What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word fantasy? For some, the answer might be a little daydream, it might be a romantic fantasy, while others will surely think of sexual fantasies. Some people may think of the socially taboo but common fantasy of attending one’s own funeral. People fantasize about success, fame, revenge, adventure, and more. Fantasies can take many forms, and while we often cast them aside as frivolous, shameful — or simply separate from ourselves and our minds — they often can tell us so much about our inner worlds, our desires, and our memories.

“What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word fantasy?”

We often tell ourselves that something is “just a fantasy” in order to turn away from it — to say that it doesn’t matter. Especially when we have fantasies that we know we wouldn’t want to act out, it can be easy to tell ourselves that it’s a fluke, just the brain running wild. But just because we don’t actually want something to happen in real life doesn’t mean it isn’t rich with meaning for us to unfold. In fact, it can often be the unusual fantasies that show us more of ourselves than we ever expected.

“Just because we don’t actually want something to happen in real life doesn’t mean it isn’t rich with meaning for us to unfold.”

To set the stage with examples, one common type of fantasy many people have is the fantasy of bad things happening to people who have wronged them. These fantasies can be detailed and vast, and depend heavily on both the person and the situation. These fantasies can take the form of direct comeuppance — a partner who cheated on you being cheated on, a professional colleague who threw you under the bus experiencing a professional failure, a friend with whom you fell out losing other friendships — or something more like the wish they never existed.

Another common fantasy is that of attending one’s own funeral, or somehow seeing your loved ones react to news of your death. This fantasy isn’t a pleasurable one exactly, and it’s an example of a fantasy that can be satisfying while also being painful. The imagined satisfaction comes as a direct result of the pain it would cause others for you to be dead, but in order to access that, it requires imagining their suffering. Of course, all in the service of demonstrating their love for you. Complicated indeed!

An example of a common sexual fantasy is being with someone other than a committed partner, and even with multiple people at once. Even when the real-life manifestation isn’t appealing, the imagined idea of it can be. But since this fantasy often doesn’t align with real-life desires, many find themselves at odds with the imagined scenario.

Fantasies can be uncomfortable and shocking sometimes — like the thoughts don’t completely belong to you. Because if they did, wouldn’t it mean that you’d have to fully stand by them in real life? On the flipside, sometimes fantasies can feel good for that exact reason that they’re taboo. That reason being your lack of desire to see these fantasies realized — their place as make-believe situations that are safe from the consequences and judgment of the real world.

“Fantasies can be uncomfortable and shocking sometimes — like the thoughts don’t completely belong to you. Because if they did, wouldn’t it mean that you’d have to fully stand by them in real life?”

So, what do fantasies such as these mean for the individual? In order to dig further into any fantasy, the very first layer is to sit with it, including (as opposed to in spite of) the taboo elements it may contain. I spoke with Evan Chethik, MA and psychoanalyst in training at Pulsion Psychoanalytic Institute, about the meaning of our fantasies. He said, “A fantasy is beyond moral judgment. There is no pathological fantasy, nor is there a normal one. […] If someone is having daydreams about something they may think is obscene, it may be helpful to begin with what precisely in the act of the fantasy is the obscenity. Is it something about being watched? Is it something about what’s said from one person to another? What relationship dynamics are at play, and how do these play out in other defenses or fantasies that the subject has? The meaning is in the the pastiche, not in the individual fantasmatic pleasure.”

One of the reasons many people cast aside their fantasies, especially sexual ones, is due to self-judgment, both on an aesthetic and moral level. Especially for those who have fantasies that involve a taboo that crosses a moral or ethical boundary that’s important to them in their daily life (the fantasy of being overpowered by a strong, powerful man is an example where this can show up) can be difficult and uncomfortable to examine. There are also plenty of fantasies that, although seemingly completely harmless, could still be uncomfortable or perhaps embarrassing to confront because they are out of the ordinary, such as the fantasy of being with two men at once. But it is in these taboo details that we find some of the most transformative questions to ask oneself. Like Chethik said, it begins with the identification of what detail contains the (real or imagined) obscenity. Is it an image? An object? The relationship itself? Or something else entirely?

Much like with dream interpretation, it is impossible to fully decode any fantasy without knowing the fantasizer and their history. But what we can begin to consider for ourselves is the way that our fantasies are directly connected to our lives and our minds. 

“From a psychoanalytic perspective, our fantasies arise to bring us pleasure, or pain, or a combination of these sensations in order to access some deeply desired emotional result.”

We often have this impression of fantasy as something that we either embrace through active pursuit or cast aside as a dirty secret never to be touched again, lest it become stronger. But from a psychoanalytic perspective, our fantasies arise to bring us pleasure, or pain, or a combination of these sensations in order to access some deeply desired emotional result.

Exploring your fantasies doesn’t have to mean trying to enact them in real life. In fact, it’s often the opposite. It can mean delving deeper into them as fantasies, continuing to imagine, and asking yourself how the details connect to your life and experience. While going to psychoanalysis or therapy can be a great venue for this exploration, Chethik also mentions, “Writing one’s fantasies on paper and then forcing yourself to read them out loud often has a surprising effect akin to analysis. The other is always somewhere in the room, even if you’re alone.”

Chethik says, “Fantasy is a fact of life — we all have them. We are born too early to help ourselves get what we need during infancy, so we cry out to our parents or guardians for help. When we can’t get what we want — if Mom is asleep in the bedroom downstairs — we fantasize the breast, the caress, the warmth, we suck our thumbs, and we can fall back to sleep. But this carries over past childhood and becomes the tool that structures our entire relation to reality. I would go so far as to say it is reality that is structured like a fantasy.” 

Fantasy is all around you, and it can be so powerful to explore your fantasies, your daydreams, your inner world of make-believe, even when the details might feel odd, foreign, or morally dubious. Because it’s in those details that you may discover parts of yourself that you didn’t know before. And you may just find that what lies at the bottom of your strangest daydreams are the incredibly raw, human desires and experiences that shape us all. 

“You may just find that what lies at the bottom of your strangest daydreams are the incredibly raw, human desires and experiences that shape us all.”

Chethik continues, “What do we want from our lover when we ask them to hold us? Certainly it can’t be reduced to some factual operation; we don’t just want two arms around us and another’s heart beating against our chest. We want to imagine that we are safe, or that we are loved, and something about words just isn’t enough. It’s precisely what’s created in excess of our meager means of communication, what’s extrapolated in excess of our bodies being held by another that is the matter of fantasy.”

Jamie Kahn is a writer and yoga teacher based in New York. Her work has been featured in Glamour, Brooklyn Magazine, Epiphany, The Evergreen Review, and others.