Course Description: 

Although we have all encountered naked human bodies across our lifetime, very few of us have had the opportunity to explore the fully naked human mind, namely, the true contents of sexual thoughts and fantasies and unconscious wishes and unconscious fears.  In this presentation on “Psychological Nudity” and its impact on couples, our speaker, London-based Professor Brett Kahr, will share the findings of his transatlantic research project, in which he has examined the erotic fantasies of more than 25,000 British and American adults, aged eighteen years and over, investigating the early infantile and early childhood origins of private masturbatory and coital fantasies and the subsequent impact of such private thoughts upon spousal relationships.

Course Objectives: 

1. Explore the phenomenology of private masturbatory fantasies and coital fantasies.
2. Investigate the early traumatic origins of private sexual fantasies
3. Study the way in which such individual fantasies will impact, often pathologically, upon marital relationships.
4. Consider precisely how psychological clinicians can become bolder and more adept at researching such shameful matters in sessions with our patients.

4 CE Credits Available

Presented by Professor Brett Kahr 

Professor Brett Kahr has worked in the mental health profession for well over forty years.  He is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London, in the United Kingdom, as well as Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health at Regent’s University London, and, moreover, he is the Honorary Director of Research at the Freud Museum London.  A Consultant in Psychology to The Bowlby Centre, a Consultant Psychotherapist at The Balint Consultancy, and a Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the Centre for Child Mental Health, Kahr also works as Chair of the Scholars Network and the Scholars Committee of the British Psychoanalytic Council, an organisation that recently bestowed upon Kahr its “Outstanding Professional Leadership Award”.  Kahr is the author of twenty-two books on a wide range of mental health topics and series editor of over eighty-five additional titles.  His best-selling books include D.W. Winnicott:  A Biographical Portrait, for which he received the Gradiva Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, as well as How to Flourish as a Psychotherapist – a second edition of which will be released in late-2025.  His noted clinical books include Bombs in the Consulting Room:  Surviving Psychological Shrapnel, as well as Dangerous Lunatics:  Trauma, Criminality, and Forensic Psychotherapy, and, also, Forensic Psychoanalysis:  From Sub-Clinical Psychopaths to Serial Killers.  His book on Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head?:  The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies investigates his work on sexual fantasies, the subject of this workshop.  Trained as an historian as well as a clinician, Kahr serves as Series Editor of the “Freud Museum London Series”, and his history books include Freud’s Pandemics:  Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis, as well as Hidden Histories of British Psychoanalysis:  From Freud’s Death Bed to Laing’s Missing Tooth, based on his archival and oral history research.  Professor Kahr works in full-time private practice with individuals, couples, and families, in Holborn, in Central London.