Daydream
Daydreams ( English: daydream ; French: rêverie ) are pictorial fantasies and imaginations that are comparable to dreams and are experienced in the waking state of consciousness . In contrast to the usual dream events, these scenes can either be deliberately controlled and consciously brought about or unfold by themselves through inattentiveness and a decrease in concentration. Here the attention is removed from the external stimuli of the environment, from influences and tasks and turns to the inner world. The daydream is thus a form of trance .
Concept history
The term goes back etymologically to the Latin oxymoron "vigilans somniat". The old French word "rêverie" referred to wandering around and - based on this basic meaning - extravagant delirium and fantasizing. It was later used for shorter compositions by French composers such as Georges Bizet or Claude Debussy ; and Robert Schumann's famous reverie is translated in French with this word.
History of philosophy
For the French philosopher, writer and founder of the literary essay Michel de Montaigne , free imagination played a special role. He described his own thinking, the mysterious course of which he kept in a diary , as wandering dreaming. To the daydreams he also counted the philosophy , in whose history the dreams of mankind could be found. Taking up the topos of life as a dream , he referred to the importance of peculiar and everyday daydreams, "which refuse to awaken just as stubbornly as collective daydreams".
In a phase of great historical conflicts and upheavals - the discovery of the New World , the overturning of the anthropocentric , Ptolemaic view of the world in the Copernican turn , but also the horror of the Bartholomew Night - the essays registered the historical experiences as world and self-reflections about people as " single and sociable being ”. Montaigne repeatedly referred to his thoughts self-deprecatingly as "salad", "confused chatter", "grotesque freaks and fantasies." These comparisons are not only due to the modesty of the author, who was concerned about his reputation, but also followed a method used specifically not to speak of oneself as a whole, uniformly. “We are all made up of patches and are so unformed and motley that every piece plays its own game every moment.” With Montaigne, dreaming is upgraded to lonely reflection and meditation.
René Descartes dealt with the involuntary nature of dreaming and held fast to the new meaning introduced by Montaigne.
.jpg)
In the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , the association meditative reverie with noise and vision , memory and ecstasy . In his Rêveries du promeneur solitaire , he described how it is possible for daydreamers to feel the overwhelming feeling of happiness of being alone with nature and a constant presence. It can be traced back to Rousseau's influence that the reverie with its melancholy moments of happiness rose as a meditative dream to become a topic often treated by many writers.
On the way to the modern age , the flaneur - like the bohemian Peter Altenberg later - adopted this attitude, the “dreaming idler” and spoiled decadent , to whom experiences with drugs were sometimes not unknown.
While the English philosopher John Locke regretted that there was no equivalent to the French rêverie in the English language that captured the free-floating, unreflective course of imagination, Immanuel Kant orientated himself on traditional language usage. In his original and entertaining early work, Dreams of a Ghost Seer , he described the fictions of a "waking dreamer" as chimeras and crickets .
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac also pointed out the ubiquity of daydreams and emphasized that everyone has probably imagined themselves as the hero of a novel and built castles in the air (“Châteaux en Espagne”).
In Ernst Bloch's principle of hope , the daydream is given a philosophical interpretation. Starting from the lack of life, daydreams are "all dreams of a better life" full of utopian hope and possibilities. As the psychological birthplace of the new, they are "pre-semblance of possible realities", "the content of the daytime fantasy is open, imaginative, anticipating, and its latent element lies ahead."
Medicine, Poetry and Art
At the beginning of the 19th century the word made its way into medical literature and became increasingly precise. Erasmus Darwin, for example, described the reverie as an attempt of the mind to relieve itself of painful sensations . With the phenomenon of relief, the way was already laid for the psychological analysis that was developing at the end of the century, because with regard to the relieving function of the daydream, Thomas Beddoes already emphasized its wishful character ("reverie of wishes").
Darwin differentiated delirium from daydreams, in which the development of ideas can still be controlled by the person at will. On the other hand, there were French voices who opposed the strict distinction between these psychological states. In the peculiar association of ideas, they saw a common characteristic between “dreaming” (rêverie) and dream (rêve) or saw only gradual differences between dream, daydream and madness . The pathological aspect was thereby underlined, the daydreams were viewed as preliminary stages to mental disruption and the deliberate controllability of dreams was called into question.
Poets like ETA Hoffmann repeatedly used daydreams as a motif and inspiration for their works. In the satirical views of the life of the cat Murr , with which Hoffmann parodied the Bildungsroman modeled on Wilhelm Meister , Kapellmeister Kreisler and his friend Meister Abraham talk about the mental abilities of animals and the nature of their dreams. Abraham explains to his friend that the cat Murr not only dreams very vividly, but "often gets into that gentle reverie, into dreamy brooding, into somnabulous delirium, in short, into that strange state between sleeping and waking, the poetic mind applies to the time of the actual reception of ingenious thoughts. In this state he has been moaning and groaning so badly for a short time that I have to believe that he is either in love or is working on a tragedy ”.
Another author in the tradition of Romanticism and Hoffmann's succession, who dealt with dreams and their sometimes uncanny aspects, was Edgar Allan Poe . In the introduction to his story Eleonora , he asked about the closeness and relationship between genius and madness and the deeper value of daydreams. “Some people called me crazy; but the question is (...) whether the madness is not about the airy, proudest mentality, (...) whether everything that is profound - could not perhaps only arise from the attacked thinking (...) you who dream during the day , have knowledge of some things which escape those who only dream at night. "
His poem Ein Traum also revolves around the topic: “But a waking dream of pulsating life and light / that broke the heart in sorrow. / Ah, what is not a dream by day / for the one whose eye is turned / with a shine on the plague / who donates the bright past? "
In his treatise Der Sinn des Wahnsinns August Krauss developed the basics of a poetics and rhetoric of madness and dream. He regretted that “the daydreams, the loose play of imagination”, were mostly ignored if “the basis of the poetic talent” was not revealed in their “richer configurations”. Childhood dreams would unconsciously continue to have an effect in adults' day and night dreams and “lend them color, tone and outline.” Sigmund Freud even saw daydreams as an essential source of artistic creation: “They are the raw material of poetic production, because from The poet makes his daydreams through certain transformations, disguises and renunciation of the situations that he uses in his novellas, novels and plays. ”In modern psychology, this connection is also extended to the visual arts. It is especially documented for the so-called Art brut .
psychology
General statement
Daydreams are images of the inner eye, lighter forms of expansion of consciousness. In doing so, the attention moves away from the external stimuli of the environment and the tasks that are imminent and turns to the inner world. Research shows how widespread daydreaming is when people are alone or relaxing. Most daydreams are portrayed as comfortable and not embarrassing, and occur shortly before sleep; only rarely is z. B. to be expected during meals.
Daydreams often revolve around practical issues that need to be dealt with in the future and interpersonal issues. Unrealistic speculations and dreams that deal with erotic fantasies, altruistic concerns and unlikely fortunes - such as the great inheritance, the lottery win, etc. - occur somewhat less often. Children in particular tend to move into an imaginary world to escape family problems, abusive parents, and loneliness . It is true that daydreams are less intense than dreams of the night; But people differ in the extent and the intensity with which they settle in their “castles in the air” and experience the other world. The individual differences, which cannot be captured by the usual psychological tests, presumably depend on persistent personality factors.
In the topological or vector psychology of Kurt Lewin daydreams are as locomotives on the Irrealitätsebene referred.
Sigmund Freud
In his famous Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud also dealt with daydreams or daytime fantasies .
He and Josef Breuer had seen in the daydreams and waking dreams - the "private theater" of the patient Anna O. - the preliminary stage of the hypnoid states. Later Freud only used the term “day dream”, which he occasionally replaced with the synonym “day fantasy”. In the chapter on dream work he worked out the relationship between manifest and latent dream content . The distinction between these two areas is fundamental for the understanding of his dream teaching. By the manifest dream he understands that which is remembered as dreamed, which often appears as an inexplicable, "senseless" psychological product, is understood as a rebus puzzle and can be interpreted or explained by means of certain reading rules. This actual meaning thus gained is the latent content . From the latent dream content, "we developed the solution to the dream," as Freud wrote.
It should be clarified which relationships the dream content has to the dream thoughts and how the dream could develop from these. The latent dream thoughts are unconscious impulses and wishes that could not be openly satisfied and therefore appear in a veiled form as a dream. While the manifest content , which is already subject to the censorship of incomplete memory after waking up, represents the socially accepted form, the true, uncensored content lurks in the latent dream thought . During sleep , the otherwise attentive censor also comes to rest and lets the repressed materials lead their own lives.
According to Freud, latent dream thoughts are also responsible for daydreams. In his opinion, the psychiatrists have not yet fully recognized its importance, while it has not escaped the "unwavering insight of the poets (...)." This is how the writer Alphonse Daudet described the daydreams of a minor character in his Le Nabab . The importance of psychoanalysis for literature and art can be seen here.
The study of the neuroses leads to the recognition of precursors of hysterical symptoms in many daydreams . The material of the fantasies can also come from repressed, unconscious zones. If one deals with them more intensively, it is not difficult to understand the naming as "dreams". There are many similarities between night and day dreams, and a more intensive study of them would have made it easier to understand night dreams.
Like dreams, for Freud, fantasies are also wish-fulfillments and are also based on the impressions of infantile experiences. If you trace their structure, you will realize “how the desired motif, which is active in their production, has thrown the material from which they are built, rearranged and combined to form a new whole. They are related to the childhood memories to which they go back, roughly in the same relationship as some of Rome's baroque palaces to the ancient ruins, whose blocks and columns have provided the material for the construction in modern forms. "
Other forms of therapy
Daydreams also play a role in the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung and other, sometimes controversial forms of therapy.
While imaginations and daydreams were viewed cautiously by neo- behavioristic behavioral research, they play a larger role in imagination therapies. Daydreams were seen as escapist and harmful on the one hand, as they served as an escape from the challenges of everyday life and from interpersonal relationships. Because of these concerns, the disadvantages of phantasy and imagination have long been considered. On the other hand, "healthy escapism" makes sense in many situations in order to cope with reality. For example, you can help yourself with fantasies on long train journeys, in the waiting room or in certain unchangeable social environments in order to escape boredom, to pass the time and even to avoid self-destructive reactions.
Active imagination
Carl Gustav Jung had enriched the dream work with his concept of archetypes , which is based on the existence of certain archetypes in the deep layers of the soul, which the client can discover dreaming and processing the dreams. In the active imagination method he developed, dreams are re- dreamed or only processed and interpreted as daydreams in therapy.
Jung's concept of the imago , which is used in depth psychology, describes an unconscious, not necessarily reality-congruent idea that one makes of a particular person. This notion can become part of a daydream that the therapist supports.
In a letter, CG Jung explained his method of active imagination to a person seeking advice: “In active imagination, it is important that you begin with some inner image. Look at that and watch closely as it unfolds or begins to change. Avoid any attempt to bring it into a certain form (...) Every mental image (...) will transform itself sooner or later, and that due to spontaneous associations (...) In this way you can not only analyze your unconscious, but also give it the unconscious a chance to analyze you. And so you gradually create the unity of consciousness and unconscious, without which there is no individuation at all . "
Image imagination
When the imagination therapy counting image imagination of the therapist works with dreamed or predetermined images with which internal images are caused when the client. Within this therapy group, JE Shorr's psychoimagination therapy is best known. It is supposed to be a phenomenological and dialectical process in which the emphasis of the interpretation is on the subjective meaning, the imagination and the presented image. The therapist shows templates or requests imaginary dream concepts, questions them for their meaning or uses them for imaginative decoration.
Dream and day dream therapies
The dream and day dream therapies are similar because during the waking dream therapy, the night dreams align with the waking dreams. The therapy pursues three goals: waking dreams should be practiced, transferred to the life plan and brought about a permanent change in thinking, feeling and behavior called reversal . The main focus of the procedure is on the first goal: In the mind, the client travels over bridges with a return trip and deals with further focused content.
Another belonging to this group is the method of Hans Carl Leuner developed, psychoanalytically informed Katathym-imaginative psychotherapy in which the client also to pictorial ideas - is stimulated - imaginations. With the motifs and peculiarities brought to light of consciousness, unconscious conflicts should be made clear to him.
Neurophysiology
In an experiment with 19 test persons, neuroscientists found that the brains tend to daydream, especially when the test persons had to work little. When there were no demanding tasks to solve, her mind began to wander. During these daydreams, certain regions of the brain were activated, which differed significantly from those used for concentrated work. The more active the neural network, the more intense the daydreams. When the subjects were inactive, most of the dreams were induced. In this state the “standard network” was most active, a network of areas distributed over the entire brain. Its activity decreased accordingly when the subjects were asked to solve tasks again.
The importance of the standard network for the creation of daydreams had also been confirmed in previous studies. If a part of the network is damaged - for example by an accident - those affected lack spontaneous ideas and thoughts and they report mental emptiness and other discomforts.
Various speculations are made about the biological function of daydreams. They could drive people and help them to endure boring activities, give them a feeling for the connections between their past, present and future. However, it cannot be ruled out that daydreams have no practical value and only arise because the brain is capable of doing so.
literature
- Gerald Epstein: Waking Dream Therapy: The Dream Process as Imagination. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-608-95264-0 .
- Hanscarl Leuner: Textbook of the Katathymes picture life. Bern 1985, ISBN 3-456-81582-4 .
- Steve Ayan: The benefits of daydreaming . Brain & Mind, issue 4/2016 ( Spektrum.de ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Historical Dictionary of Philosophy: Wachtraum; Daydream. Volume 12, p. 13.
- ↑ Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de. In: Philosophers' Lexicon . Metzler, Weimar 1995, p. 602.
- ↑ Quotation from Philosophenlexikon : Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de. Metzler, Weimar 1995, p. 602.
- ↑ Heiko Hartmann: Dream, in: Beat Dietschy, Doris Zeilinger, Rainer E. Zimmermann (eds.): Bloch dictionary - key concepts of Ernst Bloch's philosophy. De Gruyter, Berlin / Bosten 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-048580-6 , pp. 578-582.
- ↑ Quotation from: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy: Wachtraum; Daydream. In volume 12, p. 15.
- ↑ ETA Hoffmann: Life views of the cat Murr. In: Works in four volumes. Volume IV: The Bergland Book. Salzburg 1985, p. 25.
- ^ Edgar Allan Poe: Eleonora. In: Collected works in five volumes, Volume II: The fall of the Ascher house - stories. From the American by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger. Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 352.
- ↑ Edgar Allan Poe: A Dream. In: Collected works in five volumes, Volume V: The Raven - Essays and Poems. From the American by Arno Schmidt, Hans Wollschläger, Friedrich Polakovics and Ursula Wernicke. Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1999, p. 37.
- ↑ Quotation from: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy: Wachtraum; Daydream. Volume 12, p. 14.
- ^ Sigmund Freud : Lectures for an introduction to psychoanalysis, Frankfurt a. M. 1977, p. 79.
- ↑ See Heiko Ernst : Inner Worlds. Why daydreams make us more creative, courageous and relaxed, Stuttgart: Klett-Gotta 2011, pp. 168–187.
- ↑ See for example Stefan Hess : The visualization of the unspeakable. Approaches to Rut Bischler's world of images, in: ders. (Ed.): Rut Bischler. “Every picture I have painted is true”. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2018, ISBN 978-3-85881-596-5 , pp. 26–49.
- ↑ Zimbardo, Psychology, Chapter 5, Consciousness, Sleep and Dream, Why We Dream, p. 208, Springer, Heidelberg 1992.
- ^ A b Zimbardo: Psychology. Chapter 5: Consciousness, Sleep and Dream, Why Do We Dream. Springer, Heidelberg 1992, p. 212.
- ↑ Dorsch: Daydreams. In: Psychological Dictionary. Huber, Bern 2009, p. 987.
- ↑ Thomas Köhler: Freud's psychoanalysis. An introduction. The dream teaching. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1995, p. 29.
- ↑ Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams. Chapter VI .: The dream work. Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, p. 284.
- ↑ a b c Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams. Chapter VI .: The dream work. I. The secondary processing. Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, p. 485.
- ↑ a b c Hellmuth Benesch : Encyclopedic Dictionary, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Chapter 88: Suggestion-Imagination Therapy, Imagination Therapy. Psychologie-Verlags-Union, Weinheim 1995, p. 799.
- ↑ Roland Asanger, Gerd Wenninger: Concise Dictionary of Psychology - Dream. Belz, Weinheim 1999, p. 805.
- ↑ Hellmuth Benesch: Encyclopedic Dictionary, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy. Chapter 88: Suggestion Imagination Therapies, Imagination Therapies. Psychologie-Verlags-Union, Weinheim 1995, p. 800.
- ↑ Ilka Lehnen-Beyel: Standard mode : daydreams . In: Image of Science . January 19, 2007. Retrieved September 12, 2013.