Imaginary Companions and the Children who Create Them

"This is a book by one of the people who has been part of the new wave of research in cognitive development. What Marjorie did is to deal with a really fascinating phenomenon that all parents notice, which is the fact that children often have these imaginary friends who are very vivid and significant. Traditionally, explanations for this were either psychoanalytic explanations that had something to do with children’s neurosis, or the Piagetian idea that children failed to understand the difference between fantasy and reality. What Marjorie did, and what makes the book so fascinating, is that she interviewed children in a very systematic and scientific way about their imaginary companions. Part of what is lovely about the book is the descriptions of these wonderful, strange creatures that the children invent. Exactly. She discovered that children can distinguish perfectly well, that they know that even very beloved and vivid imaginary companions are imaginary. And she discovered that the children who had imaginary companions weren’t any crazier or smarter or lonelier than those who didn’t. In fact, something like more than 60% of all the children interviewed reported some kind of imaginary companion or friend. What Marjorie also showed is that children were actually using these imaginary friends to try to understand the real people around them. So children with imaginary friends did better at understanding other people, in what has come to be called Theory of Mind, than children without. What had looked like a deficit suffered by certain children was actually a help to them, and an example of how brilliant children are at working and thinking to try and figure out the world around them and, in this case, to figure out the people around them. That’s right. It is a wonderful specific example. My niece, who grew up in high-powered literary New York, had an imaginary friend who was too busy to play with her. This is actually quite typical of the descriptions and stories you will find in Marjorie’s book. And what is nice is that Marjorie is not only describing these things, but explaining them."