Saturday, March 6, 2010

Fantasy and Reality

I entered the room to be faced with an accusing psychologist. He waved some papers in my direction, "You do know this is a criminal offence, don't you?"

It was news to me. "The things written here are crimes", he went on. Back up there, sparky, I thought.

"Hang on", I say, "that is a sexual fantasy. Are you telling me that what we now think is a crime?"

He did back down from his position but along the way revealed a deeply disturbing insight into prison service mentality. Amongst the psychologists that seem to rule prisoners lives these days, it is axiomatic that fantasy equates to some future plan of action, and is therefore a cause for great concern. So it easily follows that a fantasy that includes illegal acts must mean that we are on our way to committing sex crimes. Obviously...

This is a strange and narrow view of sexuality that has no relation to reality. Of course our sexual fantasies are a tad wilder than reality. The work of Nancy Friday is an eye-opener in this regard. Her book on male sexual fantasies revealed my gender to be somewhat more depraved than even I imagined, and I am extremely fertile in my imaginings. Her work on female fantasies is equally, wonderfully, revelatory.

Sexual fantasies are just that, random thoughts that we use to turn ourselves or other people on, or to explore our own desires. They are not a statement of future intended actions. If there were, then according to Friday there are hordes of women who would like to be raped or visit the local zoo.

It was the seriousness with which this psychologist spoke that outraged and yet amused me. There are times when my keepers are just plain jackasses and their belief system is silly beyond belief. It is this reasoning that makes it positively dangerous to have pornography. Quite what they would make of a partner who introduced a 'force me' game into our play is best left to their fevered imaginings.

9 comments:

  1. In America, some of the prison psychologists were there because they were banned from public practice. I'm wondering if it's the same in the UK?

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  2. Psychologists can be real middle class know - it - all's at times, and when the subject they are addressing is sex (a subject so individual and personal), their perspectives can be hugely judgemental, patronising and even damaging.

    For example, one of my friends recently described to me how a female psychologist with whom he had council had said to him that the sex act is an act of aggression on behalf of the male. I wondered where on earth she had dug that one up from, or was it her own fantasy maybe?

    In this society where sex has been made into a commodity; to advertise things to sell; and to be bought and sold itself, there may well be a partial contemporary cultural link between sex and violence and it is something that we all have to live with, but the way some psychologists try to make out like it is natural, been like that forever and in all forms of different societies is naive at best and personally undermining at worst.

    This has been a really interesting week of blogging Ben, it has certainly been making me think about and address things that I might have just ignored or swept under the carpet, good stuff!

    Oh and that is a shocking fact about the prison psychologists in America, it wouldn't surprise me if there were a similar practice here.

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  3. How reassuring Ben - we now have psychologists who have gone cookoo because they confuse sexual fantasies with real life. God knows where they get their training from because in this real world most people have sexual fantasies from a very young age: Even someone like me who was born in a remote African village that was owned by the Roman Catholic had sexual fantasies from an early age.

    1. At 7 years of age I had a wet dream with a white man who I concluded was Jesus Christ. From that dream I imagined myself a grown up and having sex with Jesus Christ.
    2. At 12 when I was a pubescent girl I had a similar dream with the same white man by then I had concluded that he looked like Che Guevara.
    Like the psychologists, the priests wanted us to confess these fantasies to them - I never did.
    To your psychologist I suppose that means that I am into necrophilia.
    At 50 and divorced I still have the same sexual fantasies, but I know that these two men died a long time ago and no one will ever take their place on this earth. Fantasies are just that to those with a balanced sense of right and wrong, which I doubt to be the case with your psychologists. Good luck and take care. Keep fighting.

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  4. If it wasn't for the 'power' invested in these psychologists it would be funny beyond belief.

    I know that many prisoners will not discuss their sexual fantasies in any way with prison psychologists for the reason that these 'fantasies' are then used against the prisoner in risk assessments. Ben, you are so right!
    Keep writing please.

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  5. I think you're being a bit unkind about the psychologist. Perhaps the thinking at the source of his comments are not so much about a literal connection between thought and deed, more an example of risk aversion/covering one's back. My main criticism of this blog (which I admire so much) is that the author does struggle to put himself in anyone else's shoes. If you are an HMP-contracted psychologist, and are responsible for yay-or-nay decisions about people's potential for (re)offending...you can't very well ignore nasty porn! - whatever your personal thoughts about it. The structure of public sector working hasn't yet worked out any really good mechanism for letting people make their own judgements so it's one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't-type scenarios. Maybe, Ben, you feel that if YOU were the shrink and this guy were the prisoner, that you would apply all your life experience/common sense etc. to the situation and assess the prisoner as nothing more than a man with a fairly standard sex drive...but I think that when you're the one who has to write the reports, bear the consequences if your assessment fails to spot some psychopathic tendency that does then manifest itself in some criminal act on the outside...well you're screwed, aren't you? I'm not saying for a minute that I am content with the workings of The System, but I think this needs saying all the same. Probably it isn't good enough for your shrink to act just as some kind of automated functionary, but on the other hand... it's just a job, guv.

    On a different but related note, I would echo others in saying that this is all very interesting and thought-provoking. My own experience of the Estate is that it's very difficult to deny prisoners' sexuality, and this causes great problems for prison staff because it is such an obviously personal thing - and maybe just too close to home. People are often ashamed, to greater or less degrees, about their sex lives/fantasies/preferences etc. and in our Glorious Modern Age there is a lot about sex that remains taboo, for all our supposed tolerance and permissiveness. Speaking as one of the female civilian prison workers who is under 30 and on the receiving end of many memoranda about standards of dress : )

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  6. Alex says; "but I think that when you're the one who has to write the reports, bear the consequences if your assessment fails to spot some psychopathic tendency that does then manifest itself in some criminal act on the outside..."

    I am not Ben, so I am not answering for him and neither have I watched any pornography apart from the pictures I see in newspapers and magazines displayed for sale. But I still agree with Ben and will take you Alex on your comment as pasted above. We have psychopathic people in our societies and none of them are assessed by psychologists just because they are not prisoners. These people range from politicians, stars and religious figures to flashers who get sexual gratification by showing their penis to old ladies. They lie; steal, sodomise, rape, murder and some have husbands who claim for expenses incurred for renting or buying pornography. We have so called stars (film/music/acting) whose track record in psychopathic tendencies scares the hell out of me and I am 50 years of age. If these people who have both money and power are free to do what they want, I see no reason why a psychologist will condemn Ben for his fantasies just because he is a prisoner, especially given the fact that Ben is open about his fantasies.

    I must add hear that I know very little about Ben. My friend Sophie J, who has a heart of gold and like me has dedicated her life to fight against injustices persuaded me to read Ben’s blog. I have never corresponded with anyone in prison as I have enough injustices to fight against as a black woman. But I believe that people like Ben have to be taken seriously by those of us who don’t know how life in prison is like. From the little I know is that he committed one murder, but unlike most people who have killed others, he has gone on to fight for justice for prisoners. That says a lot and psychologists who go to their families at the end of their working hours should take that into consideration rather than horning on Ben’s sexual fantasies.

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  7. @SophieJ

    "For example, one of my friends recently described to me how a female psychologist with whom he had council had said to him that the sex act is an act of aggression on behalf of the male. I wondered where on earth she had dug that one up from, or was it her own fantasy maybe?"

    That is standard feminist thought (in some feminist circles) and has been so for some time. I remember first encountering it at university on the other side of the planet in the mid '80s.

    I would be more shocked if the sentiment was espoused by a male psychologist, but that it was said shocks me not at all.

    The answer of course is that it is only aggression if it is not welcome. If you barge down my front door and invade my home I call the police, but if I invite you around, you knock on my door or use the doorbell and I open the door and invite you in I would not call the police. Same with sexual penetration I would have thought.

    But apparently that means I have not thought deeply enough and am not sufficiently in touch with my feminine side. Either that or I am a reactionary male who couldn't be expected to understand. I have had those and other less salubrious responses.

    I tended not to see such people as potential dates. Would you?

    WRT psychologists and their less respectable cousins psychiatrists a large number of them have had mental problems themselves and entered the profession as part of personal therapy, which explains a lot but not why they are thought appropriate people to help others.

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  8. Peter in Dundee said... RT psychologists and their less respectable cousins psychiatrists a large number of them have had mental problems themselves and entered the profession as part of personal therapy, which explains a lot but not why they are thought appropriate people to help others."

    You are a star Peter in Dundee. I spent 10 weeks of my nurse training doing Psychiatric nursing. I was rebuted by the nurse in charge because I thought the psychiatrist was an in patient. He wore a don't touch my ankles pair of trousers with different coloured socks. Was unkempt and reeked of alcohol. God's truth - even the charge nurse was equally mental. I challenged him for telling me off and asked him how was I to know that the mad looking man was a psychiatrist and he turned round and said, 'How do you know you are not mad yourself?' That is when my drink problem started, from a complete teetotal I started drinking wine and now I only make sense to myself when I have had a glass or two!

    We live in a mad world where wrong is right and right is wrong, where normal people who question the wrong are silenced or incarcerated at the word of these mental professionals. Being a psychiatrist and a psychologist is not a bad profession. What is bad is people who go into these professions to solve their own mental health issues rather than helping those with mental health issues. It is called double tragedy for this reason; 'You are mad, I am mad, but I have a degree in madness and you don't!' That is what Ben is experiencing in prison. Life is a bitch. We need more Bens to fight against this unjust system.

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  9. I, of course, a newcomer to this blog, but the author does not agree

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