Transitional relating in maladaptive daydreaming: intersession fantasies about the therapist

Intersession fantasies about the therapist are common but rarely examined clinically. Often understood as adaptive internalisation of a benevolent object, they may also express compulsive absorption, dissociative retreat, or conflicted dependence. This paper examines therapist-focused imagined encounters in maladaptive daydreaming (MD), defined by extensive immersive fantasy associated with distress and functional impairment. Using an object relations framework, I present three de-identified adult case vignettes in which recurrent imagined interactions with the therapist became a salient between-session process. The cases illustrate distinct functions and risks: an anxiety-driven “inner session” that supported behavioural change and reduced reassurance seeking; reparative kinship and romantic scenarios that countered longstanding humiliation and deprivation while encouraging retreat from external life; and trauma-linked immersive scenes in dissociative identity disorder that aided containment and parts communication yet sometimes triggered dysregulated somatic states and sexualised self-harm urges. Across cases, therapist-centred daydreaming was clinically heterogeneous. Its meaning depended on phenomenology, consequences, and the treatment frame, including boundaries around between-session contact and the handling of shame. I propose distinctions between transitional internal use of the therapist and maladaptive absorption, with implications for assessment, pacing, containment, and endings.