Erotic Tumours of the Mind: from Private Sexual Fantasies to Spousal Explosions
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Wessex Counselling and Psychotherapy
Description
In this special presentation for Wessex Counselling and Psychotherapy, Professor Brett Kahr will discuss his research findings and will explain what he has come to discover about the traumatic roots of sexual fantasies and how such internalised “erotic tumours” of the mind will often explode as “conjugal aneurysms” which threaten to destroy intimate, long-term marital partnerships.
Abstract
Although many mental health practitioners presume that our clients or patients would prefer to discuss the intimate details of their sexual fantasies and behaviours during the course of individual psychotherapy or counselling, surprisingly large numbers of men and women will do so – often by force – in the midst of couple psychotherapy, owing to the fact that certain sexual preferences will often challenge, if not shatter, the very core of a marriage or intimate partnership.
In 2002, Brett Kahr became the Principal Investigator of the British Sexual Fantasy Research Project, undertaken in collaboration with the global polling organisation YouGov, in which he explored the private sexual fantasies of more than 20,000 adults (whose ages ranged from eighteen to ninety-plus years) in both the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The research examined the masturbatory and coital fantasies of the participants, underpinned by Kahr’s many in-depth, five-hour interviews with a selected cohort in which he explored the infantile and childhood underpinnings of subsequent erotic fantasies and behaviours. He published the results of his British data in 2007 in a book entitled Sex and the Psyche, and, in 2008, he published his American data in a book on Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head?: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies.
Professor Kahr’s study of sexual fantasies, serialised in both The Times and The Observer newspapers, became a Waterstone’s Non-Fiction Bestseller and a Sunday Times Book Club choice, and has since been published in American, British, Canadian, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish editions. His work also became the basis for a television documentary on Britain’s Sexual Fantasies.
Biographical Notes
Professor Brett Kahr has worked in the mental health profession for over forty years. He is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London and, also, Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health at Regent’s University London.
Kahr is Chair of the Scholars Committee of the British Psychoanalytic Council and, also, Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University in recognition of his contributions to the public dissemination of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy.
A trained historian, he is Honorary Director of Research at Freud Museum London and, also, an Honorary Fellow of the museum, as well as the Series Editor of the “Freud Museum London Series” of books on the history of psychoanalysis.
A Consultant Psychotherapist at The Balint Consultancy in London and, additionally, a Consultant in Psychology to The Bowlby Centre, he works in Central London with both individuals and couples.
His interest in couple psychotherapy and couple psychoanalysis developed from his work as a member of the Mental Handicap Team at the Tavistock Clinic, more than thirty years ago, when he had the opportunity to consult with parents of disabled individuals. This prompted him to train at the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute (now Tavistock Relationships). He eventually became Chair of both the Society of Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists and of the British Society of Couple Psychotherapists and Counsellors, helping to expand the field by integrating couple psychotherapy and couple counselling organisations. During his tenure, he and colleagues founded the journal Couple and Family Psychoanalysis as well as the monograph series, “The Library of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis”.
Professor Kahr is the author of sixteen books and series editor of over seventy-five additional titles. His latest books include: Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving Psychological Shrapnel, as well as Dangerous Lunatics: Trauma, Criminality, and Forensic Psychotherapy. Most recently, he published Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis, which explores what lessons we might learn from the robustness and resilience of Sigmund Freud, who endured multiple pandemics during his own lifetime. His next books, due for publication in early 2023, include Unearthing Freud’s Death Bed and Laing’s Missing Tooth: Hidden Histories of British Psychoanalysis, based on his oral history interviews with many of the pioneers of British psychoanalysis, as well as How to Be Intimate with 15,000,000 Strangers: Musings on Media Psychoanalysis, in which he describes the work that he undertook as Resident Psychotherapist at the British Broadcasting Corporation.
