[tread softly...]
Feb. 25th, 2005 12:48 amIt just struck me what's been bothering me about the idea behind the phrase "it's just fantasy" when referring to whatever fictional kink that we say we'd never consider in "real life".
Basically, the word 'fantasy' isn't something so flimsy and not real that I'd ever consider using the word 'just' about it. Then again, I'm the sort of person who'd say 'just' real life before I'd say 'just fantasy'. But even so... this illustrates the attitude that people have-- as if fantasy is completely divorced and separate from our daily selves and from who we really are-- which is what I find ridiculous and kind of scary if I think about it.
I mean, I'm not Freudian by disposition to say the least, but this is a major psychiatric movement of the past century and a half, all based around the idea that we are defined by our unconscious minds and urges-- by our dreams and fantasies. Jung focused more on the collective unconscious, and I admit I respond more to the symbology involved, but I do think Freud was on to something. We are what we dream, because the conscious mind is mostly a morass of rationalizations and white lies and avoidance and coping mechanisms of all sorts. I suppose you can judge a person in a legal sense by what they actually do in their waking life, but how can you use that to judge a person's real nature without being hopelessly incomplete?
Naturally, people overreact and use fantasies & dreams as a direct parallel to 'real life' (whatever -that- is... honestly), so someone who likes erotica featuring sexualized children is automatically somehow a child molester, for instance, which is just another way to degrade the idea of fantasy. The truth is, one's fantasies are neither entirely divorced nor tightly welded to one's everyday personality-- they come and go, they mean different things at different times, they function as stress relief and trigger and escape and many other different things. How many ways are there to dream? There are infinite ways; as many ways as there are dreamers.
( But I, being poor, have only my dreams.... )
Basically, the word 'fantasy' isn't something so flimsy and not real that I'd ever consider using the word 'just' about it. Then again, I'm the sort of person who'd say 'just' real life before I'd say 'just fantasy'. But even so... this illustrates the attitude that people have-- as if fantasy is completely divorced and separate from our daily selves and from who we really are-- which is what I find ridiculous and kind of scary if I think about it.
I mean, I'm not Freudian by disposition to say the least, but this is a major psychiatric movement of the past century and a half, all based around the idea that we are defined by our unconscious minds and urges-- by our dreams and fantasies. Jung focused more on the collective unconscious, and I admit I respond more to the symbology involved, but I do think Freud was on to something. We are what we dream, because the conscious mind is mostly a morass of rationalizations and white lies and avoidance and coping mechanisms of all sorts. I suppose you can judge a person in a legal sense by what they actually do in their waking life, but how can you use that to judge a person's real nature without being hopelessly incomplete?
Naturally, people overreact and use fantasies & dreams as a direct parallel to 'real life' (whatever -that- is... honestly), so someone who likes erotica featuring sexualized children is automatically somehow a child molester, for instance, which is just another way to degrade the idea of fantasy. The truth is, one's fantasies are neither entirely divorced nor tightly welded to one's everyday personality-- they come and go, they mean different things at different times, they function as stress relief and trigger and escape and many other different things. How many ways are there to dream? There are infinite ways; as many ways as there are dreamers.
( But I, being poor, have only my dreams.... )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}