Kristen French in Nautilus:
Throw on the Power Lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We’re going through!” shouts the commander to his crew, as he navigates through the worst storm in his 20 years of flying. A harrowing scene unfolds but then Walter Mitty is brought back to reality by the sound of his wife’s voice, the daydream fading into the byways of his mind. Not long after that, he’s struck with a new fantasy, and then another. Over the course of an afternoon, while running mundane errands, Mitty proceeds to have a series of increasingly dazzling daydreams in which he performs acts of great heroism, vivid narratives that bubble like a geyser into his mind.
This is the plot of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” a short story written by James Thurber in 1939 that has been retold over and over in popular film and theater adaptations. The story has captured so many imaginations because getting lost in daydreams is a very human thing to do. We all occasionally script narratives in our minds in which our deepest desires come true, as a refuge from some of the more disappointing facts of life.
For some, though, the delight of daydreaming can turn into a curse: The fantasies become such a successful form of escape that they take over the mind, becoming compulsive and preventing the dreamer from paying attention to important facets of reality—work, school, other people.
Psychologists have been fascinated with daydreams since at least the time of Freud, who believed they bore the hallmarks of unconscious yearnings and conflicts. But Israeli research and clinical psychologist Eli Somer was the first to describe excessive daydreaming as a distinct psychiatric problem.
More here.
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