Fantasy and Reality

Most people know there is a difference between fantasy and reality. Nonetheless, in our society fantasy is more important than we might imagine. From politics to social media, fantasy influences many people's lives.

We only need to look at the popularity of computer games and movies to see the influence of fantasy. For example, the latest fantasy movie "The Black Panther" is breaking box-office records and people by the millions are flocking to watch it.

Of course, there can be many reasons why this movie and other forms of fantasy are so popular, however, two psychological reasons immediately come to mind: escape from reality and connecting to the shadow (the dark side of the personality) in daily life.

For most people, daily life consumed with work and family responsibilities lacks fun, excitement, passion and different experiences outside of their routines. Many people find solutions to these concerns in drugs, sexuality and fantasies.

Fantasies remove people from the mundane existence of their lives, moving them to heroic levels and larger than life experiences. This is accomplished through the psychological process referred to as projection.

Projection was discussed in earlier articles but basically it amounts to the unconscious (hidden psychology) being seen and experienced when an image, an object or a person acts as a trigger to "carry" a person's unconscious projection. This is similar to a movie screen "carrying" the images from a movie projector (the unconscious). People then identify with fantasy heroes in movies or computer games through their projections.

As you can imagine, projections provide people with an artificial means of escaping their realities. Of course, once the fantasies are over, people must resume their daily lives. This is quite a disappointment.

The other factor associated with fantasy is the shadow. Again, the psychological shadow was discussed in previous articles.

As the dark side of a personality, it is an unconscious part of a person's psychology that can be projected or influence behaviors. Since most people do not consciously experience their shadows, they meet their shadows through projections and the bigger than life images in fantasies and computer games. The often aggressive nature of these images compensate for a lack of aggression in a person's life by influencing a person's ideas and behaviors.

Fantasy is never reality! Rather than project on, and mimic, these fantastic characters that function in non-realistic ways, perhaps it is better to meet our unconscious and integrate it with our conscious awareness to reduce our fantasy lives and begin focusing on finding ways to become more satisfied and fulfilled in our realities.