Imaginary Friends, Revealed
Written By Rachel Simpson
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Myth: Imaginary friends indicate an emotional void.
Reality: Having them is often just plain fun.
Big names in child development had long maintained that kids must invent their friends for dark reasons. Even the ahead-of-his-time Dr. Benjamin Spock focused on the negative: "If he [the child] is spending a good part of each day telling about imaginary friends, not as a game, but as if he believed in them, it raises the question of whether his real life is satisfying enough.... If a child is living largely in his imagination and not adjusting well with other children, especially by the age of 4, a psychiatrist should be able to find what he is lacking."
This comes from the 1945-46 edition of his "Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care." But even a generation and a sea change in parenting attitudes later, Spock was still accentuating the negative in 1974's "Raising Children in a Difficult Time." He wrote that for a child whose imaginary companion is "simply someone to have a good time with, she or he may need more opportunities to play with real children or some help in learning how to get along with them."
