Growing up without brothers or sisters, I created a few imaginary friends whom I played with frequently from approximately age three to six. The most memorable of these was a pair of identical twin girls named Kacey and Klacey. They were my age and size, and we would often do things together like play on the swings in the backyard or have tea parties. Kacey and Klacey also had a little sister named Milky. I had a strong image of them all in my mind’s eye, and they seemed very real to me at the time. My parents were mostly amused by it, though they did question whether it was natural for my imaginary friends to be so detailed and plentiful. They recall me having long conversations at the table with “no one,” and when asked, I would always say I was talking with Kacey and Klacey. Often when playing (with toys, or games) I would say I was playing with Kacey and Klacey or Milky. I would talk about them often as well, and for a period of time I remember being fixated on the idea of a seeing-eye dog, begging my mother to let me have one. Rather taken aback, my mother asked where I got the idea; I replied that Kacey and Klacey’s mother was blind, and that I wanted a seeing-eye dog like hers. As an adult, I am still surprised when someone tells me that they never had imaginary friends growing up, as they were such an important—and enjoyable—part of my childhood.
And yet “imagination” may not be an adequate term here, for imaginary companions may seem intensely real, as no other products of fantasy or imagination do. Perhaps the difficulty of fitting our adult categories of “reality” and “imagination” to the thoughts and play of children is not surprising; for, if Piaget is right, children cannot consistently and confidently distinguish fantasy from reality, inner from outer worlds, until the age of seven or so. It is usually at this age, or a little later, that imaginary companions tend to disappear.
Children may also be more accepting of their hallucinations, having not yet learned that hallucinations are considered (in our culture) “abnormal.” Tom W. wrote to me about his “intended” childhood hallucinations, hypnagogic visions he would bring on as entertainment from the ages of four to seven:
I used to entertain myself while falling asleep by hallucinating. I would lie in bed and stare up at the ceiling in the half-light. . . . I would stare at a fixed point, and by holding my eyes very still, the ceiling would neutralize and gradually become swarming pixels, which would become patterns: waves and grids and paisleys. Then, in the midst of that, figures would start to appear and interact. I remember quite a few—[and] I remember the exceptional visual clarity of them. Once the vision was present, I could look around at things the way you would a film.
There was another way I used to do this. There was a family portrait that hung at the foot of my bed, a classical staged photo of my grandparents, cousins, an aunt and uncle, my parents, my brother, and me. Behind us was a huge privet hedge. Again, in the evening, I would gaze at the portrait. Very quickly, strange and delightfully silly things would start to happen: apples would grow out of the privet hedge, my cousins would begin to chatter and chase each other around the group. My grandmother’s head would “pop off” and attach to her two calves, which would then start to dance about. Grim as that seems now, I found it hilarious then.
At the other end of life, there is a special sort of hallucination that may attend death or the anticipation of death. Working in old-age homes and nursing homes, I have been struck and moved by how often patients who are lucid, sane, and fully conscious may have hallucinations when they feel that death is near.
When Rosalie—the very old blind lady I described in the chapter on Charles Bonnet syndrome—became ill and thought she was dying, she had visions of her mother and heard her mother’s voice welcoming her into heaven. These hallucinations were completely different in character from her usual CBS hallucinations—they were multisensory, personal, addressed to her, and steeped in warmth and tenderness. Her CBS hallucinations, by contrast, had no apparent relation to her and aroused no emotion. I have known other patients (who did not have CBS or any other special condition facilitating hallucinations) to have similar deathbed hallucinations—sometimes the first and last hallucinations in their lives.
14
Doppelgängers: Hallucinating Oneself
