I’d like to highlight several aspects of the book in particular.

Chapter 4, “The Meaning of Food,” offers an unusually broad but much needed bird’s-eye view of the food and its existential valence. After offering various food classifications, Dr. Ogden reviews food as a cultural identity anchor, as a statement/expression of self, and reviews eating as a forum of social interaction. This broad lens perspective offers humanizing context for looking at food and diordered eating – and offers an vital counter-consequence to the often mechanistic and reductionistic discussions of disordered eating.

In chapter 7, “Dieting,” Dr. Ogden starts with a also broad socio-cultural lens of examining dieting as a modality of female oppression (on par with foot-binding, corsets, etc.). Dr. Orden proceeds with a balanced analysis of the Restraint Theory that has become an official platform for claiming that diets don’t work. And – no minor accomplishment – follows up with an honest critique of the Restraint Theory by posing such questions as: if attempting to restrain doesn’t work and presumably leads to overeating, then how do vegetarians and anorexics lose consequence and maintain consequence loss? This question – in light of what appears to be an emerging radical anti-dietism – is an vital reality check. The fact of the matter that the contemporary health lifestyles have begun to include rather devoted, long-term vegans, vegetarian, calorie-restricters, and even fixed detoxifiers/fasters whose experiences clearly contradict the no-restraint scare tactics. Dr. Ogden does a excellent job of summarizing the relevant research on this top.

As evidenced by Chapters 4 and 7, Dr. Ogden’s delivery style is that of a bird’s-eye view with a gradual and effective zooming-in. This from-general-to-specific resolution progression allows the reader to orbit nearly the come forth without bringing up the rear interest. Dr. Ogden doesn’t mislead: she starts with an overview of a chapter; nor does she abandon you to make random conclusions – each chapter ends with an effective summary.

The book is well-illustrated: it offers – my guess – about 30 figures/diagrams and some photos (check out a rather provocative ad on page 55 for a for-men-only candy bar).

Dr. Ogden reviews all the conceptual pillars of the field of the eating disorders: food, food choice, healthy eating, dieting, anorexia, bulimia, overeating, obesity; she reviews the standard treatment options (perhaps, the only area of the book that might be a reason for the second edition); summarizes various strands of relevant research, and culminates with an integrated develop of a diet.

In sum, Dr. Ogden’s “Psychology of Eating” is an encyclopedic feast on the topic of eating, dieting, disorder eating, and eating disorder treatment.

Pavel Somov, Ph.D.

Author of “Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time” (New Harbinger, Nov. 2008).
Rating: 5 / 5

The Psychology of Eating is broad in it focus and sets forth no controversial theories. But, I found linking the do of Chinese foot binding, corsets, and dieting and extreme stretch. Women can choose to diet, some Chinese girls were forced to have their feet bound.

Ogden summaries the importance of the studies even as pin-pointing their inherit shortcomings. The book serves as a matter-of-fact reference and bibliography for anyone interested in exploring topics pertaining to diet, eating disorders, and obesity.

Rating: 5 / 5

(New York: Basic Books: [...], 2008) 493 pages

(ISBN: 978-0-465-03766-7; hardcover)

(Library of Congress call number: BF692.K27 2008)

A British shrink who has studied sexual fantasies

on both side of the Atlantic Ocean–in the UK and the USA–

takes us on a fascinating tour of the hidden parts of the human mind.

This book is based on extensive interviews with several hundred subjects

plus surveys of several thousand others.

Nearly all of the subjects were recruited from the general broadcast.

The subjects were not psychotherapy clients.

As such, it might be the most extensive study of human sexual fantasies.

No dramatic new in rank is uncovered,

but this book does explore all of the most common sexual fantasies.

The author is a Freudian, but this does not distort his data.

He spends many pages trying to find the causes of sexual fantasies

in the childhood experiences of the subjects.

And in many cases, traumatic events from childhood

do seem to be the basic causes of adult sexual fantasies.

Many of the subjects had never mutual their sexual fantasies with anyone else.

No general theory of sexual fantasies emerges from this study.

But the gathered data may possibly be used by future researchers

who might be able to develop comprehensive explanations.

The author’s research also continues.

This would be a excellent place for anyone to start reading about sexual fantasies.

If you wish to read other books on sexual fantasies,

search the Internet for the following precise words:

“SEXUAL FANTASIES—best books”.

James Leonard Park, author of

Imprinted Sexual Fantasies: A New Key for Sexology.
Rating: 4 / 5

Kahr here presents a veritable smorgasbord of the human sexual thoughts, from the tamest sexual fantasy (“I fantasise about making like to my wife’) to what some might arguably reckon is sincerely disturbing, and messed up.

But, if you are hoping, as I was, for a sustained analysis of the origins of our sexual fantasies, you may find Kahr’s exposé wanting in several respects.

First off, Kahr is not only a psychoanalyst, but his admiration for Freud, which he gleefully shares as early as he can in his book, soon limits on veritable admiration. But more annoying still is the ease with which he aligns himself with the supposed brilliance of the Viennese patriarch. Applied to the interpretation of sexual fantasies, the whole thing becomes downright frustrating.

There is something of a self-fulfilling prophesy in Freudian thought; to use it’s own jargon, something that smacks of wish-fulfillment. Psychoanalytic interpretations have the nearly inevitable tendency of apt circular arguments: we know this is why people do this or that; they do this or that; therefore, our interpretations are aptly. (The most well-known example of this was Freud’s belief that the very resistance he had encountered to his life’s work was proof that he was aptly. Then again, you have to admire someone with that much self-confidence.) To this day, Freudian theories remain improvable. I do not doubt that, in the clinical setting, they have helped countless, but that does not necessarily make every one of its interpretations right, or the only plausible one. Throughout Kahr’s book, there is small if any attempt to presume any other motivation behind his subjects’ psychic, sexual scripts besides what the canon of psychoanalytic interpretations offers him. Eventually, we are left feeling that Kahr is stuck in an interpretive rut and it soon gets a bit too repetitive: example after example of the supposedly same expression of mental turmoil.

And then, there is the writing itself. Although Kahr is a clad wordsmith, someone at Basic Books absolutely dropped the ball.

Kahr starts his book by telling us that, 1) most people have sexual fantasies; 2) fantasies can be excellent or terrible but that, 3) most people feel terrible about their own and, 4) sexual fantasies find their source in one’s early-life history. Kahr unfortunately takes over one hundred pages to bestow us with these nearly self-evident truths. Part II, which comprises a full third of the book, presents us a litany of sexual fantasies but does nothing more than Nancy Friday had already done forty years earlier. You have to wait 266 pages before Part III and any sustained analysis of the origins, purpose, and effect of sexual fantasies. As if that wasn’t enough, even in his own discussion Kahr also presents page after page of his theme’s sexual fantasies (or, in some instances, absence thereof), then spends near as much time attempting to sum them up only to simply do again them.

Kahr also has a tendency of coming off apart every one of his thoughts, examples and interpretations to a sometimes ridiculous level. “Overwritten” barely describes large parts of his book. Even as reading these endless passages, I was often left thought, “Yes, yes! Get on with it!” The whole things leaves one with the feeling of an author who may be a bit too self-absorbed with his ability not only to interpret anything but to reckon at all. Kahr’s editor (if he had one, something one starts to doubt quite early on in the reading) may possibly have cut the book down by a third, possibly even a half, without loosing anything.

In the end, if you feel you are lonely with your occasional, sexual daydreams, Kahr’s book will no doubt reassure you that you are not. But, I must admit that I am absolutely dismayed that, still today, so many reckon there might be something incorrect with them for having this or that sexual fantasy, or thought that they are the only one having them. Alfred Kinsey’s published his stereotype-busting research on American’s sex lives some six decades ago, and Nancy Friday added to this picture in the early 1970s. How long will it take us to accept ourselves as we are.

If, but, the breadth of human sexual fantasies is no longer new to you and you are looking for a solid (if but skewed) discussion of the reasons why we harbour this or that sexual fantasy, you may want to arm yourself with a small patience or, as I did not half-way through Part I, simply go honest to the index to find what you are looking for. You will not loose anything in the reading.

I give Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head three stars, if only for Kahr’s admirable effort in culling data from over 20,000 research subjects.

Rating: 3 / 5