Standard clinical wisdom holds that, so long as fantasy does not harm anyone, it is not a problem and, indeed, can even enhance a couple's sex life. But many influential psychoanalysts are focusing on the sometimes subtle difficulties in intimate relationships that such fantasies can create, and on the range of purposes they serve, from filling empty relationships and allaying depression to bolstering self-esteem. The new thinking holds that deep within such adult fantasies as having an obedient harem of love slaves or an urge for sexual humiliation lurk infantile longings such as for an attentive love or the need to overcome a profound sense of powerlessness. But the fantasies cannot help repair such emotional traumas, the psychoanalysts say, in part because they make those who rely on them emotionally unavailable to their partners. The new view was summed up by Dr. Gerald Fogel, a psychoanalyst at Columbia University, who said that virtually everyone has aberrant sex fantasies, but that they are not always conscious of them.
Many sex therapists disagree.
No one yet knows the true prevalence of perversion in the normal population. Another major area of controversy is the contention of some psychoanalysts that women are as prone to perverse fantasies as men. Many studies have found that most officially diagnosed perversions, such as pedophilia or fetishes, are extremely rare or non-existent in women, leading sex researchers to assume that perverse fantasies are rarer in women than in men. But the new approach says the forms they take in women often are more subtle and so have escaped psychiatric notice. Indeed, a study of the fantasies that arouse women, published last month, found that a surprising number have what psychoanalysts would describe as perverse fantasies and that the fantasies are highly arousing.