Whenever an imaginary friend appears in pop culture, Dr. Marjorie Taylor is called up to provide expert testimony.
Last summer, after the release of Pixar’s Inside Out, Slate magazine interviewed Taylor, a University of Oregon professor emerita of psychology and director of the UO-based Imagination Research Lab, to evaluate Bing Bong, the pink elephant that dwelled in the recesses of a character’s long-term memory.
Marjorie Taylor, a University of Oregon professor of psychology, studies imaginary friends in part because her daughter developed one. (Kaylee Domzalski/Emerald)
“I think Inside Out did a good job,” Taylor told the Emerald. “The imaginary friend was not remembered well because the child was older.”
In the 1991 fantasy-drama Drop Dead Fred, a woman is tormented by her imaginary friend from childhood. Taylor recalls a scene in which a therapist suggests “neutralizing the part of the brain that creates the imaginary friend.”
“What a horrible movie,” Taylor sighed. “Having an imaginary friend is healthy and normal […] Give me Bing Bong any day.”
In 1999, Taylor published her best-known book, Imaginary Companions and the Children who Create Them. The book’s cover shows a young girl spoon-feeding applesauce to the empty chair next to her.
The Imagination Research Lab, based in Straub Hall, is a catalyst for much of what is known about imaginary friends.
“Around 75 to 80 percent of what’s known about imaginary companions comes from Eugene,” said Taylor. Studies conducted by the lab regularly involved interviews with families from the area about imaginary companions.
Dr. Tracy Gleason, a professor of psychology at Wellesley College, said Taylor was the first person to study imaginary companions with a systematic, empirical approach.
“We’ve successfully discarded the notion that [imaginary companions] are an indication of psychopathology,” said Gleason. “That’s definitely out the window. [Taylor] was the one who said these kids are not lonely, isolated and shy and all these negative stereotypes.”
In one study, the lab’s researchers interviewed children in the foster care system to see what effect these imaginary friends had on those who experienced a rough upbringing.
Dr. Naomi Aguiar, a UO graduate and former researcher in the lab, recalls speaking with one girl who lived in 11 foster homes before being adopted into her lifelong family. The girl told Aguiar that her companion was an invisible milk carton.
“What do you like about this milk carton?” Aguiar asked the girl.
She responded: “I really like that he’s not human because he can teach me about what it’s like to not be human, and I can teach him about what it’s like to be human.”
“A long time before Marjorie’s work, people really thought imaginary companions were a sign of mental illness,” said Lou Moses, UO professor of psychology. “It’s just a product of their creative imagination. It’s really groundbreaking research.”
During interviews with parents in studies with the lab, Taylor and the researchers have heard genuine concern from parents about their children’s imaginary companions.
“I’ve had a parent say, ‘I pray every day for the Devil to leave my child,’ ” said Taylor.
“[Taylor] was the one who pointed out that [imaginary friends] come in all shapes and sizes,” said Gleason. “They’re not all human. They’re not all invisible. Some are based on objects.”
Taylor, who recently retired from UO professorship, is working on updating her book with a second edition, which will include discoveries from the lab’s numerous studies over the past 17 years.
The updated edition will include an augmented understanding of imaginary friends as well as chapters on comparable subjects, including her more recent research on paracosms, the phenomenon of children building intricately detailed, imaginary worlds and the relationship that forms between fiction authors and their characters.
Taylor came to the UO in 1985 and published her first paper on imaginary friends in 1993. At the time, psychology textbooks would only reference creativity and childhood pretend-play in passing, despite the majority of preschoolers having imaginary companions — 65 percent of children by age seven, according to a 2004 study by University of Washington and UO psychologists.
“What do children spend the whole first four years of their lives doing in the United States? Playing and pretending,” said Aguiar. “When Marjorie [started] researching it, nobody took it seriously. It was considered fringe.”
During the lab’s studies on imaginary companions, researchers interview parents and children separately to cross-check information from the child. Oftentimes, young children are prone to misunderstanding the questions.
“If you ask, ‘Do you have a pretend friend?’ and they say, ‘No,’ then the parent says, ‘Ask her about her ghost sister,’ and you go in and ask, ‘Do you have a ghost sister?’ and she’ll say, ‘Yes! Her name is Olivia!’” Taylor said.
To bring a clinical, scientific approach to something as fickle and impulsive as childhood whimsy, the interviewer can’t laugh or even smile at what they’re hearing, no matter how odd, because any sign of amusement might encourage the child to stretch the truth.
Sometimes imaginary friends are an extension of the child’s insecurities and can serve as an alibi for projecting his or her fear onto someone else.
This is useful in understanding Calvin and Hobbes, the comic strip about a mischievous youth and his stuffed tiger playmate. Calvin won’t admit to being fond of his classmate Susie and affirms that girls are obscene, whereas Hobbes has the swagger and bravado to own what Calvin can’t.
(Illustration by Mary Vertulfo)
“I like the idea that you walk down the road with a tiger at your side and you feel more powerful,” said Taylor. “Even if the tiger is completely imaginary, the feeling of confidence is not.”
In research published in 2010, the lab documented a study with 152 Portland youth, all around age 12. They selected students who were doing poorly: getting in fights, doing drugs or failing classes. Roughly 9 percent of this group had imaginary companions.
The researchers returned to the same group when they were older. Those who had an imaginary friend at age 12 were much more likely to be part of a group that was doing well at age 18.
“Being rejected by your friends may not be a bad thing if you can create a sense of social support through your imagination,” said Aguiar.
However, the connection between the child and the imaginary companion isn’t always amicable. Imaginary friends can take on an adversarial nature.
“They’re annoying. They show up when you don’t want them. They won’t go away. They put yogurt in your hair. They’re always saying bad words and have to be put in time-outs,” said Taylor. But they’re not just relentless bullies, she added. They have nuanced personalities just like anyone else.
During another interview with the lab’s foster care study, Aguiar asked a young boy if he had an imaginary companion. The boy paused and asked, “Does it count if it’s on a video game?”
“I don’t know,” Aguiar said. “You tell me.”
Aguiar now focuses on the relationship that develops between children and the virtual characters in apps and video games. To date, there’s very little research on children’s experiences with virtual reality because they have only begun engaging with virtual characters on a screen in the past few years.
“We don’t really know how digital companions are different from the imaginary companions that children create for themselves,” Aguiar said.
Aguiar suggests that the 2013 movie Her, in which a lonely writer named Theodore forms a romantic partnership with an operating system named Samantha, made a plausible case in depicting our future relationships. The dynamic between Theodore and Samantha is comparable to that between a virtual character and a user, or a child and an imaginary companion.
“It’s very future thinking: what is a relationship?” Aguiar asked. “How do we know when a relationship is real?”
