fantasy

The fantasy is the creative power of thinking consciousness and serves as a creative element for empathy, the arts and any kind of problem solving. Sigmund Freud saw in the imagination at the time an outlet for instinctual satisfaction. Today, for psychology, fantasy is above all an alternative processing of reality.

What is the fantasy?

In psychology, the human spirit is called thinking consciousness and is the sum of all internal processes. In addition to thoughts and feelings, this also includes evaluated perceptions or memories.

The thinking consciousness is assigned its own creative power. So it can produce after-effects of a perception even though no perception has just taken place. This ability of consciousness is called fantasy in psychology.

According to Wilhelm Wundt, fantasy is thinking in terms of individual sensual ideas or images. The imagination is thus a creative ability that is associated with both memory and imagination. But it also relates to linguistic or logical ideas that require a certain imagination. Through imagination, an inner world emerges from inner images, the result of which is called phantasm.

In the neurosciences, imagination, creativity and inventiveness have so far been regarded as rather unexplored areas. However, recent research has shown that the imagination uses the memory of the brain as part of creativity. The prefrontal cortex remains quiet during this time so that the information from the memory system can be recombined.

Function & task

As a productive power of consciousness, fantasy is a special form of processing reality. She designs alternatives to reality and can meet different needs in the process. Fantastic alternatives can, for example, enlarge the personal experience space. Fantasy, on the other hand, lets people anticipate future consequences. Ultimately, the creative power can act as a substitute satisfaction. A damaged self-confidence can be compensated in the fantasy with daydreams or utopias, for example. In this way, the imagination stabilizes well-being and narcissistic balance. Shameful experiences are averted at the same time.

Sigmund Freud suspected instinctual impulses behind fantasies. He is convinced that inactivated and suppressed urges are acted out in a compensatory way in the imagination. The creative power of consciousness thus serves as an instrument for the satisfaction of pleasure desires and, according to psychodynamic ideas, is, so to speak, only an outlet for instinctual satisfaction.

This assumption had apparently been confirmed in early experiments in psychology. Students acted out their aggression after being insulted, for example in their imaginations. However, recent research in learning psychology shows the opposite results.

There is now a consensus on the great benefits of fantasy for interpersonal empathy. Understanding another person is largely dependent on imagination. At the same time, science agrees on the creative element of the imagination. Fantasies are even considered an essential prerequisite for art and are understood as a source of creativity.

Imagination also plays a role in purposeful action. When solving problems, for example, people need an idea of ​​how to solve the problem. The goal of action is visualized as a purpose or desire so that purposeful action is possible. In the sciences, fantasy also enables knowledge. The ability is relevant, for example, for the synthesis of findings and empirical observations, which only provide a certain meaningfulness through interpretation work.

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Illnesses & ailments

The fantasy room differs from person to person. The ability to fantasize extensively is therefore not equally strong in every person and is probably related to the intellect as well as to self-control and above all the possibility of diverse experiences.

For psychology, the fantasy plays a role especially when it assumes abnormal proportions. This is the case, for example, with fantasies of violence or even fantasies of killing. Regular killing fantasies are now associated, for example, with the rampage in schools. Aggression and violence are viewed as a cognitive script that is sustained in particular by media influences and negative interpersonal experiences.

In particular, early socialization experiences are relevant for violent fantasies. For example, children with behavioral problems display a more violent fantasy game than their peers. Abnormal fantasies mainly affect children with poor self-control. Social interactions seem to trigger the fantasies. This applies in particular to interactions that the person concerned experiences as threatening or humiliating. The violent fantasies are a kind of reaction to a perceived loss of control in the social environment. By fantasizing about future acts of violence, those affected often feel that they are in control again and thus reduce the feeling of stress.

Some authors speak of a strategy to deal with aggressive impulses that serve to reduce aggression. On the other hand, studies show that the fantasies tend to increase aggressive behavior in the future. There is always a particular danger when the person concerned abuses his violent fantasies as a regular escape from reality and lets himself be carried away into a progressive loss of reality.

Not only violent fantasies, but extensive fantasies of all kinds can correspond to an escape from reality and initiate a progressive loss of reality. Traumatic experiences can promote this loss of reality. Young rape victims, for example, often build a fantasy world into which they can withdraw so that they do not have to experience the traumatic situation with full awareness.

It is believed that neurological disorders or injuries can also trigger abnormal, abnormally strong, or abnormally diminished fantasies. However, due to the lack of research in this area, this relationship has so far been relatively unclear.