Basically, there are two different kinds of wishful daydreams. One comes from thoughts that arise from drives. These drives are connected with your idealized self-image, your self-glorification, your feelings of inadequacy and your lack of self-confidence. There isn’t a human being who does not, even consciously at times, indulge in fantasies. In them, you see yourself in situations in which you prove to those who have slighted you how superior or great you are. In such daydreams you are admired instead of slighted and you experience satisfaction, revenge and gratified pride. Thus you enjoy living in a way that exactly opposes your deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. You “correct” your undesirable reality with fantasy.
Obviously, there is harm in spending precious energy on such wishful daydreams — energy that could be much more constructively spent on finding the root of your sense of inadequacy and eliminating it. In living through such fantasies, you may experience momentary relief, but it is purely illusory. It is not enough to say that daydreaming is escaping reality. This is true, but let us understand more precisely how that happens. If you resist finding the truth about yourself, that you have made errors and cling to misconceptions, you cannot come to terms with yourself. Nor can you come to terms with others or with life as a whole. At least, you cannot learn to accept the areas that are affected by your problems. So you whisk away these inadequacies by experiencing their opposite in fantasy. It is true that the fantasy does bring relief to a drab life, but the availability of such relief will hamper your efforts at finding the cause and effect of your problems and instituting more constructive patterns.
There is also a benefit to daydreaming, however. Since realistic remedies are not sought, the activity of correcting life in fantasy removes aggression, hostility and destructive impulses. Another benefit is daydreams act as symptoms. How can you ever find a sickness if there are no symptoms? If a physical disease is hidden in an inner organ, without producing any symptoms, you have no opportunity to seek and treat the cause before it is too late. The same mechanism applies to your soul life.
Most people, however, enjoy the symptoms (daydreams) and do not wish to recognize them for what they are; therefore, they do not benefit from them. Simply using some form of discipline to repress your desire to daydream in order to improve your life will not serve any purpose. It will cause greater anxiety, with different outlets and symptoms. It is better to create a little distance from this activity by observing the particular pattern of your daydreams. Make a note of them. Realize their general goal. This will offer you invaluable material about the root of your problems. Instead of repressing daydreams or indulging in them without trying to observe and understand, see them as the useful symptoms they are. You will thus turn a destructive activity into a constructive one, as long as it still seems necessary. Your psyche will give it up to the degree that you learn to love life in reality. Then the daydreams will simply cease by themselves. This cessation has to be a natural, organic process.
The second category of wishful daydreaming is emotional and comes from needs instead of drives. Your repressed, unrecognized needs may create an even stronger force, just because they are repressed. This force then must have an outlet. If healthy need fulfillment is hindered through your pseudosolutions, unrealistic fears and erroneous images, which paralyze your constructive energy and resourcefulness, then an imaginary outlet is necessary. Physical, emotional, mental and spiritual fulfillment is then possible only in fantasy. This is actually a relief and not merely an escape from a drab reality.
When you are unwilling to leave your isolation, your needs cannot be fulfilled. As you know from previous talks on the subject, you either repress awareness of your needs or displace them onto superimposed needs that are not genuine. This displacement creates confusion and knots. It paralyzes your spontaneity, your capacity to feel, to live, and to experience reality. This, in turn, creates many vicious circles, which then make it even more difficult to break out of the destructive pattern. Since your psyche refuses to be cheated of real living, the accumulated pressure will often necessitate some outlet. You may then experience a certain fulfillment in daydreams. Observing and evaluating your daydreams can help you categorize them. It is very likely that you produce fantasy fulfillments for both real and false needs.
The more satisfying your fantasy fulfillment is, the less incentive you will have to resolve your problems so that your fulfillment can become real. In fantasy you live a life of your own behind your walls of isolation and can direct everything as you choose, without interference from others and without meeting obstructions. Thus fantasy seems more desirable than life. But the more you live in these daydreams, the less it will be possible for you to deal with outer obstructions, and the more their power will grow on you. Finally you will come to believe that actual fulfillment is impossible because you cannot direct people and circumstances as you choose. This negative view of fulfillment is, of course, utterly false, since fulfillment is possible in spite of everything not happening exactly when and how you desire it. But fulfillment is possible only if you are flexible and flow with life’s stream. Due to the unconscious conviction that in reality fulfillment is impossible, you can completely withdraw from living and no longer try to attain real satisfaction of your needs. The precarious pseudofulfillment is at least something, and seems so much more than what you are capable of experiencing in reality at this time. Determine whether this holds true for you and to what extent.
The more immature people are, the more “successful” their daydreaming will be and the less they will be capable of and willing to live their lives in the here and now. They want complete control of circumstances, which they can have only in fantasy. This also works in reverse, so that when they try to be flexible and resilient in meeting outer circumstances that do not entirely accord with their preconceived ideas, they will feel less capable of experiencing fulfillment. The discrepancy between daydreams in which they can make others behave, feel, and react as they want, and the reality, which is often different and requires flexibility and patience, is too much for them. Thus they prefer living in a make-believe world of future fulfillment, expecting that today’s fantasy will turn into tomorrow’s reality. Of course, the morrow never comes. The reality never conforms to the fantasy that has been laboriously prepared in daydreaming; this causes frustration. In truth, reality is infinitely more satisfying than the daydreams, but one needs courage and flexibility; one has to give up the need to control everything, throw away the blueprints, and live spontaneously.
Now, what is the benefit of this kind of daydreaming? It presents symptoms from which much insight can be gained; it may spur you to live more fully. Also, it can function as a barometer of inner changes. The different emotional quality of your fantasies and the kind of satisfaction you derive from them may indeed indicate the direction of your growth. Determining this is very beneficial.
Moreover, daydreaming of this kind encourages awareness of repressed needs. You will appreciate by now how important this is. But, my friends, often you are only vaguely aware of your needs, or if you are conscious of them, you do not evaluate them. You allow yourself to feel these needs only in your daydreams. The moment you step into real life, you shut off this awareness and you live as though this other part of you had nothing to do with the rest of your life. Your reaction to real life creates a split that could be mended by increased awareness. The harm of daydreams, then, is in your failure to take advantage of the benefits they could bring to your real life.
A greater awareness of your daydreaming can bring many benefits. My advice to you on this path is that whenever you find yourself engaged in such fantasizing, develop a new approach. Observe, evaluate, weigh and determine — without strain, compulsion or pressure — calmly and quietly. Make daydreams the useful symptom they are meant to be by learning about yourself, your real needs, your drives, your pseudo-fulfillment in fantasies and about their purpose.
