacy and ethics regarding this article? good doctor has not mentioned a single patient name in it.