Daydreaming and Self-Awareness

Daydreaming and Self-Awareness Saulius Geniusas Daydreaming (hereafter: DD) is often thought of as an insignificant mode of experience, and it is seldom addressed either in phenomenology, In classical phenomenological literature DD was addressed as a marginal theme, either as an illustration or as a “transitional” phenomenon that enables us to understand other, presumably more important themes. Besides such scattered reflections on DD that we come across in Husserl’s, Merleau-Ponty’s and Sartre’s works, more comprehensive studies of DD have been undertaken by Theodor Conrad (1968), Gaston Bachelard (1969) and, more recently, by James Morley (1998), Evan Thompson (2015) and Dieter Lohmar (2018). or in philosophy at large. In general, as far as Western reflections on DD are concerned, Thomas Branch appears to be the first Western thinker to have written a treatise on DD. His Thoughts on Daydreaming was published in 1738. DD was addressed by a number of British empiricists (especially by Hobbes, Locke and Hume), who did not distinguish between DD and MW (see Sutton 2010). Following their lead, William James further addressed both phenomena, without distinguishing between them, in his magnum opus, The Principles of Psychology (see James 1983). Relatively recently philosophers started to address DD and MW as themes that by themselves merit philosophical attention. See in this regard especially Metzinger 2013 and 2018), Dorsch 2015, Irving 2016 and 2021, Irving and Thompson 2018. In this context, the recently published anthology, The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought: Mind-Wandering, Creativity and Dreaming (Fox and Christoff 2018) calls for a specially emphasis. It includes forty-one contributions by cognitive scientists, psychologists and philosophers. Psychological analyses dominate this research field, and they are primarily concerned with questions why people DD and about what. In psychoanalysis, one addresses DD in light of suppressed wishes and fears in the context of the unconscious and “fore-consciousness.” In sociology and cultural anthropology, investigations of DD are focused on the sociocultural frameworks that shape the content of DD and on the institutionalized ways of “doing nothing.” Thus, as Ehn and Löfgren remark (2010), DDs are “cultural products created out of raw materials and social contexts.” As they further illustrate this point: “Medieval churchgoers fantasized about the mural paintings above their heads, eighteenth-century readers were titillated by exciting novels, moviegoers in the 1920s had new worlds opened up to them by the dream factories of Hollywood, and later generations learned to surf the Internet” (ibid). Neuroscientific investigations are concerned with the neurological mechanisms that make DD possible. What can phenomenology contribute to the cross-disciplinary science of DD, which in recent years has experienced an efflorescence under the heading of spontaneous thought? (see especially Fox and Christoff, 2018) The central questions that guide phenomenological investigations of DD can be formulated as follows: What must consciousness be, if it is to be capable of DD? How does DD relate to other modes of experience, and especially mind-wandering (hereafter: MW), lucid and non-lucid dreaming, and phantasizing? What are the eidetic features and constitutive functions of DD in the overall life of consciousness? While these questions are fundamental to research on DD, answers to them are nowhere to be found, and this allows one to say that phenomenology, insofar as it is concerned with eidetic structures and constitutive functions of experience, can make an important contribution to this burgeoning field of research. Moreover, insofar as phenomenology is a methodologically-oriented cross-disciplinary science of consciousness, it cannot afford to ignore DD. Our understanding of the life of consciousness will be severely limited for as long as we ignore DD. DD is the prime example of the “oneirism of wakefulness” that Merleau-Ponty had addressed in his later works: “there are both passivity and activity in waking, and passivity and activity in sleep” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 144). My goal in this talk is to show why a phenomenological analysis of DD can significantly enrich our understanding of conscious life. What is Daydreaming? Consider the case history of Fräulein Anna O., as described by Breuer and Freud in their analysis of hysteria: She embellished her life … by indulging in systematic daydreaming, which she described as her “private theatre.” While everyone thought she was attending, she was living through fairy tales in her imagination; but she was always on the spot when she was spoken to, so that no one was aware of it [emphasis added—SG]. She pursued this activity almost continuously while she was engaged on her household duties, which she discharged unexceptionably... (Breuer and Freud 1981, 22) Don’t overlook that here Breuer and Freud describe DD in the context of daily chores. The existential and material landscapes within which our daily lives unfold are not to be ignored in the framework of a phenomenological analysis of DD. Consider in this regard Ehn and Löfgren’s phenomenologically-relevant reflections: “Some everyday tasks are more important than others. A middle-aged man said that he missed the moments of washing dishes by hand, now that the family had a dishwasher. For him the haptic and sensual experiences at the kitchen sink produced a meditative situation — ‘a great moment for fantasizing,’ as he put it. The warm water, the clouds of soap suds, the background soundscape of the radio, the familiar motions of the hands, and the kitchen window that pulled his attention outward — all these things set his thoughts free. Similarly meditative situations include vacuuming and ironing.” (Ehn and Löfgren 2010, 130). This suggests that some settings are better suited than others for DD and, whether we recognize this or not, we often create special private and public places that are especially conducive to DD. As Gaston Bachelard emphasized especially strongly, various spaces in the homes we grow in are especially appropriate for DD. While DD, we are focused on the imaginary events, yet, in Merleau-Ponty’s terms, “we are not fully dragged away by the fall.” DD is a matter of “gliding in and out of different worlds” (Pamuk 2006), yet it is not a matter of abandoning reality, but of keeping it at a distance. “The world remains — in the divergence” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 149). As suggested by the English term, “DD” (or the German term, “Tagtraum),” we face here a paradoxical phenomenon: it is simultaneously a mode of wakefulness and a mode of sleep; it belongs to the light of day and to the world of dreams. Being a mode of wakefulness, DD takes place in the presence of the world. What is wakefulness? We can understand it as a state of comprehensive world-openness: to be awake is to be open to the world. This openness is openness to life and experience, as well as to events and actions. This is what DD shares with other wakeful experiences, and this is also what distinguishes DD from non-lucid nightdreaming (hereafter: ND). Yet this presence also entails a curious absence. DD lies between wakefulness and sleep. It has one foot in the actual world and another foot in the dreamworld. In contrast to non-lucid ND, DD takes place in the presence of the actual world: it is not completely taken hold of, it “does not fully abandon itself to the abundance of the imaginary” (cf. Merleau-Ponty 2010, 144). In this regard, it would be highly promising to address DD in the framework of phenomenological discussions of atmosphere (see especially Schmitz 2009). Our lives unfold in different atmospheres, some of which are better suited for DD than others. More precisely, different atmospheres are better suited for different kinds of DD. Dusk and dawn have their own atmospheres, just as different private and public spaces. In this regard, Gaston Bachelard’s reflections on DD in different spaces in one’s own home are especially telling. It is also noteworthy that this atmospheric DD potential is well-recognized by various industries, such as the hotel industry. In a study of hotel design, the Swedish writer, Maria Strannegård (2009), explored how the industry thinks about staging everything from the lobby to the bathrooms. The question here is how to create appropriate spaces for DD. Various tricks are used, including the choice of music in the elevator, the special lighting in the lobby, the atmosphere in the bar, and various other design details. See also Ehn and Löfgren, 2010. Yet there are important features that both ND and DD share. First, both constitute their own worlds, within which all the dreamed scenes are played out. Here I depart from the view defended by such thinkers as Gaston Bachelard and Jose Luis Borges, who, following Carl Jung, maintain that DD, much like ND, provides consciousness with access to the elemental. I do not endorse this view in the present context because, Bachelard’s and Borges’ arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, I do not think we have enough phenomenological reasons to endorse it, while on the other hand, the phenomenological evidence suggests that DD-images are products of the spontaneity of consciousness. Yet I should also stress that the two views I am here considering are not incompatible with each other. If one subscribes to the view that DDs are spontaneous creations of consciousness, one can further maintain that it is spontaneous creativity that links us to the elemental. While leaving such a possibility open, in the present context I will not pursue it. Second, both rely on a narrative structure. While DD or ND, we spin a tale in which we ourselves are involved, sometimes as observers, other times as protagonists. Third, for the most part, we don’t spin this tale in words, but in images. While DD, or ND, the scenes for the most part unfold as chains of visualizing thoughts. As Julien Varendonck insightfully remarks in his trailblazing study, Psychology of Day-Dreams, “We are able to think in words; but lower in the animal scale, where speech is absent, what else but images can exist as elements of thought?” (Varendonck 1921, 77) The conceptual distinction between DD and MW has never been fixed and many authors use these terms interchangeably. In Théodule-Armand Ribot’s Psychology of Attention (originally published in 1890), we come across a distinction between two forms of distraction: dispersion and absorption. This conceptual distinction provides us with a solid basis to draw a distinction between MW and DD. Distracted people are the ones “whose intelligence is unable to fix itself with any degree of persistence, and who pass incessantly from one idea to another.” They are, Ribot notes, in “a perpetual state of mobility and dispersion” and their thoughts are characterized by “incessant transition from one idea to another.” Ribot continues: “But the term ‘distraction’ is also applied to cases entirely different from this…[to] people who, wholly absorbed by some idea, are also really ‘distracted’ in regard to what takes place around them…. Such people appear incapable of attention for the very reason that they are very attentive” (Ribot 1890, 78-79). Against such a background, we could say that MW is a mode of dispersion, while DD is a mode of absorption. We can distinguish between them along the following lines: DD forms as a specific world. It shapes a particular series of events, it creates a story with its own scenario. By contrast, MW is impatient, underdeveloped and chaotic. It is less like a video, and more like a photo; or, alternatively, if DD is like a movie, then MW is like a series of unrelated movie trailers that randomly follow each other. MW offers us an image or a set of moving images, yet it doesn’t develop them into a full-fledged scenario. Development is prevented, aborted, interrupted: consciousness abandons the phantasmatic images and moves onto other images. In this regard, each MW episode is somewhat like a hypnagogic state, which, as Sartre had argued compellingly, remains worldless, while DD is like ND, which, as Sartre further argued, is world-constitutive (see Sartre 2006). When we DD, we simultaneously inhabit two separate worlds: the actual world and the dreamworld. This is what distinguishes DD both from non-lucid ND (which is characterized by full absorption in the imaginary dreamworld) and MW (which is worldless). In this regard, DD is like lucid ND. Where lies the difference between them? It concerns the mode in which consciousness relates to the surrounding world. There are different ways in which consciousness can inhabit two separate worlds simultaneously. Recall Anna O: DD does not rob us of the possibility of acting in the world (we can DD while driving a car, brushing the teeth, washing the dishes, etc.). By contrast, lucid ND takes place when we are only passively related to the world (we are aware of the actual world, since we are aware that we are dreaming; but our bodies remain motionless and we are not involved in any activities). While lucid ND is a sleeping state, MW is a wakeful state. During lucid ND, consciousness is awake while dreaming; during MW, consciousness is dreaming while awake. We can qualify lucid ND as wakeful sleep and DD as sleeping wakefulness. These distinctions help us understand DD in some detail. DD is an intermediary phenomenon that lies between wakefulness and sleep. As such, it shares a number of features with other modes of experience, while at the time same, it is a matter of inhabiting two worlds simultaneously in a way that distinguishes DD from all other experiences. Yet we cannot end with these distinctions. It is still not clear how we are to distinguish DD and phantasy. Here I would like to draw some references to a quite remarkable and often overlooked study by Theodor Conrad. In Zur Wesenslehre des psychischen Lebens und Erlebens (1968), Conrad maintained that the common phenomenological distinction between presentations (Gegenwärtigungen) and presentifications (Vergegenwärtigungen), i.e., between original experiences and reproductions, does not suffice to clarify the richness of psychic life. This is because in the common phenomenological accounts, both presentations and presentifications are addressed from the same egoic standpoint, viz., that of presence. Yet not all experiences are lived from the standpoint of the here and now. Besides such experiences, there is a whole group of other experiences, which Conrad qualifies as displaced experiences. In contrast to other forms of phantasy, DD is a mode of wakeful phantasy-consciousness that engages in its own phantasies from a displaced standpoint. DD-consciousness is phantasy-consciousness that is absorbed in phantasies. Here is how E. Varendonck describes DD in his classical study: “we pass for a shorter or longer period into a state of absorption, during which we lose all control over our mental activity, memory taking over the leading part” (Varendonck 1921, 108). Against the background of such descriptive distinctions between DD and other related phenomena, we are now ready to analyze DD in greater detail. Its closer analysis will require that we focus on self-awareness that qualifies DD. Daydreaming and Self-Awareness Our next task is to understand how consciousness can inhabit two separate worlds simultaneously — the actual world and the dreamworld. Consider Husserl’s analysis of attention in Ideas I, where Husserl introduced a distinction between three modes of attention: attentional focus, co-attention, and inattention. For instance, in §92, Husserl writes: “We draw out certain parallel noematic elements and compare them, and the alteration we will suppose consists merely in this, that in one case of comparison this objective phase has the ‘preference,’ and in the other that; or that one and the same phase is at one time ‘primarily noted,’ at another noted only in a secondary way, or only ‘just noted’ along with something else, if it is not indeed ‘completely unnoticed,’ although still continuing to appear. There are indeed different modes which belong specifically to attention as such.” (Husserl 2012, 193) These distinctions are of great importance in the present context. While DD is attentionally focused on the dreamworld, it is also simultaneously either co-attentive or inattentive to the actual world. This co-attentiveness, or this inattentiveness (the difference between them will soon be clarified), are not just accidental, but essential features of DD. Precisely because of them, DD consciousness remains bound to the actual world. Let me note in passing that, because of these structures, we obtain the conceptual means to distinguish DD from non-lucid ND. In contrast to DD, non-lucid ND is fully absorbed in the dreamworld, which means: the consciousness of ND is neither co-attentive, nor inattentive to the actual world. In contemporary literature on spontaneous thought, it is common to draw a distinction between tuning-out and zoning-out as two fundamental modes of DD and MW. Zachary Irving and Evan Thompson suggest that tuning out qualifies “aware MW,” while zoning out refers to “unaware MW” (see Irving and Thompson 2018, 93). In this regard, Irving and Thompson follow the classical analysis of tuning out and zoning out that we come across in Smallwood et al.: Tuning Out: Sometimes when your mind wanders, you are aware that your mind has drifted, but for whatever reason you still continue to read. This is what we refer to as “tuning out”— i.e., when your mind wanders and you know it all along. Zoning Out: Other times when your mind wanders, you don’t realize that your thoughts have drifted away from the text until you catch yourself. This is what we refer to as “zoning out”— i.e., when your mind wanders, but you don’t realize this until you catch it. (Smallwood, McSpadden, & Schooler, 2007, 533) For the moment, let’s disregard the distinctions between MW and DD. Using Husserlian terminology, we can say that while tuning out is a matter of being co-attentive to the surrounding world, zoning out is qualified by one’s inattentiveness to one’s surroundings; and this characterizes both MW and DD. Yet here is something else that one should not overlook: the modes of awareness of which we here speak (viz., the awareness of one’s surroundings), are also at the same time modes of self-awareness. Thus, while engaged in DD, one is co-attentive to one’s surroundings, one is also, at the same time, co-attentive to the fact that one is DD. By contrast, when, while DD, one is inattentive to one’s surroundings, one is also inattentive to the fact that one is DD. In short: In the case of DD, self-awareness and world-awareness go hand-in-hand. They are inseparably tied to each other. Such a phenomenological reinterpretation of tuning out and zoning out is philosophically rewarding for it brings into question the common assumption that only tuning out, and not zoning out, is characterized by self-awareness and world-awareness. Recall that this is the view endorsed both by Irving and Thompson and by Smallwood et al. Yet one must stress that inattentiveness is a mode of attention. Instead of drawing a crude distinction between “aware DD” and “unaware DD,” it is phenomenologically more appropriate to rely on a more subtle distinction between explicit and implicit self-awareness that accompanies DD. While tuning out is characterized by explicit self-awareness, zoning out is qualified by implicit self-awareness. More precisely, one could draw a further distinction between pathological and non-pathological DD and with this distinction in mind, one could further state, following Varendonck’s classical psychoanalytic analysis, that “the neurotic is the victim of his unconsciousness, and he is unaware of it, while the normal day-dreamer never loses the notion of reality” (Varendonck 1921, 16). More precisely: while the non-pathological DD is either explicitly, or at least implicitly aware of reality (and thus self-aware), the pathological form of DD is characterized by the loss of self-awareness. Thus, as Varendonck puts it, “in principle autistic thinking can be conscious as well as unconscious” (Varendonck 2021, 19). Suppose I am in a departmental meeting and my colleague is giving a report on the departmental budget. If I start DD during the report, I still remain attentive to what is happening around me. Suppose my colleague asks me a question. If I am co-attentive to the surrounding world, then I can hear the question and answer it. By contrast, if I am inattentive to the surrounding world, then I still hear my colleague’s words, and I still respond, although only by asking my colleague to repeat the question. By contrast, if I fall asleep during the meeting and start ND, then I do not respond. In the case of ND, it would be inaccurate to claim that I am inattentive to what is taking place around me. To be inattentive to x, y, or z, I must still experience x, y, or z. Yet the events that take place in the surroundings for the most part lie beyond the experience of sleeping consciousness. In those rare instances when sleeping consciousness experiences the events taking place in the surroundings, it either wakes up, or reinterprets them and absorbs them into the dreamworld. This distinction between implicit and explicit self-awareness is important for it allows us not to conflate DD with non-lucid ND. Indeed, here lies the fundamental distinction between these different modes of experience: while non-lucid ND lacks either explicit, or implicit, self-awareness, DD is either explicitly or implicitly self-aware. In contrast to non-lucid ND, a characteristic feature of lucid ND is that it is characterized only by implicit self-awareness. At this point we can say that all DD is self-aware, although not in the same sense of the term. While in some cases, when we DD, we are explicitly aware that we are DD, in other cases, we are only implicitly aware that we are DD. That is, in some cases, while DD, we are co-attentive to the surrounding world and to ourselves, in other cases, we are inattentive to both. So far, I have been focused exclusively just on one sense in which one can speak of self-awareness in DD: when one DD, one can be aware that one DD. Besides being aware that one is DD, one can also be aware of oneself in the DD. This is another feature that distinguishes DD from wakeful perceptions, on the one hand, and non-lucid dreams, on the other hand. When we perceive things around us, we are at least implicitly aware that we perceive them, yet it would be absurd to speak of being aware of ourselves in our perceptions. By contrast, when it comes to non-lucid ND, we are aware of ourselves in the dream, although not aware that we are dreaming. In contrast to both, when we DD, we are aware of ourselves in both senses of the term: we are aware, at least implicitly, that we are DD, and aware of ourselves in the DD. This doesn’t yet allow us to grasp the unique structure of self-awareness that characterizes DD. This is because memory, anticipation and other modes of phantasy are also characterized by such a twofold structure of self-awareness. Recollective consciousness is aware that it is remembering and aware of itself in the recollection; anticipatory consciousness is aware that it is anticipating and aware of itself in the anticipation. So also with phantasy: one is aware that one is phantasizing and aware of oneself in the phantasy. Is there anything specific about that self-awareness that characterizes DD? DD is an experience of displacement. When one DD, one is displaced from the here and now to the there and then. Nonetheless, in contrast to non-lucid ND, DD-consciousness remains aware of the here and now, although not in the primary sense of the term: the awareness of the here and now is only a marginal background awareness. DD-consciousness first and foremost lives in the DD, while it still remains anchored in the actual world. Here we can draw a distinction between a broad and a narrow sense of DD. In the broad sense, all wakeful experiences of displacement, insofar as they open up a world, can be characterized as modes of DD, irrespective of whether one is displaced into the past, or the future, or a purely phantasmatic realm. In the narrow sense, one can further distinguish DD from absorbed memories and absorbed anticipations (which Conrad calls pre-experience [Vorerleben] and post-experience [Nacherleben]). In such a narrower sense, DD is an experience of displacement that transposes consciousness from the here and now to the purely phantasmatic field, which is not only cut off from the present, but also from the past and future. Yet as emphasized above, DD-consciousness cannot liberate itself from the here and now; throughout all wakeful displacement, consciousness remains marginally bound to the here and now, either in the form of explicit or implicit awareness. At this point we can say that the self-awareness that characterizes DD entails a number of distinguishing features: a) it is to be understood in a twofold sense, both as the awareness that one is DD, and the awareness of oneself in the DD. b) The awareness that one is DD is only marginal, it occurs in the background of consciousness and it can be either explicit (co-attentiveness) or implicit (inattentiveness). c) DD-consciousness is not just aware of itself in the DD. It is in fact absorbed in the DD, which means: DD-consciousness is aware of itself in the DD as the displaced zero-point of orientation and as a displaced agent of action from which all the displaced perceptions and displaced activities unfold. d) Depending on how broadly or narrowly one understands DD, the self-awareness of oneself in the DD is an experience of displacement either only in the phantasmatic field, or also in the absorbed past and the absorbed future. Daydreaming, Self-Awareness, and Ichspaltung As already mentioned, DD is a paradoxical in that it marks conscious distance from actuality while at the same time keeping consciousness bound to actuality. Yet this is not the only sense in which DD is paradoxical. DD belongs to the group of those experiences, which cannot be qualified either as purely active, or as purely passive. When I DD, thoughts themselves come and I abandon myself to them: in this regard, DD is passive. Yet nobody else puts these thoughts into our minds: consciousness itself passively entertains those thoughts that it generates. Thus, DD is also active. Recall the peculiar structure of experience, which in Husserlian phenomenology is usually addressed under the heading of the splitting of the ego (Ichspaltung). In classical Husserlian phenomenology, this structure was primarily reserved for phantasy consciousness, although it also fits recollective- and anticipatory-consciousness. According to Husserl, there is no phantasy experience without the splitting of the ego into the phantasizing and the phantasized ego. For instance, when I phantasize that I am driving in a tuk tuk from one temple to another in Angkor Wat, my experience is inseparable from the phantasizing ego, understood as the actual subject of experience. Yet my experience also entails a projected ego — the I that is in the tuk tuk in Angkor Wat. In the present context I wish to ask if this structure of experience can also be said to qualify DD. The answer to this question is quite complicated. Consider, first, how Theodor Conrad addresses this question (see Conrad 1968 59-62). He understands DD as a modality of displaced experience. He speaks of a real, or actual, DD (eigentliche Träumerei) and contends that, in contrast to wakeful phantasy, DD is not characterized by the splitting of the ego (Spaltung des Icherlebens). In the case of pure DD (reine Träumerei), only one side of the egoic bifurcation sees the light of day: one is absorbed in one’s phantasies. Still, Conrad further emphasizes that DD is not a complete absorption (völlige Ertrunkensein) and in this regard it differs from the absolute immersion (absolute Eingetauchtsein) in the dream (see Conrad 1968, 59). Although in many regards Conrad’s analysis is highly insightful, in this regard I find it hard either to understand or to justify his view. It strikes me as incoherent. If DD is not characterized by the splitting of the ego, then DD must be an instance of a complete absorption and complete displacement. Between the splitting of the ego and complete absorption one must choose; one cannot have it both ways. If there is no splitting of the ego in DD, then the ego is fully absorbed in its own DD; in such a case, there is no longer any distinction to be drawn between DD and non-lucid ND. Yet Conrad is unwilling to accept such an implication. In this regard, Gaston Bachelard’s account of DD in his Poetics of Reverie is highly relevant. Bachelard qualifies the splitting of the ego as “the ontological paradox” of reverie: “by transporting the dreamer into another world, reverie makes the dreamer into a person different from himself” (Bachelard 1969, 79). Yet, Bachelard continues, “this other person is still himself, the double of himself.” Bachelard further compares this form of splitting with that of which the psychiatrists speak when they address split personalities, and he further contends that “reverie — and not the ND — retains mastery over its splittings” (ibid). As he further notes, “in reality, reverie splits the being more gently, more naturally. And with what variety!” (Bachelard 1969, 80) There is much more that Bachelard has to say about self-splitting in reverie, yet a further inquiry would take us too far afield. I would like to accept Bachelard’s remarks as a confirmation that not only conscious phantasy, but DD, too, is qualified by the splitting of the ego. Yet the distinction here drawn is half-finished. James Morley — the only contemporary phenomenologist I know of to have been focused on DD in his research for more than two decades — contends that DD entails not two, but three egological positions, which are occupied by what he called the habitual subject, the enacting subject and the directing spectator (see Morley 1998, 126-128). The presence of the habitual subject explains how a person can continue to respond competently to the environment while preoccupied with DD. Thus, while riding the car on a road trip, I may start DD, yet even if I do, I won’t lose control of the car. The concept of the enacting subject refers to the presence of the daydreamed ego in a DD experience. In the words of one of Morley’s interviewees, “I was completely the actor” (Morley 1998, 127). Yet, according to Morley, this twofold, classical, distinction does not suffice. The structure of DD also entails the presence of the third ego — the directing spectator. This concept refers to the subject who acts as a director, or a playwright — the one who writes the daydream scenario. One of Morley’s interviewees described this role as “playing God.” Another interviewee described it as a matter of “playing with puppets … where you are pulling all the strings” (Morley 1998, 128). What is at stake here is the plain recognition on the part of DD subjects that they were in control of the DD experience. Building on the basis of Morley’s analysis, we can say that DD is self-aware in three fundamental senses of the term. 1) While DD, the conscious subject is aware of itself as the habitual subject (that is, as the actual DD ego), and as we saw, this self-awareness can be both explicit and implicit. 2) The DD subject is also self-aware as the enacting subject, or the daydreamed ego. 3) Last but not least, the DD subject is also self-aware as the directing spectator, who writes the script in accordance with which all activities unfold. Here we can also recall Varendonck’s insightful reflections. When we DD, the mind can take on three different attitudes: “it may give us the impression that our personality is thinking, or that it is mainly acting, or that it is simply a spectator. In the two first instances we have the feeling that our mind is active; in the last we feel that it is passive” (Varendonck 1921, 89). There is a telling correspondence between thinking, acting, and observing, of which Varendonck here speaks, and the roles of the habitual subject, the enacting subject, and the directing spectator that Morley singles out in his analysis. In this regard, phenomenological and psychoanalytic approaches to DD can in significant ways complement each other. The Constitutive Function of Daydreaming Imagine the impossible: a person incapable of DD. Such a person’s wakeful life would be fully confined to the actual. She would perceive things around her, she would remember the past and anticipate the future, yet her capacity to imagine things different from how they are would be severely constrained. Being bound to the actual, she would not be able to consider alternative scenarios. Such a person would in effect be similar to the one that Jorge Luis Borges describes in “Funes, His Memory”: no single detail happening around such a person would escape attention, yet, as Borges notes, “I suspect nevertheless that he was not very good at thinking. To think is to ignore (or forget) differences, to generalize, to abstract” (Borges 1999, 137). DD provides consciousness with rudimentary distance that one needs in order to think. In contemporary psychology and cognitive sciences, DD is understood as a member of a broader family of mental phenomena that are usually labeled as “spontaneous thoughts.” In the literature on spontaneous thoughts, we come across a suggestion that such modes of experience as DD and MW — now I am using these terms interchangeably — are the default strategies of consciousness: when not engaged in any specific task-oriented thinking, our minds will be MW and DD (see especially Spirada 2018). With these discussions in mind, one can supplement Borges’ line of thought by further stating that thinking is a matter of ignoring differences, of generalizing, of abstracting because before it is anything else, thinking is DD. To put it phenomenologically, DD is cogito at birth, a nascent cogito; or as some psychologists contend, DD is “the default state.” One of the reasons for the choice of this term in psychology is that, from a neurological point of view, when we DD, our brain uses a network, identified as the default network. This network includes areas of the brain such as the medial prefrontal cortex (helps to imagine ourselves and the thoughts and feelings of others), the posterior cingulate cortex (shows personal memories from the brain), and the parietal cortex (stores episodic memories). The default network is activated when attention switches from task-oriented thinking to MW or DD. The default network generates stimulus-independent thoughts. All other modes of the cogito are in this regard forms of DD held in check and subjected to our control. This suggests that a person incapable of DD is also incapable of thinking. DD is unrestrained cogito: it is an embryonic form of the cogito that entertains ideas in the form of sensory images and that is not yet guided by this or that goal; so also, a form of the cogito that is not yet bound by this or that rule; in short, a wild cogito, a cogito untamed: an inchoate form of the cogito that is free, both thematically and methodologically. Precisely because it is free, consciousness can also design the method it wishes to follow and the goals it wishes to achieve. We can identify DD as a nascent cogito, which underlies all methodologically-guided task-oriented thinking. If this is correct, then one can claim that the constitutive function of DD is fundamental and it is to be clarified genetically, i.e., by recognizing that DD is a default mode of the cogito, that it lies at the origins of thinking and that it therefore makes highly diverse constitutive achievements possible. To avoid a possible misunderstanding, let me stress that DD is a default mode of thinking and not a default mode of experience. DD is only conceivable as a modification: it modifies the way things appear, the way scenarios unfold, or the way we act in the world. Something must already be given in experience if DD is to be possible. Yet to claim that DD is a modification is by no means to denigrate its significance. As a modification, DD is a manifestation of spontaneity and freedom: consciousness itself generates the sensory images, which it then passively relates to. This spontaneity and this freedom lie at the bottom of all cogito. The genetic account of the origins of thinking that we come across in classical phenomenology must therefore be supplemented with a chapter on the phenomenology of DD. The view I am here proposing can therefore be understood as a supplement to the classical genetic account in phenomenology, which identifies sensory experience (Erfahrung) as the pre-predicative origin of all judgments and thus, of thinking. I called DD an unrestrained form of the cogito. This makes it understandable why in Freud’s classical studies (see esp. Freud 2010, 79-80 and 537, also Breuer and Freud 1981, 22), DD was considered to be a nascent form of various pathologies. DD becomes pathological when DD-consciousness loses the awareness that it is DD. DD is Janus-faced: as cogito untamed, DD is the source of diverse forms of thinking and of diverse pathologies. Closing Words I started out with a suggestion that our understanding of the life of consciousness will remain severely limited for as long as we ignore DD. In what ways, then, does the phenomenology of DD enrich our understanding of the life of consciousness? I would like to conclude by offering three answers to this question. First, the phenomenology of DD here offered forces us to abandon the dichotomous view that sets wakefulness and sleep in sharp opposition to each other. Just as there is wakefulness in sleep (lucid ND), so also, there is sleep in wakefulness (DD). The life of consciousness is characterized by the intertwining of sleep and wakefulness. Such intertwining does not refer to anything exceptional or unusual, but qualifies ordinary experiences. I have employed concepts that I borrow from Merleau-Ponty’s late phenomenology, for more so than other thinkers in this philosophical tradition, Merleau-Ponty emphasized the importance of overcoming the sharp distinction between passivity and activity and recognizing passivity behind all activity. He thus spoke of passivity as the “‘softness in the dough’ of consciousness,” of “constitutional passivity, germ of sleep, disease, death present even within the acts” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 136). He called this “lateral passivity. In this regard, DD appears to be the prime instance of the “oneirism of wakefulness,” which, according to Merleau-Ponty, qualifies wakeful experiences. In his Lectures on Passivity, to which I am here referring, Merleau-Ponty engaged in a critical discussion of Sartre’s The Imaginary, and especially of what he identifies as Sartre’s “activism.” He maintained that “waking and sleep are less heterogeneous than Sartre says” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 147). Against the Sartrean background, Merleau-Ponty went on to address the intertwining of passivity and activity in such terms as “a quasi-perceptual character of dreams” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 147). Yet one has to admit that Merleau-Ponty’s central ambition in the Lectures on Passivity was to show that all sleeping consciousness is to a degree awake and all wakeful consciousness is to a degree asleep. What I find missing in these lectures, as well as in Merleau-Ponty’s other writings, is a sustained analysis of the differences between dreamless sleep, non-lucid and lucid ND, DD, MW and other forms of spontaneous thoughts. While the general approach that Merleau-Ponty takes in these lectures blazes the trail for such analysis, we do not encounter such analyses in Merleau-Ponty’s own writings. Second, we can take this to mean that the life of consciousness is not confined to the here and now. Besides those experiences, which unfold from the present standpoint, there is also another group of experiences, which we can qualify as absorbed, or displaced, experiences. DD makes clear that such experiences of displacement are not pathological exceptions, but regular occurrences. Third — and this is especially important in the present context — phenomenological analysis of DD brings to light that different modes of experience are characterized by different modes of self-awareness. We have grown accustomed to addressing self-awareness as a monolithic feature of conscious life, as a general structure without which no experience would be possible. I do not want to underestimate the importance of these analyses, yet at the same time, I wish to stress that self-awareness can be spoken of in many ways and that to a large extent, different modes of experience are marked by different types of self-awareness. Phenomenologists, among other philosophers and psychologists, have been successful in showing that all experiences are pre-reflectively and pre-objectively self-aware. We can nonetheless state that the life of consciousness cannot be understood in sufficient detail if our accounts are focused only on general features of conscious life. 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