Posted by Mike Field on March 02, 2005 at 22:14:28 from 203.166.84.40 user mikefield.
In Reply to: peter duck posted by John Nichols on March 02, 2005 at 21:20:23:
Thanks John, that's a n interesting follow-on to our thread of a few weeks ago.
I fully agree with Anna Roby's conclusions. All of them.
In particular, my experience shows that there is no connection whatever between a child's having an imaginary friend and having schizophrenia. My two daughters who had imaginary friends (I wrote about Carina and C2 in the earlier thread) are not schizophrenic, and the one who does have schizophrenia did not as a child have an imaginary friend. The two are both the eldest in their respective families, and the other one had an elder sister instead.
I'm afraid that both schizophrenia and imagination are much-misunderstood phenomena.
.