Is Fantasy a dream or an escape?

[Nogrod]

"Art reflects [the] dynamic in its insistence on its own truth, which has its ground in social reality and is yet its "other". Art breaks open a dimension inaccesible to other experience, the dimension in which human beings, nature, and things no longer stand under the law of the established reality principle. Subjects and objects encounter the appearance of that autonomy which is denied them in their society. The encounter with the truth of art happens in the estranging language and images which make it perceptible, visible, and audible that which is no longer, or not yet, perceived, said, and heard in everyday life."
~Herbert Marcuse: The Aesthetic Dimension, 1977 ~

Sometimes even the theorists seem to get it right?

[Thinlómien]

Dared to read the thread through at last...

Why should fantasy be either dream or an escape? Can't it be both?

Can we really separate a dream and an escape?

In my opinion they are the same to some extent. What else is a dream than an escape? Don't we escape the present to dreams?

Yet, escape might be more than a dream, it can be something more concretical (sp?).

Of course there are many extents to both "dream" and "escape", but as long as they are interwoven and entwined, they are (almost) the same thing and isn't that what is fantasy? Or faerie?

(And if this made sense, I'm surprised... )

[littlemanpoet]

Dreams are understood as the mind processing one's day/life while asleep. Nothing planned about that. By contrast, fantasies are constructed by the waking human mind. There are similarities, surely, but there is artifice in the one and happenstance in the other. Make sense?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Dreams are understood as the mind processing one's day/life while asleep. Nothing planned about that. By contrast, fantasies are constructed by the waking human mind. There are similarities, surely, but there is artifice in the one and happenstance in the other. Make sense?

Unless you are capable of lucid dreaming. I knew someone who reckoned he could do this, but I remain sceptical.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Unless you are capable of lucid dreaming. I knew someone who reckoned he could do this, but I remain sceptical.

I've dreamed lucidly a couple of times. I did change the outcome. I have a friend who reports that she dreams lucidly quite often.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I've dreamed lucidly a couple of times. I did change the outcome. I have a friend who reports that she dreams lucidly quite often.

The only kind of lucid dreaming I can do is managing to wake myself up screaming just at the moment the bomb drops or the rocks fall on my head. I will often return to the same dream, too, though I do suffer with recurring dreams anyway as that's a feature of PTSD, unfortunately. Hmm, I might be more convinced if you can do lucid dreaming - the guy I used to know who could do it ended up seeing the Four Horsemen one afternoon and being taken away, so I'm always cycnical and see it as part of his erm 'problem', which is not appropriate to go into here.

So, is a lucid dream a fantasy or a dream then?

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I will often return to the same dream, too, though I do suffer with recurring dreams anyway as that's a feature of PTSD, unfortunately.

Yike. Perhaps you might look into EMDR. Worked for me.

Originally Posted by Lal

So, is a lucid dream a fantasy or a dream then?

It's dreaming; but in this case the conscious mind is able to affect the subconscious, and thereby render the incipient chaos, ordered. ... very important for mental health.