A post by Adriana Alcaraz Sánchez

We tend to say that someone who is daydreaming is distracted, thinking about something else, absorbed in their own musings. We use the term to characterise the experience of being absorbed in our own (inner) world. But what is daydreaming exactly?

The experience of daydreaming has been extensively addressed in the psychological literature. Yet, more traditional research in this area has largely conflated daydreaming with “mind wandering” and both terms have been used to denote episodes of task-unrelated thought (Klinger, 2008; Singer, 1975). In the more traditional sense, daydreaming is understood similarly to our common-sense definition—as episodes of distraction. Given this conflation, some authors have attempted to change this trend by emphasising the distinctive features of daydreaming that make it different from mind wandering, such as its imagistic nature as well as its more agential character and purpose (Dorsch, 2015; Newby-Clark & Thavendran, 2018).

More relevant to the purposes of this piece, other authors have argued that daydreaming is not like any other kind of waking imagination (including any form of visualisation, planning, or supposition), but that it is more akin to nighttime dreaming. According to these authors, daydreams, like dreams, involve a sense of being in an imagined world—an “imaginative immersive experience” (Lawson & Thompson, 2024). Some have noted the hybrid nature of daydreaming as an experience that “lies between wakefulness and sleep. It has one foot in the actual world and another foot in the dream world” (Geniusas, 2023:49). Similarly, dreams have also been regarded as particularly intensified and immersive imaginative experiences (Windt, 2020).

One question arising from these views stressing the dream-like nature of daydreaming is: to what extent does daydreaming involve an experience of dreaming while awake? Here, I want to motivate a positive answer to this question by examining a relatively newfound phenomenon focus of recent interest in clinical psychology: the case of maladaptive daydreaming (MD; Somer, 2002).

MD, also referred to as “compulsive fantasising” (Bigelsen & Schupak, 2011) or “daydreaming disorder” (Somer et al., 2017), has gained increasing attention in clinical research as a sort of daydreaming that is highly compelling and difficult to stop. MDers report significant stress and daily dysfunction due to their extensive engagement in fantasies, often at the expense of fulfilling their daily responsibilities or maintaining relationships. MDers find their imaginative experiences so engulfing and pleasurable that they prefer them to real ones (Chefetz et al., 2023). Given the impact MD has on the lives of its experiencers, a growing number of researchers have advocated for its inclusion in the DSM-V as a new form of mental disorder (Somer, Soffer-Dudek, & Ross, 2017).

The suggestion that I want to put forward is that some instances of MD, at least the most paradigmatic ones, might involve a distinct state of consciousness, one akin to dreaming. In a sense, MDers could be said to be dreaming while awake.

One motivation for this proposal is to explain the distinctive phenomenology of MD, which, unlike more ordinary forms of daydreaming, bears a striking resemblance to dreaming. MD is described as involving a rich and detailed experience comparable to dreaming (Bigelsen et al., 2016). MDers experience episodes of “full absorption in one’s inner world” (Somer, 2018:4) accompanied by a strong sense of presence or immersion—as if being in a “virtual reality” (Somer et al., 2016: 572). Even when the content of the daydream is less rich or detailed, MDers frequently describe being emotionally moved by their fantasies to the extent of crying when one of the characters in the fantasy world dies (Soffer-Dudek & Somer, 2022). Moreover, the experience of MD often involves complex, intricate, and structured plots (Bigelsen & Schupak, 2011). Anecdotal accounts of MDers describe narratives spanning multiple generations of the imagined characters (Bigelsen et al., 2016).

Another motivation for considering MD as involving a state akin to dreaming is to explain both the uncontrollable and intrusive character of this experience. Most MDers say to volitionally initiate their daydreams, despite their internal resistance to doing so, as well as to choose their content (Bigelsen & Schupak, 2011). Thus, we might want to characterise it as an experience closer to fantasising than daydreaming—an act of imagination that is highly guided and intentional (Marcusson-Clavertz et al., 2019). However, reports of MD also allude to what we might consider intrusive imaginative episodes triggered by elements in one’s environment. Despite efforts to engage in other tasks, MDers report that daydreaming pops into their mind (Soffer-Dudek & Somer, 2022). Thus, it seems to me that is not just a matter of a weakness of the will or behavioural addiction (Pietkiewicz et al., 2018) behind all instances of MD. In some cases, the daydream world is creeping over, like the dream world does when we are falling asleep.

Perhaps, MDers are not just simply experiencing an extreme or intensified form of daydreaming or overindulging in their fantasies; rather, they are entering a dream-like state. We have some reasons to think this might be the case. Research on MD suggests that subjects experiencing MD undergo a similar state of perceptual decoupling to dreaming—a state where attention shifts from external sensory input to internally generated ones (Smallwood & Schooler, 2015). For instance, some studies have found that MDers have a higher predisposition to absorption than non-MDers (Bigelsen et al., 2016)—they are more likely to enter a state of engrossment or dissociation from everything else during those episodes. MDers are often so absorbed that they lose touch with sensory information, including interoceptive signals, such as hunger or the need to use the bathroom (Bigelsen et al., 2016; Somer et al., 2016)

A tentative hypothesis is that MD involves a hybrid state of consciousness, one with shared features of sleep and waking. In sleep research, hybrid states of consciousness—also referred to as “state dissociation” (Mahowald & Schenck, 2005)—have been proposed to explain the nature of sleep disorders, including sleep paralysis, sleepwalking, and narcolepsy. The idea is that during state dissociation, there are intrusions of one mode of consciousness (i.e., waking) into another one (sleep).

State dissociation is not limited to pathological sleep states. For instance, the well-known phenomenon of lucid dreaming has also been characterised as a state with mixed features of both REM sleep and waking (Voss et al., 2009). But more relevant to our case, states of dissociation can also occur during wakefulness.

Contrary to what might be assumed, sleep is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon but is localised and temporally dynamic (Siclari et al., 2013). Two physiological markers of sleep (slow-wave activity and sleep spindles), often occur out of phase in different brain regions (Nir et al., 2011). This body of research on sleep-like activity during wakefulness has led to the concept of “local sleep” (Huber et al., 2004). An increasing number of researchers have regarded local sleep as an explanandum for sleep-like phenomenology while awake, including attentional lapses and distraction in ADHD, but also to explain the similarities between daydreaming and dreaming (Andrillon et al., 2019). An empirical hypothesis in need of further research is that local sleep underlies and regulates the most dramatic forms of MD.

Conceptualising MD as involving a mode of consciousness that facilitates a dream-like experience might be attractive to illuminate the phenomenology of MD as well as the disruption and impact of this sort of experience on affected individuals. Additionally, it has the potential to open the door to new forms of treatment.

If it turns out that MD does indeed involve a state with mixed features of sleep and wakefulness, looking into treatment options for sleep-related disturbances might be a compelling option. For instance, Soffer-Dudek and Somer (2022) have argued that MD might be a form of dissociative disorder involving a disruption in the normal integration of self-experience, leading to a feeling of being disconnected from reality. Dissociative symptoms have been said to range on a continuum, from non-pathological forms, such as getting lost in one’s thoughts or ordinary daydreaming, to pathological cases, including derealisation and depersonalisation disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. Some preliminary research has also pointed to the possibility that MD might involve a state of “momentary dissociation” (Roy et al., 2024). In turn, some authors have provided compelling evidence that dissociative symptoms might be linked to intrusions of sleep in wakefulness (van der Kloet et al., 2012) and noted how these symptoms diminish when sleep disturbances are treated. Thus, future treatments for MD should explore how therapies aiming at improving sleep-related problems might also lead to fewer intrusions of MD.

While daydreaming might not be identical to dreaming, there is compelling evidence suggesting that the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness are less sharp than previously assumed. We have strong reasons to think that sleep-like phenomena, such as dreaming, can take place during wakefulness. Characterising daydreaming as involving a similar conscious state as dreaming is an attractive sugggestion, not only for explaining its distinctive character and setting it apart from associated experiences, like mind wandering but also for understanding the cases in which it goes awry, like MD. Such a framework may help illuminate the nature of daydreaming while offering a deeper insight into its clinical significance.

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