Fiorenzo Ranieri
Psychic withdrawal represents one of the most enigmatic and potentially fruitful experiences of adolescent development. It is the movement through which the mind retreats from the external world to inhabit an inner elsewhere, populated by images, fantasies, and scenarios that take on the function of refuge, protection, or compensation. It is within this threshold between the internal and external worlds, between thought and action, that the phenomenon of maladaptive daydreaming can be situated: a form of intense and immersive imaginative activity which, when it loses its symbolic and relational function, may become a genuine psychic withdrawal.
From Social Withdrawal to Psychic Withdrawal
Over recent decades, the phenomenon of hikikomori has drawn attention to visible social withdrawal: young people who physically isolate themselves, shutting themselves in their rooms and discontinuing relationships and activities. However, observable withdrawal is often the final stage of a deeper, internal, and invisible process: a psychic withdrawal that precedes and underlies behavioural withdrawal.
The individual progressively distances himself or herself from shared experience, taking refuge in a self-constructed mental world in which a sense of control and identity coherence can be maintained. Without this imaginative regression, no enduring social withdrawal would be possible: the body can isolate itself only after the mind has already withdrawn.
The Internal World as Refuge and Prison
Winnicott had already described the adolescent’s need to create an intermediate space between reality and fantasy, a play area in which conflicts and fears can be worked through. But when the environment fails to provide sufficient containment or recognition, this transitional area may become a “private reality” (Meltzer), an autarchic system of meanings that is no longer open to the other.
Bion and Tustin, in their reflections on autism and isolation, recognised the protective function of the sensory and imaginative shell that defends the ego against a world perceived as persecutory or chaotic. Blos and Winnicott showed how, in adolescence, fantasy may assume an ambivalent role: regressive or transformative, depending on the quality of the relationship with the environment.
John Steiner (1993), in Psychic Retreats, proposed a particularly useful formulation: the “psychic retreat” is an internal place into which the individual withdraws in order to avoid the suffering associated with dependency and loss, but where he or she ultimately also relinquishes psychic vitality and thought. A refuge that, from being protective, becomes a prison.
Maladaptive daydreaming, from the perspective of Eli Somer (2002, 2016, 2023), can be situated fully within this framework: it is a structured and immersive form of fantasy that originates as a strategy for self-regulation and narcissistic compensation. The individual constructs complex scenarios involving characters, plots, dialogues, and intense emotional states, often accompanied by music or repetitive bodily movements.
Over time, however, this alternative world may replace contact with reality, generating an internal isolation that precedes and sometimes determines social isolation. In this sense, maladaptive daydreaming can be understood as a contemporary version of the psychic retreat, constructed not only through traditional unconscious defences, but also through imaginative and narrative resources amplified by digital and media cultures.
Maladaptive Daydreaming as Psychic Withdrawal
Maladaptive daydreaming can therefore be understood as a contemporary form of psychic withdrawal: a defence that is both dissociative and creative, allowing a sense of identity continuity to be maintained when the external world is too frustrating, intrusive, or indifferent.
Compared with the forms of withdrawal described by Meltzer or Tustin, it introduces two new elements:
- Technological mediation – music through headphones, digital content, and the internet amplify the possibility of constructing all-encompassing imaginary worlds.
- The narrative and serial dimension – daydreaming becomes structured like an ongoing story, a personal fiction that evolves over time and may become more real than reality itself.
In adolescents and young adults, this dynamic reflects the difficulty of finding real places in which to bring their internal world into play. When reality fails to respond, the mind organises itself within a parallel world. As Somer wrote, the daydreamer “does not dream to escape, but to survive.”
Conclusions
The internal world of adolescents and young adults, already charged with identity transitions and developmental tensions (Blos, 1962; Winnicott, 1958), may become a virtual space for psychic survival. Omnipotent fantasies that should facilitate separation and autonomy become an alternative universe, coherent but self-referential. When there is no relational environment capable of receiving thought and dreams, imagination ceases to be play and becomes confinement.
Observable withdrawal — as in hikikomori — is only the external manifestation of an internal withdrawal: without psychic withdrawal, there can be no genuine social withdrawal. In both cases, the mind attempts to preserve itself from the encounter with the other and with limits. But while social withdrawal is visible and measurable, psychic withdrawal remains invisible, concealed within the narrative fabric of the imagination.
Understanding it means recognising that withdrawal is not merely a behavioural phenomenon, but an affective and symbolic experience that raises questions about the boundary between protection and loss of the self. Psychic withdrawal is not merely a symptom, but also an attempt at self-healing: the means by which the psychic apparatus protects its integrity when encountering the other appears intolerable or ineffective. Yet when the other fails to arrive, fantasy closes in upon itself, transforming the refuge into a prison.
Understanding maladaptive daydreaming as a form of psychic withdrawal therefore means bringing attention back to the vital function of imagination and to its ambivalence between healing and alienation. Only a clinical perspective capable of recognising this dual nature can restore to the individual the possibility of dreaming once again together with another person.
Bibliographical Notes
Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience.
Blos, P. (1967). The second individuation process of adolescence.
Meltzer, D. (1974). Sexual States of Mind.
Somer, E. (2002). Maladaptive Daydreaming: A qualitative inquiry. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 32(2), 197–212.
Somer, E., Lehrfeld, J., Bigelsen, J., & Jopp, D. (2016). Development and validation of the Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale. Consciousness and Cognition, 39, 77–91.
Somer, E., Herscu, O., & Soffer-Dudek, N. (2023). Maladaptive Daydreaming: Twenty Years of Research. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1088932.
Steiner, J. (1993). Psychic Retreats: Pathological Organizations in Psychotic, Neurotic and Borderline Patients. Routledge.
Tustin, F. (1981). Autistic States in Children.
Winnicott, D. W. (1958). The capacity to be alone.