Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head by Brett Kahr

In Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies author Brett Kahr seeks to reveal our deepest sexual fantasies. He also seeks to answer a deeper question, why? Why that sexual fantasy for that particular person?

It is clear from the outset that Kahr hopes to provide more than just a few interesting case studies. By his own admission, he is hoping to emulate Alfred Kinsey. Kinsey, in his seminal works Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male and later Sexual behaviour in the Human Female, destroyed many myths regarding normal sexual behaviour. Myths regarding the abnormality of masturbation, and irregularity of pre-marital sex were lain waste. It is clear that Kahr hopes to be equally provocative, but this time regarding our inner most thoughts.

As such, the book is almost certainly a failure. While interesting in parts, it is not revolutionary. This is less the fault of the author than the breadth of the subject matter. Kahr provides many examples of peoples’ fantasies, often written by the subjects themselves. From the standard “Any sort of sexual contact with Scarlett Johanson…” to multiple partners, bestiality, and incest. But while this will be shocking to some readers, it is little more than could have been uncovered from a quick Internet search.

Kahr hopes to take it one step further and better quantify these results. Although some statistics are provided, such as 90 percent of married people have fantasized about someone other than their partner, they are generally lacking. Those few statistics that are included fail to provide much in the way of revelations. More importantly they do little to answer Kahr’s own principle question, why?

To answer this question, Kahr is forced to engage in far more thorough interview sessions. In each session, lasting about five hours, Kahr attempts to uncover as much about a subject’s personal history as well as their particular sexual fantasy. Then he applies his full psycho-analytical skills to the problem.

This is easily the most interesting portion of the book. The stories are well written and engaging. Some are amusing, others disturbing and, in one particular case, simply heart-wrenching. Throughout, the author’s analysis is, more often than not, convincing. But while in many ways this comprises the best part of the book, it is also flawed.

The subjects are self-selecting. They consist of people willing to spend five hours with a psycho-analyst, relating their darkest sexual desires. Naturally, this appeals to those whose thoughts might tend towards the more disturbing and perverse. This in turn unleashes the author’s full Freudian fury. While many of the revelations concerning his interviewees’ fantasies are convincing, they would seem to offer little insight into the fantasies of those who have not suffered severe childhood trauma or abuse.

It would seem that Kahr also realizes this, as he attempts to bring the book back to its more humble beginnings. At the beginning, Kahr poses a number of questions to help focus his efforts. “What constitutes a ‘normal’ sexual fantasy?” and “Do we control our fantasies, or do our fantasies control us?” are just a couple of the questions he poses. Though he ends up answering all 22 questions individually, for the most part the answer is remarkably the same: it depends.

While this is hardly enlightening, it is honest. In the end, this honesty is the saving grace for the book as a whole. There seems an admission that the subject itself is simply too broad. While Kahr has certainly created a worthy addition to his field, he has not created an authoritative work. But perhaps one should not look so much for value in the answers as the questions themselves.