Playing Through Life: How Fantasy, Imagination and Make Believe May Aid in Building and Sustaining Stable, Resilient, Focused and Creative Lives

Singer, Dorothy G. and Singer, Jerome L.
The House of Make-Believe
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990

Book cover from THE HOUSE OF MAKE-BELIEVE by Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer appears courtesy of Harvard University Press, Copyright ©1990 by Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer.

Athletes have been using the power of the imagination for some time with great results. Tiger Woods pictures the perfect swing to direct the ball with great accuracy. Lance Armstrong envisions challenging parts of a race and strategies to pull ahead, seemingly implementing them with ease. Though we do not understand with great clarity the inner workings of the mind or the power of the imagination, studies have been done that point to the positive influence of engaging in the development of both. “As you think, so you shall become,” a saying made known in popular culture by Bruce Lee, is a centuries-old philosophy taught in yogic traditions. The idea that the mind has transformational power is indeed not a new one. In The House of Make-Believe, the authors hypothesize about a variety of positive outcomes resulting from engaging in fantasy—or imaginative play—from infancy through adulthood, basing their deductions on the findings of previous studies as well as observations in their own lives. In the process, they provide insightful discussion about the nature and value of imagination.

The outward manifestations of the imagination through physical and verbal play is easily observable in young children and, as such, has been studied more extensively than in other age groups. Singer and Singer’s hypotheses include a correlation between engaging in intricate and sustained make-believe play and enhanced cognitive functioning. They also link active imaginative play to lengthened attention spans and enhanced memory functioning, also applicable in later life stages.

Though much attention is devoted to primary ages and the development of the toddler, Singer and Singer also address the middle school years, a stage of development often overlooked by researchers and psychoanalysts, on whose findings the researchers base their studies. The world of make-believe becomes less visible and thus more difficult to observe, study, and assess as children advance in age, as time restrictions are imposed on individual free time, and as outcome expectations increase in and out of the school structure. This, however, doesn’t diminish the necessity for play or the reality that children engage in it. As the authors point out, imagination merely goes underground, or becomes internalized and changes from a physical, and therefore observable, act to a mental engagement. One study cited caught my attention as it found that engaging in rich internal fantasy leads to less aggressive behavior in adolescence.

Adult lives tend to be focused on task oriented goals and the achievement of benchmarks. Here play is not viewed as important, pertinent, or even helpful but is often seen as a distraction. In this life stage, Singer and Singer hypothesize that continued play and fantasy aids in the creation of balanced, productive lives and self-perceived well-being. They also draw a direct parallel between allowing the imagination to take over within the cognitive realm and the ability to experience something fully and with depth of meaning. “Our willingness to suspend disbelief temporarily can help us to enter deeply into aesthetic experience, to be lost in a book” (288). This quality of engagement speaks directly to Lincoln Center Institute’s arts-focused pedagogy for imaginative teaching and learning.

A welcome discussion on the differences between imagination and creativity, terms often used interchangeably with little or no differentiation, is presented here. Creativity, the authors put forth, requires knowledge, skill sets and motivation, as well as the playful consideration of possibilities, and results in products or actions. Imagination, however, does not require a tangible resultant product or any particular skill.

Though we are not all endowed with the gifts, or the resilience, of a great artist, engaging in make-believe can bring great value to our lives and to those around us. As the research gathered and presented in this book implies, imagining how things might be different in the future than they have been in the past or are in the present provides a basis for changing reality. So why not take a moment to think of yourself as something you’d like to become?

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