A daydream is a visionary fantasy experienced while awake, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes, or ambitions. Paul César Helleu ( December 17, 1859 - March 23, 1927) An artist born in Vannes, Brittany, France, best known See Fantasy for an account of the literary genre involving the development of common or popular fantasies [1] There are so many different types of daydreaming that there is still no consensus definition amongst psychologists. Psychology (from Greek grc ψῡχή psȳkhē, "breath life soul" and grc -λογία -logia) is an Academic and [1] While daydreams may include fantasies about future scenarios or plans, reminiscences about past experiences, or vivid dream-like images, they are often connected with some type of emotion. Dreams are the images sounds thoughts and feelings experienced while Sleeping, particularly strongly associated with Rapid eye movement sleep.
Daydreaming may take the form of a train of thought, leading the daydreamer away from being aware of his or her immediate surroundings, and concentrating more and more on these new directions of thought. The train of thought, stream of thought, or chain of thought refers to the interconnection in the sequence of ideas expressed during a connected Discourse To an observer, they may appear to be affecting a blank stare into the distance, and only a sudden stimulus will startle the daydreamer out of their reverie. The thousand-yard stare or two-thousand-yard stare is the unfocused gaze of a battle-weary Soldier.
While daydreaming has long been derided as a lazy, non-productive pastime, daydreaming can be constructive in some contexts. There are numerous examples of people in creative or artistic careers, such as composers, novelists, and filmmakers, developing new ideas through daydreaming. Creativity is a mental process involving the generation of new Ideas or Concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts Similarly, research scientists, mathematicians, and physicists have developed new ideas by daydreaming about their subject areas.
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History
Daydreaming was long held in disrepute in society and was associated with laziness. In the late 1800s, Toni Nelson argued that some daydreams with grandiose fantasies are self-gratifying attempts at "wish fulfillment". In the 1950s, some educational psychologists warned parents not to let their children daydream, for fear that the children may be sucked into "neurosis and even psychosis. "[1]
In the late 1960s, psychologist Jerome L. Singer of Yale University and psychologist John S. Antrobus of the City College of New York created a daydream questionnaire. The questionnaire, called the Imaginal Processes Inventory (IPI) has been used to investigate daydreams. Psychologists Leonard Giambra and George Huba used the IPI and found that daydreamers' imaginary images vary in three ways: how vivid or enjoyable the daydreams are, how many guilt- or fear-filled daydreams they have, and how "deeply" into the daydream people go. [1]
Recent research
Eric Klinger's research in the 1980s showed that most daydreams are about ordinary, everyday events and help to remind us of mundane tasks. Klinger's research also showed that over 3/4 of workers in 'boring jobs,' such as lifeguards and truck drivers, use vivid daydreams to "ease the boredom" of their routine tasks. Klinger found that less than five percent of the workers' daydreams involved explicitly sexual thoughts and that violent daydreams were also uncommon. [1]
Israeli high school students who scored high on the Daydreaming Scale of the IPI had more empathy than students who scored low. Some psychologists, such as Los Angeles’ Joseph E. Shorr, use the mental imagery created during their clients' daydreaming to help gain insight into their mental state and make diagnoses. [2][3]
See also
- Absent-mindedness
- Thinking about the immortality of the crab
- Dreams
- Fantasy (psychology)
- Escapism
- Imaginary world
- Imagination
- Mind-wandering
- Pipe dream
- Stream of consciousness (psychology)
External links
- Positive effects of daydreaming
- Daydreaming improves thinking (Cosmos Magazine)
References
- ^ a b c d e Eric Klinger. Absent-mindedness can refer to three very different things a low level of Attention ("blanking" or “zoning out” intense attention to a single Thinking about the immortality of the crab (Pensar en la inmortalidad del cangrejo is a Spanish Idiom about Daydreaming The term is usually a humorous Dreams are the images sounds thoughts and feelings experienced while Sleeping, particularly strongly associated with Rapid eye movement sleep. See Fantasy for an account of the literary genre involving the development of common or popular fantasies Escapism is mental diversion by means of Entertainment or Recreation, as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant aspects of daily stress. An imaginary world is a setting, place or event or scenario at variance with Objective reality, ranging from the voluntary Suspension of Imagination is the ability to form Mental images/sounds/feelings or the ability to Spontaneously Generate images/sounds/feelings within one's own Mind See also Daydreaming and Attention. Mind-wandering (sometimes referred to as task unrelated thought) is a topic in Experimental psychology Stream of consciousness refers to the flow of Thoughts in the conscious Mind. Psychology Today. October 1987.
- ^ D. Vaitl, J. Gruzelier, D. Lehmann et al. , "Psychobiology of Altered States of Consciousness," Psychological Bulletin, vol. 131, no. 1, 2005, pp. 98–127.
- ^ Warren, Jeff (2007). "The Daydream", The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness. ISBN 978-0679314080.
Dictionary
daydream
-noun
- A spontaneous and fanciful series of thoughts not connected to immediate reality.
-verb
- To have such a series of thoughts; to woolgather.