Daydreaming

Daydreaming is a stream of consciousness that detaches from current external tasks when a person's attention turns toward a more personal and internal direction, and is also known by names such as mind-wandering, fantasizing, and spontaneous thought. Many types of daydreams exist, though nearly all forms share the common characteristic of meeting the criteria for mild dissociation, and their effects are not uniform, since some are disruptive or harmful while others may be beneficial to some degree. The clinical psychologist Jerome L. Singer's research on the subject laid the foundation for nearly all later scholarship, though the terminology used by modern researchers has created challenges in identifying daydreaming's common features and in building a shared body of work.