[tread softly...]
Feb. 25th, 2005 12:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaIt 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.
My impulse is to be disturbed at fantasies that seem dark and twisted, fantasies about harm to others, and I feel that's a valid impulse-- not as in, it's an excuse for rash judgment but as in a reason to investigate further. If someone has continuous escapist fantasies of a violent and dark nature, sure, that doesn't mean they're repressing these same urges in themselves-- but it does mean something, and that something is most likely troubling them or will at some future point. How can it not? It is one mind that reasons and that dreams alike-- the barriers are flimsy and porous at best, and it is not a different person that comes out at night or in secret, when we let our guard down. The only difficulty is being able to believe that we do not know all that is ourselves, that we must contain many layers of self-identity we aren't fully aware of, and yet how can one believe anything else?
I know from my own experience that I don't have any fantasies, sexual or otherwise, that are completely foreign to me-- even my darkest impulses, even things I can't imagine doing-- I know I can do them under the right circumstances. The trick is trying to make sure some of these circumstances never come to pass, but I know I can kill, and hurt, and abuse people-- and I'm pretty much almost entirely harmless as I expect anyone who knows me would tell you. I am theoretically capable of the whole range of human behavior, as are we all, and it is because of that self-knowledge that I find people claiming these dark thoughts are 'just' fantasies to be distasteful. It is in denying one's darkness and not paying close attention, not by embracing it, that one brings it dangerously close to overwhelming one's control.
It seems like when people dismiss fantasy as being wholly separate from the day-to-day reality in an effort to carve out freedom for themselves, they are really curtailing their freedom. They are separating themselves into parts, and labelling some more 'real' than others, a process of repression through which unsatisfied urges can fester and grow. If one doesn't make an effort to understand what one's unconscious mind is saying through any kind of 'culturally inappropriate' desire or fantasy, eventually one realizes that fantasy has its limits-- and they are reached when something snaps inside us, and we become hungry.
Finally, we realize that fantasy isn't a distant relative to our desires-- it is their very sustenance, the soil upon which desire grows. For whoever has wanted anything without also dreaming of it first? And is there really anyone out there who doesn't either crave or fear that of which they must dream? The passion in one's dream is what remains, after all, where 'real life' desire comes and goes depending on one's age and mood and body chemistry. "Real" desire is unstable, a surface thing, a fickle thing; it is fantasy which endures, and defines our past, our present and our future.
Ask anyone-- who do they think of more: the person whom they merely touched, or the person they'd long dreamed of touching? Which meant more to them? Which touch seemed more real when it happened?
How can anyone really know the difference between fantasy & unfulfilled desire? And indeed, what is the meaning of that difference if it existed? Only conscious choice; only our waking minds deciding to pursue one impulse and not another. And while our choices may define us in the eyes of others, and these are the things which fill up histories, we must at least admit to ourselves that it is our dreams which shape the identity which drives those choices forward.
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.
My impulse is to be disturbed at fantasies that seem dark and twisted, fantasies about harm to others, and I feel that's a valid impulse-- not as in, it's an excuse for rash judgment but as in a reason to investigate further. If someone has continuous escapist fantasies of a violent and dark nature, sure, that doesn't mean they're repressing these same urges in themselves-- but it does mean something, and that something is most likely troubling them or will at some future point. How can it not? It is one mind that reasons and that dreams alike-- the barriers are flimsy and porous at best, and it is not a different person that comes out at night or in secret, when we let our guard down. The only difficulty is being able to believe that we do not know all that is ourselves, that we must contain many layers of self-identity we aren't fully aware of, and yet how can one believe anything else?
I know from my own experience that I don't have any fantasies, sexual or otherwise, that are completely foreign to me-- even my darkest impulses, even things I can't imagine doing-- I know I can do them under the right circumstances. The trick is trying to make sure some of these circumstances never come to pass, but I know I can kill, and hurt, and abuse people-- and I'm pretty much almost entirely harmless as I expect anyone who knows me would tell you. I am theoretically capable of the whole range of human behavior, as are we all, and it is because of that self-knowledge that I find people claiming these dark thoughts are 'just' fantasies to be distasteful. It is in denying one's darkness and not paying close attention, not by embracing it, that one brings it dangerously close to overwhelming one's control.
It seems like when people dismiss fantasy as being wholly separate from the day-to-day reality in an effort to carve out freedom for themselves, they are really curtailing their freedom. They are separating themselves into parts, and labelling some more 'real' than others, a process of repression through which unsatisfied urges can fester and grow. If one doesn't make an effort to understand what one's unconscious mind is saying through any kind of 'culturally inappropriate' desire or fantasy, eventually one realizes that fantasy has its limits-- and they are reached when something snaps inside us, and we become hungry.
Finally, we realize that fantasy isn't a distant relative to our desires-- it is their very sustenance, the soil upon which desire grows. For whoever has wanted anything without also dreaming of it first? And is there really anyone out there who doesn't either crave or fear that of which they must dream? The passion in one's dream is what remains, after all, where 'real life' desire comes and goes depending on one's age and mood and body chemistry. "Real" desire is unstable, a surface thing, a fickle thing; it is fantasy which endures, and defines our past, our present and our future.
Ask anyone-- who do they think of more: the person whom they merely touched, or the person they'd long dreamed of touching? Which meant more to them? Which touch seemed more real when it happened?
How can anyone really know the difference between fantasy & unfulfilled desire? And indeed, what is the meaning of that difference if it existed? Only conscious choice; only our waking minds deciding to pursue one impulse and not another. And while our choices may define us in the eyes of others, and these are the things which fill up histories, we must at least admit to ourselves that it is our dreams which shape the identity which drives those choices forward.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-25 09:40 am (UTC)