Mental Onanism

Your sexual fantasies are yours. You may have never shared them with someone and you may never share them in the future. The nine women interviewed for this study did share them and their sincerity was striking. Even if their fantasies did not comply with existing ideas about what 'normal' sexual fantasies are or when you can indulge in your mind's eye's erotic world, the respondents showed how fantasies can include orgies, incest or a male torso without a head. The women also show how they lived their fantasies, how they use them while they have sex or how they want to have nothing to do with their imagination in reality. Sexual fantasies are silenced. For this research the silence was broken and this revealed hidden understandings of the experience of the erotic mind's eye. Sexual fantasies do not exist in a vacuum. They are personal, but by means of the reflexive process individuals experience, the internal dialogue in which people make sense of desires and practices, the mind's eye is a cultural place too. This reflexive process is where cultural narratives influence the experience of sexual fantasies.