Common Fantasy Research Articles

To do or not to do: a study about sexual fantasies in an Italian sample

Sexual imagery and fantasy are key aspects of human sexuality: they are associated with sexual arousal and are reflective of societal influences on sexuality. In addition, they are thought to play a role in sexual activation, desire and personal satisfaction. The current study aimed to investigate the sexual imagery on a sample (N = 5043) of the Italian population adapting the questionnaire used by an American study about the same topic (Lehmiller, 2018). Most participants (82%) think that sharing sexual fantasies with their partner improved their relationship, while the most common fantasy in the sample (60%) is seeking “novelty or having new or exciting sexual experiences.” People with a gender identity other than biological sex report the fantasy of having a different body during sexual intercourse and are more prone to having sex with transgender or cross-dressed people than respondents with congruence between gender identity and biological sex. Conversely, they report less interest in vaginal sex. This study offers a general but innovative overview of the Italian sexual imaginary.

The implications of the Madonna/Whore Constellation: A common fantasy underlying misogyny?

AbstractThe Madonna/Whore Constellation of fantasies often underlies well‐recognized and pervasive misogynistic attitudes in our culture. These common and disturbing ideas about women serve to validate continued societal acceptance of the degradation of those people who are identified as female. The author suggests that there is a dynamic connection between the often‐unconscious Madonna/Whore complex of fantasies and consciously recognized misogyny. The author suggests that this set of fantasies is driven, in part, by overwhelming (i.e., traumatic) annihilation anxiety. It is argued in this paper that men who have felt overstimulated by women both emotionally and sexually as they develop are likely to feel helpless, anxious, and powerless in relation to women as adults. To defend against these feelings, some men wish for omnipotent control and place women into the binary, dichotomous categories of Madonna or Whore. These fantasies serve to solidify masculine identity and a male sense of superiority. The author proposes that the prevailing norms in our culture that reflect male supremacy not only reflect shared patriarchal beliefs but also function to justify these particularly dangerous hateful beliefs ‐ as if they were appropriate and even necessary to maintaining superior male status.

From Sensationalism to Sensation: Brian Evenson’s Affecting Texts

Brian Evenson’s work forcefully resists literary categorization, playfully mixing then deconstructing genres such as the Gothic, the western, post-apocalyptic fiction, magic realism to name but a few. Yet several short stories and novellas seem to strive towards a common fantasy: achieving sensation. This article intends to analyze the ways in which Evenson’s prose endeavors to probe the limits of literature, reassessing its power to seize the body of the reader by opening the text to a virtually physical reception.

Tell me what you want: a painting on italian sexual fantasies.

Sexual imagery and fantasy are key aspects of human sexuality: they are associated with sexual arousal and are reflective of societal influences on sexuality. In addition, they are thought to play a role in sexual activation, desire and personal satisfaction. The current study aimed to depict the sexual imagery of Italian population using a paradigm similar to the pioneering American study about the same topic (Lehmiller, 2018). 5043 participants were recruited on social networks. A first collection of basic socio-demographic information was asked and then, the respondents were questioned about their sexual imagery. After descriptive analyses, a comparison was made between groups (sexual orientation, gender, age) through a one-way ANOVA and t-student test for independent samples, while correlations were investigated with Pearson correlations. Most participants (82%) think that sharing sexual fantasies with their partner improved their relationship, while the most common fantasy in the sample (60%) is seeking for “novelty or having new or exciting sexual experiences”. It also emerged that men think about having sex with their partner's parents / best friends significantly more often than women, as well as having sex with younger partners, even much younger. People with a gender identity other than biological sex report the fantasy of having a different body during sexual intercourse and are more prone to having sex with transgender or cross-dressed people than respondents with congruence between gender identity and biological sex. Conversely, they report less interest in vaginal sex. This study offers a general but innovative overview of the Italian sexual imaginary. In a Country where LGBT+ rights are still underrepresented, and sex education struggles to emerge due to stigma and religious concerns, a colorful landscape of sexual fantasies and preferences has nevertheless emerged, highlighting continuity with the sexual revolution that is underway happening all over the world. Daniel Giunti, Paolo Antonelli, Andrea Olmi, Gioele Salvatori, Miriana Amoroso, Francesco Fantacci, Justin Lehmiller declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Игровые миры как способы бытия, созвучие голосов: почему так важно их создавать?

This paper discusses the playworlds of the Playworld of Creative Research (PWCR) research group. Play¬worlds are created from a relatively new form of play that can be described as a combination of adult forms of creative imagination (art, science, etc.), which require extensive real life experience, and children’s forms of creative imagination (play), which require the embodiment of ideas and emotions in the material world. In playworlds, adults and children (or teenagers or seniors) enter into a common fantasy that is designed to support the development of both adults and children (or teenagers or seniors). The PWCR understands play¬worlds and the study of playworlds as ways of being. In this paper we present unique, individual playworlds that we truly love from the perspective of researchers, artists, teachers, children, administrators, and imagi¬nary characters, who participate in playworlds. We use a master fiction writer’s words on the love of literature to frame our discussion of playworlds, focusing on truth, time, human magic, infinite possibilities, fun, and the enriching and intensifying (and so, creating) of the real in playworlds in Japan, Finland, Sweden and the US.

The Rust Tree by the Road

(translated by Chae-Pyong Song and Anne Rashid) 1 In front of the window of my house A road stretches out; by the road a rust tree grows up every night. 2 All the pedestrians who can t remember the roads they have walked become rusty. Don't we, the poor, witness this down the roads we come and go upon daily? The houses crumble down and the roots of the rust tree move freely, punching big holes in the young one s lungs, collapsing the building s scaffolding. At first, the rust tree s root is fatigue gathered on the pedestrians soul, dust descending on the bread crumbs of memory, and paralysis and amnesia - the whole picture of our love - on the sky that we all possess we make an open graveyard and lie crowded. Already at the window rust leaves touch the lips. When one by one they cover the roof, children will become hags - even your lover will wither. It's fatal for the big tree, producing rust bloom flowers. Haven't we seen the houses on the road and the earth with words rusted away? On every road we traverse rust trees bloom like the dead of night even the birds of childhood and people change. 3 Beside me, about my love and around my house, blooming in a crowd, ah, the smell of rust. The Rust Tree Inside Me I've been sitting on the windowsill. What has gone wrong? Alongside a movie theater, a few bars, and a closed supermarket absurd red insects disappear I know there's not any place better than here. I feared the clock and the train, wars and horror movies, too. I was young then. I wondered if maybe a corpse was lying between the walls - a common fantasy. Where was Father then? When I saw innocent love, for a moment, my heart would stop. I've been sitting on the windowsill. I want to be a typist with perfect spelling. Sometimes I'd like to have a child, a scary thought. Without wheels and pedals, a bike is of no use. An unfortunate person walks, following an abandoned railroad track. There are things I would like to forget silently like the railroad disappearing, covered by overgrown grass. When the curtain descends, what kind of dream would fall in this window? My life like a birch tree that dares to sweep away Heaven - I once thought I would live like that. …

The Day I Killed James (review)

Reviewed by: The Day I Killed James Karen Coats Hyde, Catherine Ryan; The Day I Killed James. Knopf, 2008 217p Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-94158-0 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-84158-3 $16.99 R Gr. 7-10 Against her better judgment, Theresa takes advantage of her next-door neighbor's unrequited love for her and invites him to take her to a party to show her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Randy, that he can't push her around anymore. She even goes so far as to make out with neighbor James, which has the desired effect on Randy; while they engage in some reconciliation kissing, James roars off on his motorcycle, which is later found halfway down an embankment, with no evidence of skid marks or attempted braking as the heartbroken James sailed off the cliff to his death. Unable to find atonement for the part she feels she played in James' death, Theresa tries therapy, and then shaves her head and runs away, only to find that boys still want a girl like her, who will play fast and loose with their hearts. She forms a strange alliance with an abused girl, Cathy; when Cathy inadvertently shoots her own brother, the two accidental killers embark on a journey that saves them both. Though the elements are melodramatic, the storytelling is effective. Theresa's guilt emerges in clipped sentences and fragments that feel like truth to her but are more the guarded nuggets of eclipsed pain; as she moves through her healing process, she opens herself up to understanding her own defense mechanisms and works through her misplaced grief and self-involved interpretation of events. Her encounter with Cathy is admittedly random, but the parallels and differences in their situations allow Theresa's cynical denials to evolve into real wisdom and give her a chance to practice that wisdom both with her heart and her mind. As [End Page 475] the belief that heartbreak is fatal is a common fantasy of teens, this will find a ready readership, who will then be sobered by the lesson that, while there is no excuse to be careless with the heart of another, there's always more to the story of a suicide, and there is always the possibility of atonement. Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Radical Man, The Process of Psycho-Social Development

Abstract Charles Hampden-Turner has written a very fascinating and very bad book. Its fundamental aim is to give us a scientific account of the process by which “radical” consciousness is developed. This is the sort of theme that is certain to attract a lot of attention, for in the last year or so the movement has developed an almost insatiable thirst for analysis. One can almost imagine a movement of R. Crumb cartoons, zonked out of their minds, walking around with a common fantasy, substituting for the ever-present female nude, a copy of Capital. What is needed is some kind of theory that will adequately deal with transformations in the objective structures of Imperialist production; account for the kinds of political motion developing in the various sectors of American society; and most importantly, explain who we in the movement are and what exactly it is that we are doing.

Demonstration of a Common Fantasy in a Group

Demonstration of a Common Fantasy in a Group