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A daydream is a visionary fancy experienced while asleep, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes, or ambitions.^[1] There are so many different types of daydreaming that there is still no consensus definition amongst psychologists.^[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. Look up daydream in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ... See fantasy for an account of the literary genre involving the development of common or popular fantasies. ... Psychological science redirects here. ... For other uses, see Dream (disambiguation). ...

Daydreaming may take the form of... a train of thought, leading the daydreamer away from being aware of his immediate surroundings, and concentrating more and more on these new directions of thought. 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. Released on November 11, 2003, Train of Thought is an album by the progressive metal band Dream Theater. ... The phrase thousand-yard stare refers to an unfocused gaze of the eyes, typically by soldiers, typical of acute battle shock and/or post-traumatic stress disorder; also seen in reactions to traumatic events. ...

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. Similarly, research scientists, mathematicians, and physicists have developed new ideas by daydreaming about their subject areas. For other uses of Creativity, see Creativity (disambiguation). ...

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.

See also

• Absent-mindedness
• Dreams
• Fantasy (psychology)
• Escapism
• Imaginary world
• Imagination
• Mind-wandering
• Pipe dream
• Stream of consciousness (psychology)

Absent-mindedness can refer to three very different things: 1) a low level of attention (blanking or “zoning out”); 2) intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes us oblivious to events around us (See absent-minded professor); or 3) unwarranted distraction of attention from the object... For other uses, see Dream (disambiguation). ... 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 disbelief of fictional universes and the socially constructed consensus reality of the Social Imaginary, to alternate realities resulting from disinformation, misinformation or imaginative speculation, and the subjective universe... Imagination is accepted as the innate ability and process to invent partial or complete personal realms within the mind from elements derived from sense perceptions of the shared world. ... See also daydreaming and attention. ... Pipe Mania Pipe Dream is also the name of Binghamton Universitys student newspaper. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ...

References

• 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. 

External links

• Positive effects of daydreaming
• Daydreaming improves thinking (Cosmos Magazine)