ABSTRACT
Immersing ourselves in our ‘own world’ provides an opportunity to escape from the restraint, confines and persecution of reality – albeit the persecution we impose upon ourselves. This highly personal place enables us to dwell on thoughts, aspirations and dreams, and unless such thoughts are verbalised or acted upon they remain purely in a psychological space. Naturally, some thoughts are shared. Individuals, for example, might think about winning the National Lottery and will dream (both personally and verbally) about how a substantial win would change their life and how they would spend their new found wealth. Such thoughts, however, are of limited interest, and the very fact they are verbalised represents their social acceptability. But what about those thoughts that represent our deepest, darkest and most erotic desires – sexual fantasies? Such thoughts are unlikely to be verbalised and when they are, they are likely to be shared between consenting adults and only ever acted out in part. The likelihood of two individuals sharing exactly the same sexual fantasy is limited because fantasies are a complex interaction of experience, thought and arousal highly personal to the individual.
