Her favorite fantasy was one she called the “slutty bride”

Incest fantasies, however, are not necessarily so destructive.

Often, for women, the focus of such a fantasy is on the size of the animal’s penis or, more generally, the “animalistic” nature of the beast’s desire. We think about “animal” passion as an intense passion that doesn’t obey social rules or restraints. It is pure sex, its crucial ingredient being that there is no pretense of an exchange between two

Sexualized advertising “works” only when it resonates with the fantasies of its consumers.

In addition, children of both sexes often have to contend with the relative emotional absence of their fathers, who, by choice, emotional disability, social role, or economic necessity, have ceded the primary caretaker role in the family to the mother.

But not always. Children also often misunderstand a parent’s motives and intentions.

Popular wisdom has it that sexual desire is most passionate in the context of an intimate relationship with someone we love. Unbeknown to most people, however, the relationship dimension of sex is only half the story. Sexual excitement also requires that we momentarily become selfish and turn away from concerns about the other’s pleasure in order

The relevance of transference to sexual boredom is obvious. To the extent that we unconsciously experience our partner or ourselves as similar to a parent, and to the extent that earlier parental relationships contained elements of worry, guilt, and shame (which most of our childhoods did), those feelings will enter our love life even more than

Our sexual partners, therefore, have to perform the same function as sexual fantasies, namely, to establish the conditions of safety necessary to allow sexual excitement to emerge.