Imaginary friend

Imaginary friends, also known as "imaginary companions", are pretend characters often created by children. Imaginary friends often function as (or perform a tutelary function) when they are engaged by the child in play activityFact|date=February 2008. Imaginary friends may exist for the child into adolescence and sometimes adulthood. Imaginary friends often have elaborate personalities and behaviors. Although they may seem very real to their creators, studies have shown that children understand that their imaginary friends are not real. [Taylor, M. (1999) "Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them." New York: Oxford University Press]

Medical and philosophical aspects

The development of imaginary friends by a person does not alone necessarily signify a problem or disorder. [ [http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1628324.htm Imaginary friends open up fantastic world - ABC Science] ] [ [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050308101309.htm Imaginary Friendships Could Boost Child Development - Science Daily] ] According to the DSM-IV, imaginary friends are classified as a psychological disorder only if they interfere with everyday social interactionsFact|date=May 2007.

According to several theories of psychologyFact|date=May 2007, an understanding of a child's conversations with their imaginary friends can reveal a lot about the anxieties and fears of that child as well as the child's aspirations and perception of the world. Some children report that their "imaginary friends" manifest themselves physically and are indistinguishable from "real" people, while others say that they only see their friends in their head. [ [http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/] ]

Purposes

Anthropologist Maurice Bloch of the London School of Economics argues that once humans had evolved the necessary brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't physically exist, they had access to a form of social interaction unavailable to any other creatures on the planet. "Uniquely, humans could use what Bloch calls the 'transcendental social' to unify with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead." [ [http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=4740178&page=1 ABC News: Religion: A Figment of the Imagination? ] ]

It has been theorized that children with imaginary companions may develop language skills and retain knowledge faster than children without them. This may be due to the fact that these children get more linguistic practice while carrying out "conversations" with their imaginary friends than their peers do. [ [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050308101309.htm Imaginary Friendships Could Boost Child Development] ]

A long-time popular misconception holds that most children dismiss or forget the imaginary friend once they begin school and acquire 'real' friends. According to one study, by the age of seven, sixty-five percent of children report that they have had an imaginary companion at some point in their lives. [ [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/12/041206193849.htm Two-thirds Of School-age Children Have An Imaginary Companion By Age 7] ] Some psychologistswho have suggested that children simply retain but stop speaking about imaginary friends, due to adult expectations and peer pressure. Children have reported creating or maintaining imaginary friends as pre-teens or teenagers Fact|date=December 2007, and a very few adults report having imaginary friends. This may, however, signal a serious psychological disorder. [ [http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1628324.htm News in Science - Imaginary friends open up fantastic world - 15/05/2006 ] ] [ [http://specialchildren.about.com/od/booksonmentalhealth/gr/imaginaryfriend.htm Book Review: Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them ] ] The term 'Imaginary Friend' has also occasionally been used by atheists to describe the concept of God. Although this tends to offend the religious, it has been suggested by some scientists that there is a significant similarity between the two concepts. [ [http://www.beliefnet.com/story/178/story_17889.html Interview with Richard Dawkins] ]

Fictional depictions of imaginary friends

In the 1991 movie Drop Dead Fred, the lead character develops an imaginary friend in order to cope with the psychological abuse that she had received from her mother. Writing about this imaginary friend, one movie critic wrote,

The imaginary friend is cavortingly rude for a reason; he served to push the girlchild to do mischief for attention and as a cry for help. Now grown up, the woman has forgotten and is about to lose her soul, so events call for some kind of literal return of her demon to force the exposure of her pain. This psychic crisis is poignantly realistic even if the plot device is less so, thus offering validation to all the bad girls who felt so alone in their right choices to rebel (rebellion is expected in boys). The creature who is visible only to the woman is like a poltergeist energy of her repressed self, a problematic ego container into which her powers of assertion and creativity were poured and stored. The movie's resolution is startlingly beautiful, as she goes into a meditative dreamworld to find and hold the little girl who was abandoned by everyone but Fred, and now, having accepted the adult's response-ability to embrace all parts of self (thus becoming more of her Soul) she must bid a final bittersweet goodbye to her old trickster friend. [ [http://www.astralresearch.org/mysticalmovieguide/mmlist.pl?exact=Drop%20Dead%20Fred&year=1991&index=1 Review of Drop Dead Fred] , Mystical Movie Guice]

On the popular children's show, Sesame Street, Snuffleupagus was originally portrayed as Big Bird's imaginary friend. However, the Children's Television Workshop ended this in light of high-profile stories on pedophilia and sexual abuse of children that had aired on shows such as 60 Minutes and 20/20 in the mid-1980s. CTW feared the Snuffy plot would scare children into believing that they could not tell "fantastic" stories to parents or other responsible adults without being dismissed as a liar or ridiculed, even if these stories were true. The show then revealed Snuffy as being real, requiring a rewrite of several plot-lines and scenes. [ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sesame_Street Wikipedia History of Sesame Street] ]

References

ee also

* Imaginary world