Premium
Imaginary friends
Author(s) -
Fritz Gregory K.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the brown university child and adolescent behavior letter
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1556-7575
pISSN - 1058-1073
DOI - 10.1002/cbl.30041
Subject(s) - the imaginary , fell , wife , adventure , sister , regret , psychology , falling in love , art , psychoanalysis , art history , philosophy , sociology , theology , computer science , machine learning , anthropology , paleontology , biology
For a year or two when he was a preschooler, our son Peter had two imaginary friends that my wife and I found delightful. Named Jamie and Tommy, they were an inseparable pair of boys older than Peter whose exploits were invariably interesting and sometimes astonishing. Always the most imaginative of our three children (neither his older nor younger sister ever had imaginary friends), Peter seemed to enjoy regaling us with stories of Jamie's and Tommy's adventures. They were well beyond the reach of a 4–5‐year‐old boy but fell short of being the stuff of superheroes. Peter was aware that no one else could see his imaginary friends, but we never pressed him about the details of where they fell on the real‐unreal spectrum. They departed suddenly, to his apparent regret and likely ours, falling together from the nearby Golden Gate Bridge.