...children often create imaginary friends as tools for expressing their deep desires and actions that they normally are afraid to engage in. isolation from peers. Clinical psychologists have reported that young children in boarding schools often develop imaginary friends to cope with extreme stress and separation from their family. In other circumstances, children often create imaginary friends as tools for expressing their deep desires and actions that they normally are afraid to engage in. It is only common for a child to be mischievous and participate in immature acts such as pranks and games, and then blame their imaginary friend. This allows the child to act out fantasies that they are otherwise restricted from doing. Similarly, children often give their imaginary friend the personality traits that they lack and shape them into ideal versions of themselves. For instance, bashful kids often describe and foresee their imaginary friends as popular extroverted pranksters, to become the ultimate childish role model. A long-time popular misconception holds that most children dismiss or forget the imaginary friend once they begin school and befriend real humans. Some psychologists suggest that children simply retain but stop speaking about imaginary friends, due to adult expectations and peer pressure. A well-known American television series produced by Cartoon Network Studios, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends has a concept related to the heartaches of growing- up, kids, and their imaginary creatures. The animated series revolves around the life of a shy and creative 8-year-old introvert named Mac, together with his self-created best friend, Bloo, and the rest of the “forgotten childhood imaginary friends” that reside at Foster’s. Mac was forced to sacrifice Bloo due to peer pressure and societal acceptance but ends up bargaining with the caretakers and employees at Foster’s Home. A deal was made that they guard Bloo from adoption as long as
Mac continues to visit the center every day. Bloo is the exact opposite of his creator, a real chaosmaker and mischievous lad who is mostly the evil mastermind behind every humorous tragedy Mac faces. In other words, he’s the source behind Mac’s enjoyable and colorful jubilant life. Niall Horan, one of the boys of the ridiculously famous tween sensation, admits to having an imaginary friend as a boy. Being an only child, growing up alone with occupied parents, Niall played soccer under the Mullingar sun with Michael, his imaginary buddy. I guess you can say this is “one direction” to having company. Similarly, American actor and comedian, Robin Williams, also confesses to growing up with an imaginary friend as a kid. Adults are not even excluded from this therapy for loneliness. Cast Away, a 2000 film starring Tom Hanks, depicts the survival of a FedEx employee after the company’s plane crashes on the Pacific Ocean during a violent storm. Hanks’ character is forced to live and seek strategies and ideas in the uninhabited island for each day to assure his life and sanity where he prays for a miracle of coming home to his wife. One of his tactics to survive was keeping himself sane. Being the only survivor of the plane crash, there was no one else to talk to nor was there an identifiable scrap left of the airplane, except a ball, a Wilson brand type for volleyball, that was intended for delivery. Hanks spends four years on the island with only “Wilson” by his side to serve as his reliable friend. He talks to him as if Wilson was not an inanimate object. He treated him more like a brother and a family member than just another athlete’s volleyball ball. Hanks imagined Wilson to be real human being with actual human feelings to keep his sanity intact while suffering the burden of extreme isolation from civilization.
Adults have a fancier way of referring to imaginary creatures that linger in their lives; they call them spirit guides, guardians, angels and selfacclaimed advisers. There are many theories and studies that claim these events with the reasons similar to that of children being alone and having no one to express their feelings to. Another is the battle against Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), also known as the Multiple Personality Disorder, the feeling that the other person can take control of one’s mind, which enables them to hear voices. The situation of victims diagnosed with DID recognize the voice within to be their friend who has full authority over them. Moreover, the Attachment Theory also claims that imaginary friends are positive in adults. Some kids, maybe single children or neglected children, don’t get enough emotional nourishment growing up thus developing imaginary friends as a support system and bring their make-believe buddies with them until they grow up to be complete adults. Everyone needs a friend, and it does not come with age. Children, teenagers and adults alike need companionship or the interaction with other human beings to keep them sane. And if desperate times call for desperate measures, having an imaginary friend does not count as insane but rather a working force of creativity. The years went by and the time slowly shifted its gears; Marceline grew up. She no longer played with her dolls nor climbed trees or even went outside her house to play. Piece by piece, Joey was fading from Marceline’s sight and imagination. By the time Marceline was 10 and about to enter middle school; she fell in the company of real humans and enjoyed their bonding. And Joey no longer existed. Now, he lies in the cemetery of other forgotten childhood memories. His service as a friend to Marceline was done. January 2013 THESPECTRUM
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