Powers of Creation

Once upon a time, my sister and I created a paracosm centered around the Kings, a family consisting of the most powerful, magical and 51% evil individual in the universe and his three half-alien, half-Earthling daughters, the younger of which were a set of Mary Sue self-insert identical twins. The Kings regularly traveled through space and/or time, meeting fictional characters, ridding the world of menaces and going on sarcastic, parodic tangents.

Back in 1996, we did an adventure for them called Operation WAWBAB. An egregiously obnoxious family, the Wallis-Budges, moved across the street from the Kings. Offended by their egregious obnoxiousness, the Kings employed many creative, non-magical devices to evict the Wallis-Budges from their neighborhood. The Wallis-Budges did not budge...

...Until the Kings threw a dinner party on par with that of the Rocky Horror Picture Show [which, incidentally, we didn't know about at that time]. Each of the Kings decided to embody the stereotypical fashions and mannerisms of a different late 20th century decade. The patriarch, for some reason, targeted the 1960s, as interpreted by New Age sensibilities. To complete the characterization, he included in the driveway a VW MicroBus and a Hillman Minx, both decked out in, uh, weird paraphernalia.

Now, as far as my sister and I were concerned, the Hillman Minx was the funniest car in existence, thanks to its immortalization in a Dave Barry column as "a wart-shaped British car with the same rakish, sporty appeal as a municipal parking garage but with not as much pickup." Therefore, at some point, I decided to make a custom scale model of it. Since I could not find a small-scale Hillman Minx, I had to make do with a Volkswagen Beetle. Just pretend it's a Hillman Minx, okay?

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Apparently there's a relatively recent movement championing the dialogic self, viz., the idea that we are groups of voices with different perspectives and positions.

Also, apparently, John Rowan, author of the rather dry Subpersonalities, is coming out with a new book next month called Personification: Using the Dialogical Self in Therapy and Counseling. I'm sure it discusses in a structured way what I learned the hard and lonely way to do all by myself.

What I want to know is where all this theory and information was when I was convinced I was going insane??

Subpersonalities may be defined as little, semi-autonomous clusters of traits inside us with their own peculiar thoughts and worldviews that we as a whole employ in our daily lives. I personally think they overlap a lot with imaginary characters, which is why I just now typed "subpersonalities" into Google and came up with this blog entry from Integral Options Cafe, in which the author tries to define subpersonalities. The author also discusses some books and psychological theories that use the subpersonalities model. The author mentions the book Subpersonalities by John Rowan [which I have read and reviewed in my ongoing bibliography about paracosms and imaginary characters and such], as well as other sources that I have not looked into and need to.

Hooray, more places to look for interpretations of paracosms and imaginary characters!

Later I should write something about Internal Family Systems [TM].

I found that the Wikipedia article about imaginary friends contains a bibliography of scholarly articles for further reading!!

"The Jet Propelled Couch," an article [part 1, part 2] from a 1954 issue of Harper's, describes an analyst's encounter with a university professor and scientist who lives a dual life. In his mundane existence, he works at the university and researches, but, in his fantasy life, his soul travels to other galaxies, where he is the ruler of a planet, charismatic, powerful, womanizing and benevolent. His trips to his kingdom planet were becoming more frequent, interfering with his job; hence the analyst was called in.

"The Jet Propelled Couch" explores how "Kirk Allen," the subject, nurtured his fantasy world as he grew up as one of the only white children in an isolated settlement in pre-statehood Hawaii. When he chanced upon a series of science-fiction books featuring a protagonist also named Kirk Allen, this coincidence propelled his fantasy world into detailed development. Kirk began to "fill in the gaps" and "make corrections to" the adventures in the Kirk Allen series, as well as drawing maps, charts and pictures of people and places related to his sci-fi activities.

The Kirk Allen paracosm sustained Kirk for many years and gave him much pleasure, and the analyst had to figure out how to "wean him from his madness." Eventually the analyst decided to partly indulge Kirk's paracosm, getting into the spirit of his world, so to speak, taking it on its own terms. By agreeing with the reality of the Kirk Allen paracosm, the analyst showed Kirk what it was like to be a person who believed in his realm. Seeing a version of himself [i.e., a paracosm believer] in the analyst, Kirk slowly began to realize the fallacious assumptions upon which the reality of his paracosm was based. Thanks to the analyst's participation, Kirk realized that his paracosm was indeed fantastical, and he apparently resolved his conflicts between his mundane life and his fantasy life.

"The Jet Propelled Couch" is both fascinating and frustrating. It's fascinating in that it gives a view, albeit heavily psychoanalytic, of how a person's life circumstances may promote the development of a paracosm. At the same time, it's frustrating because the fact that the analyst thinks that Kirk Allen is "mad" makes the whole business of paracosms seem more insane, threatening and maladaptive than they really are. I know from my researches and personal experience that paracosms can be an enjoyable, helpful, glorious part of the imaginal development of childhood and adulthood, even though people who are foreign to the idea tend to think it's a little mad.

In my estimation, Kirk Allen was not mad and did not have a psychosis; I would say more precisely that he had an elaborate, engaging paracosm, the reality of which was interfering with the mundane reality of his life. The only problem with his paracosm was not that it was so well-developed and detailed, but that it was causing trouble with his job. In this case, madness lies not in the contents or existence of the paracosm per se, but more in its effects.

NOTE: As a work in progress, this list will be periodically updated to reflect my latest research.

Ever since my sister and I created our first imaginary world at age 4, I've been interested in imaginary worlds, technically termed "paracosms," and imaginary characters/friends. Information about the paracosmic is surprisingly difficult to come by, but, over the years, I have scraped together relevant material. Most of it is from a psychological, psychiatric or sociological point of view, although a few New Agey things have crept in since I considered them useful. Forthwith, a list.

Caughey, John. Imaginary Social Worlds: A Cultural Approach. In a welcome antidote to archetypical navel-gazing, Imaginary Social Worlds compares the contents of imaginary social worlds cross-culturally. Caughey examines daydreams, celebrity fantasies, sexual fantasies, etc., and looks at the ways in which an individual's fantasy world reflects themes and obsessions of the world around him/her.

Cohen, David; MacKeith, Stephen. The Development of Imagination: The Private Worlds of Childhood. Containing one of the first longitudinal studies of children and their paracosms, this book is notable for collecting stats and stories about the paracosms of several score British paracosms and the lives of their creators. The best parts of this book give thumbnail sketches of each creator's family circumstances [economic status, siblings, location] and how these affected each paracosm. Included is also a summary of the salient points of each imaginary world. Good for a look at the actual content of paracosms.

Matthews, Caitlin. In Search of Woman's Passionate Soul: Revealing the Daimon Lover Within. A collection of observations from heterosexual women discussing their experiences of relationships with male imaginary characters. Despite its Jungian underpinnings, limited sample size and ridiculous extrapolation, I like this book for its first-person reporting about the paracosmic.

Root-Bernstein, Michele. "Imaginary Worldplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness." In The International Handbook on Giftedness, edited by Larisa V. Shavinina. Noting that the seeds and early signs of adult creativity may be seen in childhood play, Root-Bernstein looks at what childhood paracosms can tell us about their creators as adults. She notes a high correlation between creators of childhood paracosms and those who went on to be artists and successful scientists. Less about paracosms themselves and more about their implications.

Rowan, John. Subpersonalities: The People Inside Us. Dry, but good for a historical overview, this book discusses the changing conceptions of  imaginary characters over the last 150 years of psychology/psychiatry.

Taylor, Marjorie. Imaginary Companions and the Children who Create Them. Taking the perspective of a child development psychologist, Taylor synthesizes many studies on fantasy play in children. Discussing imaginary friends, transitional objects and paracosms, she concludes that the invention of these things represents a common, healthy aspect of modern American child development. Taylor is at her best when talking about imaginary friends; her section on paracosms has great first-person reports, but ends too abruptly.

Watkins, Mary M. Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues. A premier introduction and overview to the concept of multivocal consciousness, imaginary friends, whatever you want to call it. Watkins argues that the current psychiatric fixation with a unitary voice/self ignores a rich philosophical, mythological and phenomenological tradition of an internal population of >1. To that end, she synthesizes information reaching back to ancient Greek epics and forward to modern Jungianism. Her discussion of authorial relationships to story characters is especially strong.

Watkins, Mary M. Waking Dreams. Written before Invisible Guests, this book takes the same pro-paracosmic viewpoint, extended to fantasy, daydreaming, waking dreams and other supposedly "non-productive" states in general. Watkins' Jungian background leads her to champion the concept of "active imagination," that is, calling out the characters in one's head and talking to them. She explores the origins of this technique in European and American practice. Less rigorous and more poetically written than Invisible Guests, Waking Dreams is a thought-provoking ancillary, but should be read after Invisible Guests.

Wegner, Daniel M. White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obsession and the Psychology of Mental Control. A lucid, conversational, funny book about the ways in which people attempt to control their thoughts and the ways in which these methods backfire. Wegner's comments on suppression and obsession provide insight into how people can create characters and then endow them with so much personality that they seem independent.

With the final book of the Twilight Saga coming out on Saturday [woo hoo!!], Laura Miller takes a critical look at the immensely popular glurge. She correctly notes that Bella's extreme lack of personality makes her a Mary-Sue-shaped costume which the typical fan, a young teenaged heterosexual girl, can climb into so that she can have virtual smoochies with Edward:

She is purposely made as featureless and ordinary as possible in order to render her a vacant, flexible skin into which the reader can insert herself and thereby vicariously enjoy Edward's chilly charms...Edward, not Bella, is the key to the Twilight franchise, the thing that fans talk about when explaining their fascination with the books. 

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