Fiction, drama, poetry, art, and music enable people to enter a world of fantasy which is interpreted and modified by each participant's personal imagination. When we read a story, we visualize the scene and characters and hear their voices. Even in reading history, science, or news accounts we use our imagination to help us experience more fully what we are studying. These shared fantasies become a very powerful collective imagination when great numbers of people see and hear the same thing. As history is the collective memory, literature and the arts are the collective imagination.
Famous people come to have a public image.
The confusion between these images and reality in the fantasies of glamour can cause problematic social delusions. Common personal fantasies that emphasize sex and violence tend to be exploited by the media. Thus collective fantasies of society can tell us much about our overall socio-psychological health.