Arousal: The Secret Logic Of Sexual Fantasies w. Dr Michael Bador
In this episode, we examine the hidden logic behind sexual fantasies and desires, why psychological safety is essential for arousal, and how our minds use erotic scripts to counteract deep-seated guilt and anxiety. We explore how childhood rules shape our adult intimacy, and why sexual boredom naturally develops in long-term relationships.
Joining me to discuss this is Dr Michael Bader. Michael is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst based in San Francisco with over forty years of practice. He is the author of Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies and Male Sexuality: Why Women Don't Understand It—and Men Don't Either. His work challenges traditional psychoanalytic models by demonstrating that sexual fantasies are creative solutions rather than symptoms of pathology.
Key Points
Safety as the prerequisite for arousal: Sexual excitement is not automatic. The unconscious mind constantly assesses the environment for danger, deploying physiological brakes like erectile difficulties or lack of lubrication if it detects a risk of guilt, shame, or rejection.
Disarming pathogenic beliefs: Pathogenic beliefs are irrational convictions formed in childhood that pursuing ordinary pleasure, assertion, or independence will harm someone we love. Fantasies act as bespoke psychological antidotes engineered to disarm these beliefs, proving to the nervous system that it is safe to feel pleasure.
The function of sexual ruthlessness: Healthy sexual excitement requires an element of selfish indulgence and objectification, where you can pursue climax without worrying about your partner's emotional fragility. Fantasies of dominance, submission, or ravishment remove the burden of caretaking, allowing both partners to drop their guilt.
Familiarity and sexual boredom: In long-term relationships, deep intimacy and the collapse of personal boundaries make it harder to be selfish in bed. Because partners care intensely about each other's feelings, caretaking takes over and inhibits arousal, which is why physical distance or novel settings like hotels often reignite desire.
Timestamps
00:00 Summary of Theory
04:03 Introduction to Michael Bader and His Work
10:05 Understanding the Unconscious Mind in Sexuality
11:28 What is the value of looking into our fantasies?
16:00 Defining Sexual Fantasy and Preferences
24:14 Are sexual fantasies trying to resolve guilt and worry?
31:50 The Concept of Sexual Ruthlessness
34:46 Why am I turned on by the opposite of my values?
39:20 Dom or sub but same guilt?
44:05 A Summary Of The Theory
46:32 Navigating Internal and External Cues
50:45 Will I Loose My Fantasy/Kink If I Understand Them Or "Work On Myself"?
57:09 BDSM: No one is actually getting hurt.
01:01:03 Exploring Fetishes and Their Symbolism
01:09:17 Audience Question
Transcript:
Please note: This transcript has been corrected using AI since the original software does not do a great job. There may be small errors.
00:00 Summary of Theory
Sergio Rebelo (00:00) Dr Michael Bader argues that the primary function of our erotic fantasies, above all else, is to ensure psychological safety. Our fantasies are a creative way to momentarily alleviate specific internal threats to connection, which he calls pathogenic beliefs.
Sergio Rebelo (00:23) Pathogenic beliefs are unconscious convictions that we formed in childhood that pursuing or expressing what is in our normal nature, like pleasure, desire, frustration, or anger, will cause harm to us or someone we love.
Sergio Rebelo (00:46) So, for example, let's take the belief that our joy harms others. If we got excited, loud, or completely absorbed in play while a parent was depressed or stressed, they may have snapped, "Calm down, why do you have to be so loud?" As children, we concluded, "When I feel happy, it upsets Mum. It's selfish to enjoy myself when she is hurting. My joy takes away from her." Over time, reaching into adulthood, that can quietly become: if I focus on my own physical pleasure, I am depriving or damaging my partner.
Sergio Rebelo (01:28) Or let's take the belief that our needs are a burden. If we asked for comfort or attention when our caregiver was overwhelmed, and they sighed, rolled their eyes, or shut down, we concluded, "My needs are too heavy for Dad. If I keep asking for help, I will drive him away, so I must stay quiet." In adulthood, that can sound like: if I ask for what I want in bed, I will exhaust my partner and get rejected.
Sergio Rebelo (02:00) Now, when we become aroused, we move directly into the arena of bonding, and these childhood beliefs immediately switch on. Our unconscious mind warns us that our desire is about to hurt our partner or invite abandonment. That alarm floods our nervous system with unconscious guilt, shame, or anxiety, which acts as an immediate physiological brake on arousal, shutting down lubrication, erections, and sensations.
Sergio Rebelo (02:35) Bader's central argument is that erotic fantasies are the psychological antidotes engineered to disarm those specific pathogenic beliefs. Our erotic imagination creates a scenario where the perceived danger is stripped away, proving to our nervous system that it is safe to feel pleasure.
Sergio Rebelo (02:59) So, for example, if we carry the belief that our desires burden others, asking a partner for touch triggers instant guilt. Our mind might solve this through a ravishment or forced compliance fantasy. The erotic logic is that if a partner overpowers us and demands that we receive pleasure, we have no choice in the matter. Because we did not initiate or ask for anything, the guilt is cancelled out. The fantasy disarms the pathogenic belief, the alarm shuts off, and arousal finally takes over.
Sergio Rebelo (03:38) This is the core theory offered by Bader in his first book, Arousal. In this episode, we will explore it in much more depth. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for listening.
04:03 Introduction to Michael Bader and His Work
Sergio Rebelo (04:03) So, I'm very excited to welcome Michael Bader onto the podcast. It's really great to have you here. I have increasingly grown fond of your work, and all your literature. I came across your book Arousal about 12 years ago. I was about 25 years old, and I was going through my own sexual confusion. I had a lot of fantasies, I was very kinky, but I had no way of grounding that or anchoring that.
Sergio Rebelo (04:32) So, somehow I came across your book, I don't remember exactly how, but there it was and it was the first piece of literature that spoke to me. And it was such a good find because it really helped me find an anchoring and a grounding in my own sexual understanding.
Sergio Rebelo (04:48) I then I put the book down, because I'm a 25-year-old, I'm doing my own thing, and then I kind of still wrestled through my own sexual understanding. And it's only now, in my late 30s, that I've picked it back up again, because I'm training as a psychosexual therapist, and it's reaffirming thoughts and beliefs that I have about sexual fantasies, kink, and BDSM.
Sergio Rebelo (05:01) So, I just want to say first and foremost, thank you so much for writing that. You've done more writing after this, but thank you so much, it's a great contribution to the field. So, yeah.
Dr Michael Bader (05:08) Thank thank you, Sergio. I appreciate that feedback, that's great. Great story.
Sergio Rebelo (05:13) So, before we begin, maybe it's good for listeners just to get a bit of context of who you are, how many years have you been working, and how did you get to this place of having this particular subject matter as a focus of yours?
Dr Michael Bader (05:24) Sure. I I trained as a a psychologist in the '70s, graduated and got my degree in 1980, and I'd always been, because of my training and predilection, been drawn to psychoanalysis.
Dr Michael Bader (05:43) So, years went by, but I always had in the back of my mind that I would eventually go to and get formal psychoanalytic training, which I did in San Francisco in the late '80s, early '90s.
Dr Michael Bader (06:00) And so I love psychoanalysis, I loved psychoanalysis, but it has blind spots, many, as some of your listeners will know. And one of the things is psychoanalysts think they know a lot about sexuality, because, you know, Freud was revolutionary in talking about childhood sexuality and the drives, libido, and really opened up conversations professionally and in therapy about how to understand a patient's sexual desires and feelings.
Dr Michael Bader (06:33) And, of course, Freud was always thinking in terms of drives, instincts. And in the classes I was taking that had to do with sexuality or what we called sexual perversions at the time, they were very abstract and metatheoretical, importing a lot of Freud's ideas, and I found that understanding and approach useless in helping my patients, and in the day-to-day phenomenology of hearing them talk about everything from sexual boredom, to sexual to masturbation fantasies, to all of their conflicts about sex.
Dr Michael Bader (07:31) And, so, at that time I was working with someone who, within psychoanalysis, was considered a little bit of a deviant or radical. His name was Joseph Weiss. And here's the thing that I liked about Weiss's approach: Weiss says, in effect argues, that our unconscious minds are smart, and always are working to regulate what we're thinking and feeling, more than we know. They call it non-conscious processing.
10:05 Understanding the Unconscious Mind in Sexuality
Dr Michael Bader (10:05) Your unconscious mind is always surveying what you're feeling and thinking with an eye towards one thing, which is psychological safety.
Dr Michael Bader (10:14) And when the unconscious mind experiences a desire, a wish, a memory, a thought as not safe, the unconscious mind then comes in and deploys what we call defences, and various ways people have of inhibiting, displacing, repressing, projecting, all of these things that psychoanalysis always talked about. The unconscious mind is using them because it's making unconscious judgments about safety and danger. And the unconscious mind says safety is our top priority.
Dr Michael Bader (10:48) So I started thinking, well, okay, that's interesting. How would that apply to people's experience of sexual desire and pleasure? And I think it applies a great deal, and it got me thinking about what the unconscious mind might consider and judge to be safe or dangerous when it comes to sexual life. And that's why I wrote the book. The book is really about how the unconscious mind's perceptions of safety and danger are what shape the content and the spirit of our sexual fantasy life.
Sergio Rebelo (11:03) Yeah. It's interesting because I think it's often thought that we survey danger or unsafety externally to us, but what I hear you saying is that there's actually a process where it's internal as well, what's unsafe inside us. So, there's a large preoccupation with this.
Dr Michael Bader (11:15) Well, that's exactly right. You know, we know that hundreds of thousands of years ago, primitive people had to detect external dangers, whether there's a sabre-toothed tiger around the corner. And the amygdala in the brain developed as the organ in the brain that detects danger, and it sends signals to the prefrontal cortex, which then makes judgments and decisions about how to manage the danger.
Dr Michael Bader (11:21) But over hundreds of thousands of years, there are no sabre-toothed tigers out there. Well, there still are for many people, but there are sabre-toothed tigers in here. And that's the fascinating thing, and that's what psychoanalysis, a psychoanalytic approach, is especially designed to understand, I think.
11:28 What is the value of looking into our fantasies?
Sergio Rebelo (11:28) Yeah. There's a quote in, actually, the second book that you wrote, Male Sexuality: Why Women Don't Understand It—and Men Don't Either—which I love that little "and men don't either" at the end—
Dr Michael Bader (11:37) Yeah. Have to have to add that last thing, yeah.
Sergio Rebelo (11:40) Which I think speaks to the value of why someone would want to look at their sexual interests. I'm going to read the quote out here. It says, "Freud said that dreams were the royal road to the unconscious. I would argue that we get there faster by studying sexual fantasies." Can you say more about that?
Dr Michael Bader (11:58) Yeah, um... You see, in my view, and my clinical experience tells me, that when we have a sexual fantasy—and we can talk about how we define that in a little bit—it is constructed creatively by the unconscious mind in order to not feel certain dangers and ensure a certain kind of safety.
Dr Michael Bader (12:28) And the way it does it is it creates stories, and choreographies, and preferences, and narratives that are pleasurable, but which contain elements that address this issue of danger and safety. So, my argument is that if the mind is doing that with sexual fantasies, it's likely doing that everywhere in the person's life.
Dr Michael Bader (12:56) And so, you know, if, for instance, someone we discover clinically is crippled with a certain—what we'll talk about in a little while—guilt about hurting their partner, or hurting the other. And that comes up in various ways in their sexual life, and therefore they have to inhibit it, or they have to shut it down, or turn off the motor. If they're doing that in the bedroom, they're doing that in the office, they're doing that in their family life, they're doing that out in public, because the mind is unitary, and it's the inherent functioning of the mind.
Dr Michael Bader (13:37) So, if it's doing it with sexual fantasies, it's doing it everywhere. Therefore, if we understand the chemistry that the mind is deploying in the bedroom to deal with this issue of safety and danger, then we have an open window to understand the person's core fears, and conflicts, and inhibitions that undoubtedly appear in the rest of their life.
Dr Michael Bader (14:14) So, if somebody in my office tells me their sexual fantasy, I can almost regularly, or almost automatically, make certain inferences about what ails them in their everyday life. If guilt is a primary issue with sexual fantasies, guilt's going to pervade this person's life in so many other ways. And if shame and feelings of rejection are prominent in their sexual life, it's going to be there everywhere.
Dr Michael Bader (14:50) So, that's what I mean. For Freud to decode a dream, he wrote a 300-page book, The Interpretation of Dreams, a hundred pages of which was devoted to analysing one of his dreams called the Irma dream. And we don't have to do a hundred pages. If we understand and get details and can elicit from the patient really meaningful associations to their sexual excitement and issues, then we really understand a great deal about how that person's mind works, and what gets in the way, I think.
16:00 Defining Sexual Fantasy and Preferences
Sergio Rebelo (16:00) And I think there's space here then to kind of define what sexual fantasy is, because you have an expansive view. It's not sexual fantasy, it's sexual preference.
Dr Michael Bader (16:08) Yes! Yes, see that's a really important extension, because when I say to somebody, "What's your sexual fantasy?", they think, "It's what I think about when I masturbate." Okay, that's like a pure culture, a pure sexual fantasy. It's entirely internal mentation, right?
Dr Michael Bader (16:29) But I think that we can expand the understanding of sexual fantasies and think about sexual preferences, which is whatever turns you on, Sergio. What are the body types? What are the personality types that most excite you? What do you like to do in bed when it comes to the choreography of your sex life?
Dr Michael Bader (16:53) Do you like somebody who is built big, strong, manly man? Does that trigger a little dopamine excitement in your brain? Or maybe it's somebody who seems more sensitive and intellectual? If you expand the definition, then it becomes more universal, because everybody has something that, in their idiosyncratic little brain or mind, is especially arousing.
Dr Michael Bader (17:34) And the arousal doesn't have to be a full-fledged orgasm, but just it wakes them up. It's like, "Oh yeah, she's hot," "Oh yeah, he's hot." Well, everybody doesn't have the same definition of hotness.
Sergio Rebelo (17:52) Yeah.
Dr Michael Bader (17:53) And so therefore, it's highly idiosyncratic, and that is our bread and butter, because we're working with people individually. Even though I also say that socialisation, cultural stereotypes, social norms and pressures about what constitutes beauty and sexual appeal, they're also important, and they are a context around our minds, but they are not determinative of the sort of private, personal little details that one person likes and is drawn to versus another person.
Sergio Rebelo (18:25) Yeah. I think it's really important to emphasise the speed at which the story exists. So, if someone's walking down the street and they see someone and they get aroused—
Dr Michael Bader (18:34) Instant. Instant. Instant.
Sergio Rebelo (18:36) Yeah, there's a whole story.
Dr Michael Bader (18:37) It's an entire That's a really good way to put it. I mean, you could look, as I have done a lot when I've given talks, you could look at advertising.
Dr Michael Bader (18:49) So, look at Italian Vogue sometime, just out of the blue, and you see a model, a man or a woman, that an art director has composed a photograph of with an advertising tag, and it's not accidental the way they have depicted the object of your interest. And so you're going through the magazine, like, "Oh!" You kind of wake up, that's what the guy wants you to do. He wants you to, "Oh, that's cool," or, "She's hot," or, "He's hot."
Dr Michael Bader (19:24) And it's fascinating. You can look at these photographs of models, and you can decode: why is that one popular? For instance, if you look at a fashion magazine today, pick up Cosmopolitan, you see the fashion ads in there. Most of the time, men in these ads kind of look like this.
Dr Michael Bader (19:54) Why? Why do they look tough, humourless, and I'll argue a little later, a little ruthless? It's because that is attractive. And then you say, "Well, why is that attractive, man? Why does that appeal, as opposed to a guy who's just smiling?"
Dr Michael Bader (20:19) And the same thing with the female models. Often the models in these pictures are not smiling. They don't look exuberantly happy. And that has to do with the fact that when they are serious, they seem—now, this is unconscious—communicating a kind of strength, and a certain type of solidity and sturdiness that's important, and we'll get to, because then the viewer doesn't have to worry about being too strong and hurting them, or that they're pushovers, or all those things can make a viewer feel guilty and uncomfortable.
Dr Michael Bader (21:03) So, instead, you have these tough guys and tough broads, and that's the way fashion sells. Women like these tough female models often because they identify with these tough, sexy women. "I would like to not feel like a little, helpless, feminine thing. I would like to be a tough broad, sexy girl." And heterosexual men can be attracted to those women in magazines because they seem tough to men, and they don't have to worry about hurting them.
Sergio Rebelo (21:40) Yeah. It's amazing how quick this all works, you know, truly a testament to the psyche.
Dr Michael Bader (21:46) Oh, it's like an instant.
Sergio Rebelo (21:47) Yeah, absolutely.
Dr Michael Bader (21:49) Non-conscious processing happens all the time, actually, and it happens in a nanosecond. We make predictions, we make inferences, we draw conclusions, and it's all in the service of adaptation, safety, attachment, and all those good things. But they happen almost instantaneously.
Dr Michael Bader (22:15) You see, my model is like there's actually, in a sense, two steps, but they happen at the same moment, so it seems like they're the same thing. But the two steps are this: everybody has, I think, a natural, healthy, normal desire for sexual pleasure and excitement. It just is a good thing. It's a healthy, normal human thing that people aspire to be able to feel. We don't have to explain theoretically where that comes from like Freud did with drives and instincts; we take that as for granted.
Dr Michael Bader (23:08) The issue is the context and situations in which someone can feel that excitement. And what I argue in the book is that it's not automatic. It feels automatic, but actually what's happening is that the mind is assessing a situation to determine whether or not it's safe to feel turned on. And if the mind decides, yes it is, you get to feel pleasure. It's like two steps, but they happen at the same time.
24:14 Are sexual fantasies trying to resolve guilt and worry?
Sergio Rebelo (24:14) So, maybe we kind of go from the start here. If psychological safety is paramount to experiencing pleasure, why would someone begin, or when would they begin, to feel unsafe?
Dr Michael Bader (24:26) Right. So, I think there are a couple of classes of feelings and associated beliefs that regularly interfere with sexual pleasure and excitement.
Dr Michael Bader (24:41) The first class, which I think is very important, is guilt and worry. And I just say flatly, and I believe this, that you cannot get maximally turned on with somebody, either in fantasy privately or in the world, if you have to and feel yourself drawn to worry about their welfare too much, and feel guilty and responsible for their happiness. That belief and feeling state is inimical to sexual excitement.
Dr Michael Bader (25:21) So, if I'm worried about burdening you, Sergio, or overwhelming you with my excitement and arousal, or driving you away, or making you feel bad in any way, if that's where I'm programmed to worry about you, I will not allow myself to let the cat out of the bag and really get turned on. And there's like a lot of that that I see in everyday clinical life.
Dr Michael Bader (25:56) But there's another impediment and threat to sexual excitement that I think falls in the class of shame, inferiority, rejection, even helplessness, this whole family of affects and feelings. If you are someone who is prone to experience yourself in the world in these ways, with shame and feelings of being one-down, and inadequate, and rejected, you can't get really turned on. It's the opposite of the feeling you have when you're sexually exuberant and comfortable expressing it.
Dr Michael Bader (26:40) So, you've got these obstacles, I'll call them. And the unconscious mind says, "Uh-oh, better restrain yourself. Better not get too intensely turned on here, because you're going to hurt Sergio, or Mary, or whatever. You're going to hurt the other."
Dr Michael Bader (27:06) And so the mind still wants to have pleasure, but now it's got these big fences, these big inhibitions, or threats. So, the mind is so creative, it has to figure out a way of reducing those threats enough so that you can do what you want to do, which is to have pleasure and fun, and sexual excitement.
Dr Michael Bader (27:32) And the way the mind does it in sexual fantasies and preferences is the stuff of the books that I wrote. I'll give you a couple of quick examples, just to make this real.
Dr Michael Bader (27:44) Let's tell a story this way. Let's just say I'm someone who worries about hurting women. I grew up with a kind of sad-sack mother, she was a little bit of a martyr, I feel responsible for making women happy. Not a rare thing, but let's just say start with that. Now, I'm with a woman, and we start having sex, or we start getting excited together. I am highly motivated to not hurt her.
Dr Michael Bader (28:16) Now, when I'm having sex with her, sometimes—I argue in the book—intense sexual excitement itself feels to the person like it threatens the other person's welfare, somehow. It burdens them, it overwhelms them, it makes them feel bad about themselves, somehow.
Dr Michael Bader (28:44) Now, it's irrational, what I'm saying is an irrational what I call pathogenic belief. "I'm responsible for women, I've got to make them happy. Here I am having sex, and I am highly attuned to the impact of what I'm doing, saying, and feeling on her, aren't I? I'm very attuned to her." But because I am inclined to worry and feel guilty so much, there is something that I have to do in order to not hurt her feelings.
Dr Michael Bader (29:19) A guy I saw last week who had this issue, we're talking about his sex life with his wife. And he said, "You know, Dr Bader, our sex life's okay. I don't think she likes it so much because I like to have sex only entering her from the rear. Vaginal intercourse, but from the rear." And he says, "And I don't know, Doc, I think she gets a little tired of that, it's a little boring. She would like to have sex vis-à-vis, face-to-face."
Dr Michael Bader (29:56) So, we explored a little bit, and what comes out is that when he's making eye contact with her, it's like he can see inside her psyche and emotional heart space so acutely that it interferes and it distracts him, and it makes him feel like, "Well, I better not selfishly just take what I want from this woman, because I care about how she feels internally so much. But if I go in from the rear, I can just have the freedom to, like I said before, let the cat out of the bag and just have great sex."
Dr Michael Bader (30:45) So you see, that's a sexual preference, isn't it?
Sergio Rebelo (30:47) Yeah.
Dr Michael Bader (30:48) From the rear. It's not a fantasy he's just masturbating to, it's an actual choreography of sex, but it is like a sexual fantasy in that the choreography is creatively constructed as a solution to a problem, or a danger that he imagines he would experience if he was looking into her eyes.
31:50 The Concept of Sexual Ruthlessness
Dr Michael Bader (31:50) And it gets to this issue that I discuss controversially a little bit in the book about what I call sexual ruthlessness.
Dr Michael Bader (32:00) And I want to take a minute on it, because in our culture, we say something like this: great sex is something where you really have to tune in to the other person's needs, you have to be respectful, and appreciative, and empathic, and attuned to your partner. That's a good thing, right, everyone? "Yeah, yeah, it's a great thing."
Dr Michael Bader (32:27) But not entirely, because there's an element of sexual excitement and arousal that's inherently selfish. And I use the word ruthless because in my training, there was a British psychoanalyst named Donald Winnicott. And he talked about ruthlessness in the baby, and it had to do with this notion that the baby uses the mother, and is not motivated primarily by care and concern, but from this selfish user need the baby has. It's just a baby.
Dr Michael Bader (33:14) I think, and believe, and argue that elements of selfish ruthlessness are inherent in any great sexual connection. It's not the same as hurting the other person at all, but there's an element of objectification that's an important ingredient in sexual excitement. And it has to be in relation to empathy and attunement, which is also great for a sexual relationship, but there's a dialectical relationship between those two dimensions of experience.
Dr Michael Bader (34:00) Ruthlessness, one woman described it this way: she said, "You know, when I get excited and aroused and approach climax, it's like a wave that builds, and builds, and builds, and then crashes on the shore. And I don't want to have to worry about whether the shore can take it or not."
Sergio Rebelo (34:36) Yeah.
Dr Michael Bader (34:37) "So, I don't want to worry about the shore." Many sexual fantasies and preferences are unconscious attempts to not have to worry about the shore.
34:46 Why am I turned on by the opposite of my values?
Dr Michael Bader (34:46) And that's a very common concern people have. A woman I treated last year was an outspoken, well-known feminist theorist in Berkeley. And she came in because she read some stuff I'd written, and she was just embarrassed, conflicted, and guilty, because she said, "Doc, here's the thing. Like, I'm this outspoken feminist, but you know, my sexual fantasy life is really different, and I'm embarrassed about it, and I want to understand it."
Dr Michael Bader (35:36) I said, "Well, tell me what it is."
Dr Michael Bader (35:38) "Well, my fantasy is a janitor in the building, who I don't know, big guy, basically has his way with me in my office, on my desk. And then when he's done, he leaves. Doesn't say goodbye, doesn't worry about my inner life, doesn't feel a great pressure to be attuned and empathic, he just takes it. And it's exciting to me, and I wonder if my public self, which is all about feminine strength, is just bullshit, because this is my secret, private self."
Dr Michael Bader (36:26) What I was able to help her with, I said, "That's not the case at all. Actually, having a guy who is that selfish enables you to be more selfish. The fact that he is big and he takes what he wants and overpowers you is exciting because you can be as out there in your sexual excitement, and be as intensely aroused as you want and can possibly be, without having to have any concern for him."
Dr Michael Bader (37:11) So, that's an example—and I know we're going to talk about this later—where the sub, the bottom, the person that likes to be and is drawn to situations where he or she is dominated, this is how it gets worked out. When you are being tied up and dominated, you know, you are not worried about the person doing the dominating, are you? You're not tuning into the ebb and flow of their excitement, and are they happy with this or that? You can just not give a shit.
Dr Michael Bader (38:00) And the moment when a situation allows you to, quote, "not give a shit" as much, some people might say, "Well, that's just selfish, that's just egocentric, bad, misogynist sex." It's not necessarily at all. And with her, I was able to reassure her, "No, you're actually able to be strong because you don't have to worry about hurting the man."
39:20 Dom or sub but same guilt?
Dr Michael Bader (39:20) And this is so common. If a sexual fantasy is an antidote to something that is interfering with your pleasure, we have to ask the question: what problem is it solving?
Dr Michael Bader (39:46) If her problem, the problem that it was solving for this woman, is her guilt that she could hurt men, the sexual fantasy is a remedy for that. It disconfirms her belief that she's so strong she can hurt the man or anyone that she's having sex with.
Dr Michael Bader (40:15) So, if it's an antidote to this belief that she's going to hurt people, I'll bet you that belief finds its way into the rest of her life.
Sergio Rebelo (40:32) Yeah.
Dr Michael Bader (40:33) Almost certainly, right?
Sergio Rebelo (40:36) What I find fascinating is that both those players in that scene, let's say the man and the woman, they could be sitting on the same pathogenic belief, like they're all yeah, like they're not good enough, or they both could be sitting on guilt, yet they're playing it out in different ways.
Dr Michael Bader (40:53) That's so true. That's really interesting, isn't it? Because the person whose preference is to be dominant and to inflict force and authority, and sometimes even pain, on the other, you say, "Well, how is that guilt?"
Dr Michael Bader (41:14) Well, it's guilt because of the following thing: "I'm being a tough, powerful guy, and rather than the person being hurt, he or she is excited."
Sergio Rebelo (41:35) Yes.
Dr Michael Bader (41:37) And if the person is excited, it's a sign they're not hurt.
Sergio Rebelo (41:43) Yeah, that's it.
Dr Michael Bader (41:45) You see, that's what I mean. When you look at pornography, in almost every scenario, everybody and their uncle is excited in the scene. Everybody's turned on, straight, gay, it doesn't matter. And part of that is communicating that no one's getting hurt here, because when somebody's turned on, your mind registers that as, "Oh, they're okay, they're happy, they're not hurt."
Dr Michael Bader (42:25) And I'll give you one more example. A guy came in to see me because his wife wanted him to get help because he never wanted to have sex, and they hadn't had sex in a long time. And he told me a few data points about himself. One was his wife, a couple years ago, had lost a child from another marriage, and was depressed, and had been depressed for several years.
Dr Michael Bader (42:55) And the other data point, incidentally, because there's always the mother in this, Sergio, the mother moved from New York to the Bay Area to be near her son, and was needy and aggrieved that he was spending more time with his wife than with his mother, and she felt a little left out and complained about it. So, that's all I knew.
Dr Michael Bader (43:24) Talking about sex, I said, "Well, do you masturbate?" He says, "Oh yeah, I masturbate regularly." I said, "Well, what do you think about?" He said, "Well, I use porn."
Dr Michael Bader (43:33) I said, "So, what kind of porn do you like?" And he laughs, he's embarrassed, no one likes to talk about the details of this initially. He says, "Oh, no, the usual." I said, "Well, what is the usual for you?" And he said, "Oh, you know, it's just like large-breasted women going around and giving blowjobs to men, and everyone's excited at the party, and the men are getting fellated, and the women are happy, and they have big tits, and that's just the usual scene." I got it right away.
44:05 A Summary Of The Theory
Dr Michael Bader (44:05) The fact that the women had large breasts signified to him unconsciously that they had a lot to give to a man, and that they were all excited meant they were happy to do it. They were happy to give this guy pleasure in the scene, and that disconfirmed his belief that women did not like to take care of men, and they were energetically sad-sacks, women were sad-sacks to him.
Dr Michael Bader (44:48) In the fantasy that got him turned on, it was the opposite. He didn't have to take care of these women, they wanted to take care of him. And the structure of that object relationship counteracted his ongoing internal sad belief that there were these needy, depressed women, and he had to take care of them.
Sergio Rebelo (45:15) Is it something like this, I'm going to try and strip it back. As an individual grows up, they learn that their anger is unwelcome, you shouldn't be angry, so go put it somewhere else. The natural tendency to be aggressive and to make your way through the world is considered wrong.
Sergio Rebelo (45:41) So then this child believes that any impulse I have of this is wrong, it's a pathogenic belief. Yet, when I meet someone, if I get the validation, if I'm allowed to express these parts of myself which I've shunned, this anger, more aggressive, directional part of myself, if I'm allowed to express that, I feel pleasure because they're smiling back and they're validating that it's okay to bring it out, please do.
Dr Michael Bader (46:16) "Because I'm not hurting them. Because I'm not hurting them." See, that's where the guilt and the relational part That's a good summary, and I'd just add a few adjectives, which is: aggressive, selfish, narcissistically needy, or demanding, like, "I want the world to think I'm freaking great." That's a wish and a need that many people feel very uncomfortable and guilty about, just like they feel guilty about their aggression, or being too selfish.
46:32 Navigating Internal and External Cues
Dr Michael Bader (46:32) So when the situation allows—it's not that the person is always waiting for explicit permission from the other, obviously, but they're reading the cues all the time. "She sort of, or he sort of seems to enjoy when I am a sarcastic, aggressive, cynical son of a bitch, and I'm doing this whole routine that I do, and the person seems to like it. That's kind of a turn-on because it frees me up internally. I'm reading external cues for their meaning as it pertains to my internal life, all the time."
Sergio Rebelo (47:20) Yeah. Sounds, the pressure, the grip, that's always something which validates, it's censuring everything that happens in that environment, as ways to feel—
Dr Michael Bader (47:33) You're doing it all the time. And I didn't mention that the other big family of affects and beliefs that get in the way was inferiority and shame.
Dr Michael Bader (47:50) These are so subtle, but let's say somebody's getting dressed to go out at night, on a date or a party. And they kind of dress for show, they're looking in the mirror, putting on makeup or they're not, putting on certain clothes, and there's a feeling, "I'm looking pretty good tonight."
Dr Michael Bader (48:26) And I go out in the world, and in its extreme form, you say that such a person could even be exhibitionistic, but that doesn't have to be pathological at all. Could just be, "Hey, I'm looking good, people." And it's not like I'm getting sexually excited every minute I'm out in public, but it's lighting me up. And it's lighting me up because it disconfirms my belief that I'm actually a not very attractive little pisher that no one would love to have sex with, right?
Dr Michael Bader (49:09) So, that feeling of inferiority is counteracted by the display. And now take it one step further: what if I am somebody who grew up feeling one-down, like I'm missing something, harbouring these self-derogatory feelings of shame and rejection and inferiority?
Dr Michael Bader (49:33) What do you think it might mean to me if the person that I seduced or got involved with was somebody famous, let's say Taylor Swift? Now, Taylor Swift might be hot just on her own terms, but the meaning to me is: if Taylor Swift thinks I'm hot, that's a powerful chemical reagent that helps me disconfirm, for the moment, my feelings of inferiority.
Dr Michael Bader (50:07) Or, what if you're Monica Lewinsky, and it's the President of the United States? What could be more exciting than that, not because Bill Clinton was objectively so hot, but the fact that he was powerful and in authority and not available meant that if somebody who's not available desires me, oh man, that is like supercharging, counteracting my feelings of being inferior and inadequate.
Dr Michael Bader (50:35) Or I seduce my therapist, or a cop, or a politician, or a teacher, or somebody where there's boundaries, they're unavailable. You get somebody who's unavailable to desire you, then it has that extra jet fuel.
Sergio Rebelo (50:42) Yeah, it adds to the story.
Dr Michael Bader (50:44) It adds to the story, and it helps us as an antidote to these feelings of inferiority.
50:45 Will I Loose My Fantasy/Kink If I Understand Them Or "Work Onyself"?
Sergio Rebelo (50:45) One question that comes up with clients a lot is, if I resolve—if you can ever do that, I don't know—these feelings of inadequacy, of guilt, of shame, will that then affect my sexual fantasies? Will I lose my kink? Because lots of clients, and myself, I don't want to lose this. I love this, it's energy.
Dr Michael Bader (51:04) Yeah, no, it's energy, and it's pleasure.
Dr Michael Bader (51:10) That's a good question. First of all, sexual fantasies that disconfirm your beliefs about guilt and shame, they help you feel excited for the moment. The sexual fantasy does not cure your pathogenic beliefs.
Dr Michael Bader (51:33) If I'm somebody who goes around, "I'm supposed to take care of sad-sack women and fix them, and that's my pathogenic belief," so I have a sexual fantasy solution to it, it doesn't mean at the end of it that I'm no longer somebody who feels responsible for sad-sack, injured women. That happens in therapy, or because of corrective experiences in real life. Your sexual fantasies do not cure your pathogenic beliefs.
Dr Michael Bader (52:13) There are residues of these pathogenic beliefs that I think are universal. The nature of childhood and family life is that we're highly motivated to maintain safe attachments to our parents, to our families. Adaptation and attachment is the primary motivation of human life. A child has to figure out how to fit into their family. The kid has to figure out the rules of the road: what am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to want? What am I supposed to need?
Dr Michael Bader (53:06) And the biggest threat is hurting your parents or leaving your parents. So, since I'm so motivated to have a safe attachment to a happy parent, which is a deep subcortical desire, anything that disrupts that attachment, I'm going to feel bad about.
Dr Michael Bader (53:35) And so when kids grow up and become more independent, they invariably feel some shadow of separation guilt and survivor guilt. In the modern family, we're supposed to leave home, separate, individuate, be our own person. Well, separation carries with it a certain perception that, "If I leave and become my own man, I'm going to leave them behind, I'm going to hurt their feelings, I'm going to disrupt or threaten the attachments that I have with them."
Dr Michael Bader (54:33) And that is what we're calling separation guilt, or survivor guilt, which is the belief that I'm not supposed to have more of the good things in life than my parents. It's foundational in many people's psyches. It's hard to imagine that anyone could grow up without some residue of one or both of those. I think they're near-universal.
Dr Michael Bader (55:18) They don't have to be disabling, but they are latent, and they are potential threats that you're always slightly trying to manage. So, if you cure your pathogenic beliefs, you can mitigate and lessen radically the painful consequences of those beliefs, but I don't think you can ever get rid of them completely.
Dr Michael Bader (56:06) So, I think that they're still there, and the kink is always an attempt to deal with some version of these things that I think are universal.
Sergio Rebelo (56:22) In my personal experience, understanding my own circuitry and my own inner erotic life, it's actually enriched the space. I could play around with it much more. Now I know the game, the rules, I know how to cheat a bit, I know how to stretch, and it's much more playful. That's my personal experience and what I see in my clinical practice.
57:09 BDSM: No one is actually getting hurt
Dr Michael Bader (57:09) That's interesting. You kind of know where your juice comes from, and then you can creatively play with situations that feed that. That makes a lot of sense.
Dr Michael Bader (57:28) Some of what I'm talking about, if you take it to its extreme, sounds bad. It's like I'm saying, "Yeah, don't give a shit about your partner, and objectify them, and be a little ruthless, will you, Sergio?" But that's not really what's happening at all, you're not hurting anybody.
Dr Michael Bader (57:48) We know in bondage and discipline, and sadomasochistic scenarios of various kinds, the bottom is not being hurt. They may be representing themselves as hurt, but they're not actually being hurt. So, if we're talking to the person who's the bottom in the situation, or the sub, and we're saying, "It's exciting to you because then you know you don't have to worry about the guy tying you up, do you?"
Dr Michael Bader (58:18) You say, "Okay, that's right, I don't."
Dr Michael Bader (58:20) And the guy tying you up, you get turned on tying Fred up there because you know that Fred is excited by the prospect of your dominance, not hurt. So, no one's actually being hurt.
Dr Michael Bader (58:43) And that's an important distinction. It's a little bit of a fine line, because when we're talking about these choreographic scenarios that involve aggression, ruthlessness, selfishness, it can bleed over into scenarios where someone's actually getting hurt. Most pornography involves scenarios in which everybody's excited and turned on, and not really hurt. They may enact, performatively, the role of somebody who's hurt, but there are people that need and seek out situations in which the other person is actually hurt, and that turns them on. And they have a slightly different psychology, but it still has to do with danger and safety.
Dr Michael Bader (59:44) If part of my fantasy life requires that you actually be hurt, that person almost invariably was him or herself as a child made helpless and hurt. And when they grow up, they turn passive into active, we call it identify with the aggressor, reverse the roles, and they become the hurter, and the other person is the done-to person who's being hurt. And in that moment, "I'm not a helpless, abused kid who's being hurt and made helpless. I'm the one who's got all the cards."
Sergio Rebelo (01:00:46) Reclaiming power, yeah.
Dr Michael Bader (01:00:48) Yeah, you reclaim the power. It's relatively unusual, but I think even there, it involves considerations of safety and danger.
01:01:03 Exploring Fetishes and Their Symbolim
Sergio Rebelo (01:01:03) In your podcast Mysteries of the Mind, which is very good, you speak about fetishes. And I just want to give a bit of room to fetishes, because that's a sexual connection to an object, or a body part, or something. Can you speak a bit more about that?
Dr Michael Bader (01:01:23) I love fetishes, I love talking about fetishes! The best thing I think Freud ever wrote was his essay on fetishism.
Dr Michael Bader (01:01:34) Here's what Freud said, basically: "Why are there these guys that get turned on by women with high-heeled shoes, or just high-heel four-inch spike heels? What's that mean, man?"
Dr Michael Bader (01:01:49) And Freud's theory, of course, borrowed on his metapsychology, which was corrupt and wrong, but he said this: to a man, when he sees high-heeled shoes symbolically, he equates that with a penis. And he sees a woman with a penis.
Dr Michael Bader (01:02:10) In Freud's theory, remember, all boys grow up with castration anxiety, a fear of castration. In Freud's vercockte theory, when the boy sees that there are creatures without a penis, that is, girls, it makes him more anxious about castration, because if they don't have one, he could lose his. But when she has high-heeled shoes on, in his mind, it's like, "Oh, no, she has a penis. I am no longer endangered by the threat of castration. I'm reassured, it's safe now, finally, for me to get turned on."
Dr Michael Bader (01:03:04) And his thing about castration and penises was nonsense from his time. But here's what's true about it: his observation is correct that there are men who do get turned on by high-heeled shoes. It's not an uncommon fetish.
Dr Michael Bader (01:03:22) A fetish is when a human quality or body part is reduced to that of a thing. So, getting turned on by a thing is because the thing symbolises something that's quite human.
Dr Michael Bader (01:03:39) In Freud's thing about high-heeled shoes, the way I would say is: boys often suffer from having grown up in families with an unhappy, weak, depressed mother. But if he sees a woman who looks tough—toughness is a fetish, and high-heeled shoes represent a tough, phallic woman. And if it's a tough woman, "I don't have to worry about my sad, old mom, do I? I don't have to worry about women that I have to take care of. I can get turned on because it symbolises strength."
Dr Michael Bader (01:04:36) There are some Caucasian women, white women, who have a fetishistic attraction to the idea of having sex with a Black man. Now, there's all sorts of social, historical, cultural reasons for that that are a pretty tough story historically, but for her, she experiences him as only a hard body.
Dr Michael Bader (01:05:15) Because of her racist, caricatured projections, she doesn't relate to him as if he has a complex inner life at all. She relates to him as a body, as a thing. And that hard body is a body that she can bounce off of, and she can let it all hang out, because he doesn't have an internal life she has to worry about, for God's sakes!
Dr Michael Bader (01:05:49) The stereotype of a Black man with a large dick, who she doesn't have to imagine has an internal life that she has to give a shit about, is a turn-on to her. And this happens all the time.
Sergio Rebelo (01:06:17) Yeah. So, what I'm hearing is that the object, the colour, the scent, even a texture absorbs certain qualities from the individual or from a culture, and that we then have a relationship towards that.
Dr Michael Bader (01:06:36) Yes! That's a really good way to put it. It's the quality that we associate with the thing that is turning us on, it's what it symbolises and represents.
Dr Michael Bader (01:06:56) The racial, social categorisations happen a lot. Like Asian women: submissive, deferential. I know that's not an accurate stereotype, but for some men, it's a fetish. "Why are you attracted to Asian women?" He doesn't know why, but we know why, because the skin colour, the cultural heritage, and the story about Asian women is what is turning the person on.
Sergio Rebelo (01:07:44) I think we underestimate how symbolic animals we are. We're highly symbolic. We can condense a large amount of information into a simple shape, logos, for example. We condense it, store it, bam!
Dr Michael Bader (01:08:00) Robert Stoller, who was a very influential psychoanalyst that I used to read a lot in the '70s, said that sexual arousal was a microdot.
Dr Michael Bader (01:08:14) A microdot was an old spy technique where, in this little dot, if you put it under a microscope, there's huge amounts of information. And that's what sexual arousal is, it's a microdot. It contains a story, and if you understand the story behind the dot, you not only understand your sex life, but you understand a lot more about the rest of your life, because that stuff is there all the time.
01:09:17 Audience Question
Sergio Rebelo (01:09:17) Do you have time for an audience question?
Dr Michael Bader (01:09:19) Totally.
Sergio Rebelo (01:09:20) Great. Okay, so I'm going to read it out:
Sergio Rebelo (01:09:27) "I'm a gay male living in North England. I'm 34 years old, had a relatively okay childhood, mother was a little depressed, father a bit absent. Although I struggled with my own sexuality, my family was actually fine with it when I came out. I worked in gay establishments my whole life and never had any conflict around my sexuality outside of school bullying. My brother and I did fight a lot, but never about my sexuality.
Sergio Rebelo (01:09:56) However, I've recently developed a behaviour of paying straight men. This is incredibly confusing, as I feel it goes against everything I believe in, but I find these dom alpha types on the internet and pay them for their, quote, 'superiority'. It makes me sick, but a fantasy I can't seem to stop. It's mainly straight guys, and I don't know how to think about this."
Dr Michael Bader (01:10:28) This is a great example, because I'm treating somebody right now very similar. Think about it this way: seducing and getting a straight man to fuck you, or be fucked by you, or have sex with you, is itself a powerful aphrodisiac because it says, "You are really special. You are so appealing, and so compelling, that this guy will like violate his lifetime of heterosexual, sexist training to jump into bed with you?"
Dr Michael Bader (01:11:15) The guy that I'm seeing is very similar. His sexual fantasy is a straight, white, married, well-to-do man, a father. That's what turns him on. If he comes over to my side of the street, it means I'm powerful, I'm compelling. And this guy that I'm treating is an African American man, and it's a white man that he wants to come on over to his side of the street. And if he can seduce, coerce, or convince him to do that, it is a powerful aphrodisiac because it means he's special, so special that this guy is willing to give up all the trappings of the good life for him. Imagine the meaning of that.
Dr Michael Bader (01:12:15) This is in the realm of counteracting feelings of shame, rejection, inferiority. I saw a woman whose sexual fantasy was that she is on stage, and she's stripping, and there are hordes of men at the stage looking up, salivating with desire for her. And she said, "I'm so embarrassed."
Dr Michael Bader (01:12:47) It's because of the obvious thing: if they are all lecherously craving you, it means you are pretty damn important, compelling, powerful, beautiful, exciting, and special. And that's what I think with this guy.
Dr Michael Bader (01:13:13) And I want to say one last thing. This example I had with the guy who didn't want to make eye contact with his partner, because looking into her eyes is a window to the other person's internal life, and, "I don't want to have to worry about that life so much, so I'm going to turn you around and have sex with you from the rear." A version of this happens in normal, healthy couples over time, and it's the source of sexual boredom. The frequency and intensity of sexual excitement declines over time in an intimate, healthy relationship.
Dr Michael Bader (01:14:12) Why is that? Because we love each other so much, we've been together so long, I can almost finish your sentences. I have seen you in every situation, whether proud or embarrassing. It's like I really get you, and that's a source of strength for us.
Dr Michael Bader (01:14:38) But it works against sexual arousal. Familiarity and the sort of collapse of boundaries makes it harder for me to be a little ruthless with you, objectify you at all, and instead, I'm pulled into just having to take care of you so much. And that's why sexual desire decreases over time, and it's why sex therapists will say, "Go out to a hotel, have sex."
Dr Michael Bader (01:15:10) It is better sex when they go to a hotel. Why is that? Because they're not home. Home equals family, love, intimacy, mutuality, reciprocity, all those great things, okay, associated with home, but you can't objectify, be ruthless, be too selfish, because you would feel too guilty. You go to a hotel, it's like you're starting afresh. There's separation, boundaries, and a little distance, and that helps you with this dynamic.
Sergio Rebelo (01:15:53) Fantastic. Dr Michael Bader, it's been absolutely wonderful. Thank you for your time, your wisdom, and your contribution. It's been great.
Dr Michael Bader (01:16:02) Well, thank thank you. I'll just say this, it's really a pleasure, too. I've done several podcasts, it's a pleasure to be interviewed with someone who is so smart, and I thank you for that, man.
Sergio Rebelo (01:16:15) Thank you. Thank you so much.
Dr Michael Bader (01:16:17) All right, you take care.
Sergio Rebelo (01:16:19) Thank you, bye.
Dr Michael Bader (01:16:20) Bye, bye.
