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In this paper, I will look at the importance of analyzing daydreams in a patient I will call Alan. Analyzing fantasies is part of every analysis; however, in my work with this patient, the slow unveiling of his inner life as revealed through his daydreams took on unusual importance. Alan lived largely in a fantasy world and was paralyzed in real life. As these daydreams have been analyzed, his psychic structure has shifted.
According to Raphling (1996), a daydream is distinguished from fantasy by “the daydreamer's conscious intent to daydream, and his or her awareness of the process of forming and elaborating the imagery and narrative.… This distinction is not absolute, however, since what may begin as spontaneous fantasy may be deliberately elaborated upon and transformed into a daydream” (p. 542). In other words, a person without conscious attention can become aware of a fantasy and then with conscious attention elaborate it into a daydream. Furthermore, Raphling notes, daydreams may generate dreams, unconscious fantasy, and other conscious fantasies.
In “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming,” Freud (1908) writes that once a child stops playing, he substitutes daydreaming. Freud states that “the motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality” (p. 146). Arlow (1969) states, “No sharp line of