Frequent Daydreaming Populations and Systems of Fantasy Immersion

Abstract

Daydreams are an ordinary experience for most people, the empirical literature explored in Chapter 2 found that people fantasise about everything: from intimate relationships, sex, fame and triumphs, to battles, accidents and calamities (Singer et al., 1961, 1963, 1972). While people engage in waking fantasy regularly there is also a notion found in ordinary understanding, recent psychiatric concepts and research that it is bad to daydream too much. The available empirical literature consistently finds that maladaptive styles of conscious fantasying occur only in states of frequent daydreaming.¹ The studies disclose patterns involving combinations of restricted and repetitive fiction, bodily preoccupations and obsessive or bizarre ideation, and themes of power, revenge, withdrawal and protection. Problematic habits of waking fantasy can include hostile content, involve scenarios of death, illness and suffering, and prompt attitudes of guilt, self-debasement and fear reactions to daydreaming (Singer & McCraven, 1961; Singer & Antrobus, 1963, 1972; Zelin et al., 1983; Harder et al., 1984a; Greenwald & Harder, 1994, 1995, 1997).