ABSTRACT
According to Freud, dreams and day-dreams were structured by the same internal psychic processes, and the dream-work was essentially the same, based on displacement, symbolization, condensation, and secondary revision. There is an intriguing paradox that dreams and day-dreams are the same and yet are essentially different—a paradox that suits the dreaming world and the mind of the dreamer. This chapter presents an exploration by considering dreams and their relationship to creativity, and looks at the context of dreams—namely, sleep—and considers what states of mind there might be, other than being asleep or being awake. It discusses the ways in which conscious fantasy and day-dreams may be the same and may be different. In trying to make an aesthetic evaluation of the product of dreaming, the dream, and the product of fantasizing, the daydream, the issues are not clear-cut. The very reflexivity in Freud’s thinking on dreams and day-dreams makes it very difficult to theorize a qualitative difference between the two.
