What's the meaning of the underlined pat?
The fantasies of children and grown-ups, sometimes called daydreams, are always concerned with the future. These ‘castles in the air’ are the goal of their activity, built up in fictional form as models for real activity. Studies of childhood fantasies show clearly that the striving for power plays the predominant role. Children express their ambition in their daydreams. Most of their fantasies begin with the words ‘when I grow up’, and so on. There are many adults who live as though they too were not yet grown up. The clear emphasis on the striving for power indicates again that the psyche can develop only when a certain goal has been set; in our civilization, this goal involves social recognition and significance. An individual never stays long with any neutral goal, for the communal life of humankind is accompanied by constant self-evaluation giving rise to the desire for superiority and the hope of success in competition. The fantasies of children almost always involve situations in which the child exercises power.
