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This book continues and develops the study of the daydream that was begun in the author's previous work on Psycho-Analysis in the Classroom
(reviewed in this JOURNAL, Vol. III, p. 237). Its principal contention is that the observation of daydreams in children affords a useful clue to the existence of certain important stages of development. These stages are characterized as follows: in the first (up to the age of three) Nutrition is the chief interest; in the second (from about three to ten) interest in the Self is the most prominent; in the third (from about ten to puberty) Gregariousness becomes important; while in the fourth (at puberty) Sex plays the leading rôle. To the last three of these developmental stages there correspond certain well-marked types of daydream. During the second stage a characteristic form of daydream is concerned with an 'imaginary companion' who possesses a variety of useful functions, e.g. helping to gratify and develop the incipient gregarious tendencies, fulfilling vicariously the child's own prohibited, repressed or impeded desires, affording a suitable object for the child's wish to exercise authority, and providing an ever-willing admirer of the child's accomplishments. Corresponding to the third stage—in which more purely egoistic activities give place to group games and group exploits—there is a 'team' phantasy, in which remarkable experiences are undergone by a group of adventurers, the individual daydreamer himself being merely primus inter pares. Corresponding to the fourth or adolescent stage, there is formed the 'romantic' daydream, in which the individual performs exploits that centre round or culminate in some sort of relation to a person of the opposite sex. These exploits usually conform to certain types, e.g. the 'saving' or triangular phantasies with which psycho-analysis has made us familiar. In the later portions of the book there are some interesting chapters on the relation of the daydream to literature,