Imaginary friend,good or bad?
Question:
Answers:
The development of an imaginary friend is NOT inherently a sign of a mental problem. It all depends on the specifics of the situation.
After all, in some senses even adults have imaginary friends of sorts. Many treat objects as if they were people, give them names and pronouns reserved for people instead of objects, and so on. Usually such behaviour (in children or adults) is just a kind of game played with the imagination or a crutch to ease social woes.
Even when children seem unable to distinguish an imaginary friend from a real one, it is not necessarily a sign of concern. Some psychologists feel that this can be a useful tool to help a child learn to make those distinctions between the imaginary and the real. And there are those who would argue that millions of people have beliefs in unreal entities who they nonetheless claim to be as real as anything else. But let's not segue into a religious argument.
An imaginary friend CAN be a sign for concern if it interferes with a normal life. I recall the case of one murderer claimed he had to commit his acts because the neighbor's dog told him to. An extreme example. Most children (and adults) do not choose to spend time with an imaginary friend INSTEAD of a real one, but if they consistently do then this, too, can be a sign of concern. Likewise, some people become afraid of their imaginary 'friends', in which case they might be more properly called imaginary enemies, I suppose.
Bottom line - it's not really the imaginary friend itself that could be a problem, but how a person values and interacts with it that might be.
Hope that helps!
My imaginary friend says it's a good thing.
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