Daydream Believers
by Steven Jay Lynn and Judith W. Rhue
Carla's parents were downstairs discussing her college prospects.
Carla was upstairs playing with her dolls, Barb, Kathy and Becky.
As the scenario unfolded, Barb argued that Carla, a straight-A
student, would be stupid to spurn the generous scholarship offered by
the school of her choice. Kathy argued that Carla should capitalize
on her musical talents and join a rock band before committing herself
to years of grueling education. Becky finally struck a hard-won
compromise: Carla would go to college and join a campus rock band.
Carla thanked her dolls, gently placed them in a box, locked it and
went downstairs to tell her parents that after careful deliberation
she had decided to accept the scholarship.
Carla is one of the so-called "fantasy addicts" we studied as part of
a recent investigation of the fantasy-prone personality. This line
of research goes back at least 20 years to Josephine Hilard's
pioneering study at Stanford University, which found that people who
are highly hypnotizable are more likely than other to have a rich
fantasy life. More recently, psychologists Sheryl Wilson and
Theodore X. Barber of Cushing Hospital in Framingham, Massachusetts,
confirmed the links between hypnotizability and fantasy proneness and
concluded that these people have a unique set of personality traits
and life experiences.
Carla fits the profile outlined by Wilson and Barber. She has a long
history of intense imaginative involvement in reading, play and
mystical or religious experiences dating back to early childhood.
She claims that she experiences physical reactions such as nausea and
anxiety to violence on television and in movies, that her fantasies
are so vivid that she can, for example, experience an orgasm wihout
touching herself, that she enjoys spending as much as half her free
time engaged in fantasy and that she occasionally has psychic and
out-of-body experiences. Additionally, Carla is a hypnotic virtuoso,
one of those rare individuals who can respond to almost any hypnotic
suggestion, even those that involve profound alterations in subjective
experience. Despite this rather out-of-the-ordinary background, Carla
impressed us as a well-adjusted college student. She had reconciled
her career objectives and was excelling in academics as well as
performing in a popular campus band.
Unlike earlier research, which started with people who differed in
hypnotic responsiveness, we first identified people who differed in
fantasy proneness. Using a brief questionnaire, we identified 23
fantasizers from a pool of more than 1,400 college students.
Twenty-one medium and 18 low-fantasy-prone students were identified
as comparison groups. We rated these people on their susceptibility
to hypnosis, administered a number of personality tests and
interviewed them about their childhood experiences.
As expected, fantasizers were highly responsive to hypnotic procedures.
Nearly 80 percent of them scored in the "high susceptible range,"
accepting at least 9 of 12 hypnotic suggestions. The fantasizers did
not differ from the others in terms of grade point average, but they
did outscore their less imaginative counterparts on measures of
fantasy, imagination and creativity. On these and virtually all of
the other measures we used, the medium and low fantasizers were
indistinguishable, suggesting that fantasy-prone people do represent
a unique group.
One of the primary goals of our research was to trace the development
of fantasy proneness. And what we found supports the commonly held
belief that highly imaginative children are lonely and cultivate a
rich fantasy life to compensate for a lack of stimulation. In other
words, some childrean escape into a fantasy life as a way of coping
with a less than perfect world. The fantasizers in our study
reported feeling lonelier than the low-fantasy people did, and said
they preferred imaginary games to playing with friends.
Our findings regarding physical punishment also highlight the coping
functions of fantasy. Six of the fantasizers but none of the other
students reported being severly abused as children, and reported
using their imagination to block the physical and emotional pain of
punishment. And it appears to have worked. Despite their reports
of abuse, the fantasizers did not describe their home environments
as any more negative than those of the other students.
Rorschach tests also suggested that an active imagination can serve
as a safety valve. Fantasizers did not show any problem distinguishing
fantasy from reality, but they did project more hostility onto the
inkblots than the comparison groups did--not surprising, given their
punitive home environments.
Not all of our fantasy-prone students, however, were victims of a
harsh environment. More than a third of them had parents who did not
use physical punishment. These parents encouraged imagination,
sometimes to the point of sharing fantasies and shaping a mutual
fantasy world. So it appears that imaginative tendencies can thrive
in contrasting climates.
One final area of investigation involves the possibility that some
fantasizers may be psychologically impaired. This does not appear
to be the case. We are currently studying fantasy proneness in
children, and on the basis of our ongoing research our impression
is that neither an active imagination nor an addition to fantasy is
related to psychological problems.
Steven Jay Lynn is a psychologist at Ohio University. Judith
W. Rhue is a psychologist at the University of Toledo.