Fantasie als afweermechanisme

Fantasy as a defense mechanism

Coping, Defense mechanisms, Psychology

When life is unpleasant or upsetting, people often use fantasy as a way to escape reality. Fantasy is one of the defense mechanisms or coping mechanisms the brain can use to escape reality.

What is a defense mechanism?

When you have difficult emotions or impulses you often look for ways to deal with these unwanted feelings. Unlike conscious strategies we use to deal with daily stress, these defense mechanisms work on a completely unconscious level. They are a way your mind unconsciously tries to reduce your anxiety and restore emotional balance.

Sigmund Freud was the first to talk about psychological defense mechanisms against anxiety and stress, and Anna Freud was the first to define defense mechanisms. After this original definition, however, researchers continued to look for other possible defense mechanisms. One of them is fantasy.

How does fantasy work as a defense mechanism?

Fantasy helps you explore alternatives to situations you are unhappy with. For example, you might fantasize about winning the lottery, a reunion in which everyone ended up worse off than you, that your favorite pop star proposes to you, or that you win an argument with your mother or your annoying boss. This kind of fantasizing is normal and to some extent healthy.

Fantasy is used as a defense mechanism in hundreds of different ways, from daydreaming to reading a novel. You can lose yourself in literature, music, television, movies, the Internet, social media, drama and theater, gaming, watching porn or cosplay. Such activities allow us to escape our real problems or worries.

When fantasizing takes over your life, however, it can cause you to lose touch with reality and not engage in actions that can really improve your life. You avoid problems by imagining that they are not there, or by distancing yourself from reality. If you regularly use fantasizing as a defense mechanism, it can even become addictive and obsessive and difficult to let go of.

Acts associated with other defense mechanisms, such as some addictions or dissociation and depersonalization, also have elements of fantasy.

Fantasizing as a personality trait or disorder

Imaginative personality

A fantasy prone personality or Fantasy prone personality (FPP) is a proposed personality trait in which a person experiences a lifetime of extensive and deep involvement in a fantasy world. A person who suffers from this has difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality and may have hallucinations and psychosomatic symptoms.

Symptoms are:

  • Having imaginary friends in childhood
  • often fantasize as a child
  • having a fantasy identity
  • experiencing imagined sensations as real
  • vivid sensory perceptions

And, somewhat more esoteric:

  • easy to hypnotize
  • sexual gratification without physical stimulation

American psychologists Sheryl C. Wilson and Theodore X. Barber first identified FPP around 1981 and said it applied to about 4% of the population.

Maladaptive daydreaming (the daydream syndrome)

Maladaptive daydreaming or daydreaming syndrome is a proposed psychiatric disorder identified by Professor Eliezer Somer of the University of Haifa in Israel. This disorder causes intense daydreaming that distracts a person from his or her real life. People suffering from this pathological daydreaming or excessive fantasizing take on roles and characters in self-conceived scenarios.

Symptoms are:

  • extremely vivid daydreams with their own characters, settings, plots and other detailed, story-like features.
  • Daydreams caused by real life events
  • difficulty performing everyday tasks
  • difficulty sleeping at night
  • an overwhelming desire to continue daydreaming
  • performing repetitive movements while daydreaming
  • Making facial expressions while daydreaming
  • whispering and talking while daydreaming
  • Daydreaming for long periods of time (many minutes to hours)

People suffering from excessive daydreaming are aware that the scenarios and characters of their fantasies are not real and have the ability to determine what is real, elements that distinguish them from those suffering from schizophrenia.

Fantasizing as part of a disorder

Fantasy in trauma

Fantasy can be a way to leave a traumatic situation mentally or emotionally (spacing out) when you enter a fantasy world or scenario. This helps to numb you and relieve current pain and anger.

There is also a fantasy model (FM) of dissociation, which posits that dissociation is not caused by trauma, but that individuals prone to dissociation often use fantasy as a defense mechanism. However, this model is controversial.

Autistic fantasizing

Fantasy as a defense mechanism is also sometimes called autistic fantasizing when fantasizing is used to replace social relationships. This function of fantasizing can occur not only in autism spectrum disorder but also, for example, in social anxiety disorder or alexithymia.

For example, someone who is repeatedly bullied at school may retreat into a fantasy world based on her favorite movie. She spends all her time in this fantasy world and loses friendships as a result. Her schoolwork may also begin to suffer.

Schizoid fantasy

Fantasy as a defense mechanism is also sometimes called schizoid fantasy when fantasizing is used to avoid uncomfortable situations. This defense mechanism is common in children or may be present later in development in schizoid personality disorder.

People with schizoid personality disorder have vivid fantasies into which they often retreat. They also often have extensive fantasy relationships rather than real relationships. In their fantasies, they have total control over what happens, which makes fantasy relationships safer. Some people with schizoid personality disorder create such immersive and elaborate fantasy worlds that they become famous writers.

Fantasizing and psychosis

People with schizophrenia cannot distinguish reality from fantasy. Therefore, there is a view that daydreaming and fantasy are important factors in the onset and maintenance of hallucinatory psychosis.

However, the results of several studies cannot support the idea that psychotic patients have particularly frequent or vivid daydreaming activity. Rather, psychotic patients tend to inhibit aspects of normal fantasy.

Fantasy in other disorders

  • In a study of depressed patients, a negative fantasy style was associated with clinical depression.
  • Sleep disturbances were also associated with a negative fantasy style.
  • Extreme or maladaptive daydreaming occurs in ADHD and OCD

Other forms of fantasy as a coping mechanism

Fantasy binding or fantasy binding

A particular form of fantasy as a defense mechanism is fantasy bonding (fantasy bond) according to Robert Firestone. This describes the illusion of merging you as a child with your parent or caregiver, usually your mother, when your parents were not available or meeting your needs. Later in life, this fantasy bond provides an illusion of love that prevents real emotional contact with someone else.

All people, to varying degrees, tend to make imaginary connections with people. Many people have a fear of intimacy and at the same time fear being alone. A fantasy connection allows you to maintain some emotional distance while alleviating loneliness, but this connection reduces the likelihood of success in a relationship.

Resources

Read more about: Coping, Defense mechanisms, Psychology

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Zoe Williams

Zoe Williams

Editorial Team wizzi.site

Zoe Williams writes short, no-nonsense stress explainers you can use without tools. Each column spotlights one skill inside a familiar exchange. She ends with a three-line recap for quick recall. Checklists beat long theory in her format. It reads fast and works in real life.

Ana Rodrigues

Ana Rodrigues

Editorial Team wizzi.site

Ana Rodrigues explains defense patterns in plain language without dumbing them down. Short vignettes show how to notice a pattern in real conversations. She adds small exercises you can try safely. In her writing she stresses boundaries and when to seek professional help. You get insight and a next step.