A Few Thoughts About Fantasy (Article)

In hypnokink play, we often have fantasies that we seek, whether that comes from media or porn or personal desires that we have discovered on our journeys. In “The Brainwashing Book,” we went over a lot about scene-building and how imaginative fantasies can be metaphorical for change and play. In this writing, we’ll be looking from an adjacent angle about what it takes to pursue certain fantasies and how they connect with reality.

What is Fantasy?

“Fantasy” is a broad word, but when we’re talking about it within the context of erotic hypnosis, there are a couple connotations we can derive from it. One possibility is that something deemed “fantasy” is impossible in the real world; brainwashing helmets that physiologically change the way we think, or mind-controlling flower pollen. On the other hand, a fantasy could be realistic and achievable, whether it’s something the person hasn’t done before or something they want to repeat. For example, many people’s first fantasies are centered on simply being hypnotized at all. A fantasy could be something that a person is deeply yearning for, or something that they’re mildly curious about.

Getting to understand the nature of a fantasy helps us when we’re trying to achieve something satisfying. You would treat a fantasy differently if it was a personal, secret desire than if it was something that person was openly enthusiastic about. Similarly, someone might be using fantasy as escape from reality, while another might see fantasy as an exploratory vehicle for certain themes, topics, or people, both of which call to different approaches.

When we ask ourselves and our partners, “What are our fantasies?” we should also be asking, “Why?” What makes something a fantasy? What does it make us feel? Where does it come from? As with everything in hypnosis, information discovery is not only useful, but can be an erotic process in and of itself. It can be particularly useful to view fantasies this way, thinking of them as an extension of the other person and their desires. What makes them tick?

What’s the Center?

Similar scenarios will have different appeals for different people, and one of the best things you can do to make for an intense scene is trying to discover the aspects of the fantasy that are the true “core” of it for that person. For example, someone may say that they have a fantasy of being turned into a fuckdoll, only good for being used for sex. Is the main appeal being turned into a literal object? Being seen only sexually? Being used and then put away? Is it humiliating? Gendered? Something else? Many of these together?

Identifying the centrally stimulating parts of a fantasy allows you to give it the right amount of focus in a scene. You can also think of this as connected to a different concept: “What is or was the obstacle preventing them from having this, and how is that changing how they feel about it now?” Oftentimes, our fantasies are so alluring because they feel out of reach. The moment where someone thinks that they might be able to be fulfilled and the moment they finally get what they’ve been wanting are both incredibly significant, especially in the case of someone who’s been lusting over something for a while. We need to pay attention to those moments -- they can be extremely climactic, and we want to be able to take advantage and emphasize them as part of our scenes.

As with all scenes and hypnosis, you don’t need to have an interrogation before play to garner information. Conversations are helpful, and you can use them as an opportunity for hotness and trance, but you can treat this process of learning as an investigative one during the scene, too. Be open to the direction you’re going and pay attention to the responses you get. If you try a particular direction where you focus on the idea of your partner becoming very pretty and doll-like and you notice them having some sort of intense reaction, you’ve learned something to file away, and you can keep testing and poking around. Don’t be afraid to ask questions during the scene, either: “Oh, yeah, did that feel good? Was that one of your buttons?” or other sexy-toned inquiries aren’t just hidden check-ins, they’re causing the person to remember and reconstruct the moment again, which can be used to direct the flow and intensity of the scene. This also encourages more feedback and sets a tone that tells the person they are meant to share how they’re feeling through their responses.

Fulfilment vs Exploration

Each different step or moment of fulfilment is an opportunity for intensity. We can conceptualize scenes as a whole as a series of moments, and when we’re playing with our specific fantasies, those moments happen when we are getting something that hits hard. In the scenario of the fuckdoll fantasy, you may want to make choices to emphasize different parts of the scene: the moment where they lose their personhood, the moment where they are used for the first time. Linger on the things that you know are attractive; dangle them out of reach and play with the anticipation before giving it to them. Knowing what gets someone off and what they want gives you power, and you can make that very clear as an element of dominance and submission. You can play (consensual) games with it and create your own obstacles for fulfilment: “I’ll give you what you want -- if you suck my cock well enough.” Making the obstacles a collaborative part of the trance and fantasy also works very well: “You’ll get what you want if you drop very deep into hypnosis for me” or “You’ll get what you want if you focus hard enough on the secret images that your brain is constructing about your desires.”

But fantasies are not just about doing the specific things that the person is hoping for. A lot of hypnosis is about being able to find things that are new and exciting along the way. It’s helpful to keep an open mind in terms of what you expect will get you both off, and you can encourage that, too. Very simple Ericksonian language and concepts can come in handy here, like saying, “I don’t know what we’re going to discover that will hit your buttons, but I’m sure you’ll consciously or unconsciously find something that you didn’t expect.” You can talk about how different aspects of fantasy collide, how fulfilling their desires can cause them to more deeply appreciate the connections between ideas. There may be a very real depth to the fantasy that they never thought about, maybe because they never believed they’d get this far, or because reality is somehow different.

Fantasy is a Two-Way Street

Thus far we’ve been talking a lot about fantasy in a sense that can’t help but imply one person taking steps to realize a fantasy for another person. But one of the most important parts of enjoyable hypnokink is understanding that both partners’ desires matter equally. Some people enjoy simply doing what their partner wants and that’s where they get satisfaction, but we need to be careful and not fall into the trap of assuming that this is the only correct way to engage in hypnosis.

Finding common ground is key to having a good time. Instead of viewing negotiation as a vehicle to find what the other person wants so you can give it to them, you should enter into the conversation as equals and mutually express your desires and fantasies. Sharing fantasies can be really exciting, and you can use it as an opportunity to think about what your core desires are and how they share overlap with your partner’s. It is not just about compromising about what elements should be involved, but being able to understand what aspects of your passions are within the same space. For example, if you are interested in the idea of your partner becoming a robot, try to identify what makes that fantasy work for you and see how it meshes with your partner. Maybe it’s the dehumanization aspects and tropes like monotone speech. Perhaps they’re not as much into the robot stereotypes, but they are into the idea of being controlled in an intense way, so you can use that as an avenue to make the fantasy work; they’re so deeply under your power that they no longer have control over what they are transformed into.

Translating

There are a lot of different skills that are involved in the overarching activity of hypnosis. Being able to connect one idea to another, “selling” concepts, adaptability, improvisation. It is an endless conversation to discuss what makes someone “good” at being a hypnotist. But possibly one of the more overlooked skills is the ability to translate.

Being able to decode information is indispensable in hypnokink. As an example, even within the context of learning more about hypnosis itself, so many of the resources that might be helpful to us are written almost in a different language. Even kink-made sources may take translation to be able to fit our individual needs. But one of the most common cases of this is when we read books that are meant for a clinical audience. We may read about hypnosis being used in a therapeutic method, which looks at it from the perspective of using it to solve problems. There is a presumed issue that needs addressing, something that is “problematic” that needs to become “better.” 

The issue is that this is not really a mindset that we use to go into kinky interactions -- we’re not generally looking to "fix" things with our partners. A simple way of translating this is shifting the original perspective and thinking about everything in terms of goals, instead. A therapeutic context might be goal-oriented and say that we want to get from point A to point B. It may teach different techniques to discern where the person is starting and what will help them change. In kink, we can use this model -- our overarching process might be similar, where we want to know about a person in order to have some sort of experience with them. There is not a singular method of translation from one mindset to another. Other ways of interpreting therapeutic text could be taking only linguistic patterns and seeking to adapt those, roleplaying or modeling the therapist/client relationship in some way, or eschewing the goal-oriented process in favor of one that is more about discovery.

Transformation

But this idea of translating permeates everything we do, especially when we’re talking about the idea of fantasy. Fantasies must be translated in a variety of different ways when we interact with them. We translate them between abstract ideas and verbal communication, we translate them differently for different people, and we translate them to reality when we manifest them in our play.

When we translate something, we’re transforming it in some way. Translation in linguistics has two important aspects: fidelity (how literally accurate the end text is) and felicity (how much sense it makes to the new language’s reader). Language needs to be changed in order for it to properly be expressed. From a kink lens as well, when we think about making a fantasy happen, we have to figure out how to keep it faithful to its core themes as well as reconciling it with the capabilities that we have in reality.

A fantasy about being abducted by a mind control cult, for example, requires a significant amount of transformation. We can identify the core themes (perhaps through the idea of “chunking” or meta modeling from NLP or other introspective tools): maybe malicious intent, brainwashing, resistance, recruitment. We then can think about the avenues that we have to create those motifs.

Tools

This comes down a little bit to recognizing what we have available to us as hypnotists, almost taking a step back and re-evaluating how we do hypnosis as a whole. Sometimes, a little introspection about our process can help inform how we achieve something.

“Hypnosis” is the language that we are communicating and translating to. It is easy enough to conceptualize the idea of “malicious intent,” but how do we create that feeling? We can do it through suggestion (“I wonder if you’re noticing that you seem to be in a dangerous situation…”), we can do it through framing or roleplaying (“‘It’s so nice to meet someone like you in a bar; here, I bought you a cocktail, take a drink…’”), we can do it through direct statement of intent (“We’re going to take you in for a little bit of an attitude adjustment, and then I’m sure you’ll feel so much better about joining us…”).

To some degree, you can see how there’s a lot of overlap in the different kinds of language we use and the feelings we are trying to elicit, and this is just talking about the verbal components, not taking into account any kind of props or nonverbal suggestion or communication. One way of conceptualizing this is by thinking about what “part” you are engaging when you are working with someone. You might be able to think about this in terms of the common concept of “modality” -- engaging different sensory processes -- but it is beneficial to think of this as much more expansive than the senses.

When you say something, how is your partner going to process it emotionally? Are they going to be thinking about it in a certain way or connecting it to other concepts? If you say something to create reference, like, “You look a little bit like a damsel in distress right now,” which parts of their memories and past experiences are being recalled? Perhaps you can consider that they have to create an image of themself or an abstract concept of what that means to process it. From there, you can continue creating the flow of the scene through directing their process -- you know a little bit about their thought patterns, so you have a choice of which step to take. You could emphasize the “looking/judging internally” part (“What does that even say about you that you feel so helpless?” -- shifting them to introspection) or you could emphasize the “observing from outside themselves” part (“I’m sure you’d look very alluring if someone wanted to take advantage of you right now.” -- shifting them to perceiving what an outside observer would see).

In Conclusion

These are just a few brief thoughts that look limitedly on both a macro and micro lens on how we engage with fantasy. Any of these sections could be expanded, and you’re encouraged to think about how. All of the tools we have available to us as hypnotists help us realize fantasies and create intense experiences -- framing, chunking, metaphor, and many other concepts in our toolsets are the lubricant that make engaging in imaginative scenes fun and fulfilling.

See if you can apply and translate the ideas in this article to a past scene or one that you’re thinking about for future. The key to good hypnosis is being flexible and adaptable, not only in terms of improvisation, but in being able to change your perspective and mindset about what we do so you can utilize different models. Enjoy!