Imaginary Companions

Roundtable discussion with Edith Ackermann, Paul Bloom, Ruth Fischer, Marcel Kinsbourne, Dorothy Singer, and Marjorie Taylor.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• philoctetes
• roundtable
• children
• imaginary
• friends
• child
• psychology

[faunflynn]

In my experience imaginary friends almost never act as if they are a part of you . They do stuff you really could do without.

There is a big difference between people you make up and hallucinations you don't.

One you create the other, it haunts you like a ghost. Not fun at all. Scary even.

Pretense and presence.. just change the T the an S.

[me00179]

@SchizoKnight12

I did not get the same impression you did. In fact none of the panelists accepted this view as their own. However (and that is where you might have gotten that impression), they did a lot of back-and-forth between the recent findings and their understanding as "this is good" and the older perceptions mingled with societal misunderstandings of imaginary friends as "this is bad." Still today some people (not the ones on the panel) believe these to be evil and are very worried.

[SonnyKraack]

I reasently heard Daniel Stern and Stein Bräten talking about this theme, concluding that children with imaginary friends generally was more social than children without.

[SchizoKnight12]

during the first hour, they made it sound like having imaginary friends was some kind of dissociative disorder. i am reminded of calvin and hobbes. i can't picture hobbes embodying any of calvin's overt or covert qualities. hobbes is an autonomous entity with enough free will to decide whether or not to jump calvin every time he comes home from school.