IF: children’s film shows some of the joy that comes from having an imaginary friend

By Paige Davis, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Leeds

In IF, 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming) discovers that she can see other people’s imanginary friends – and there are lots of them.

This is something I know well, from more than one part of my own life. I first learnt about the film not as a result of my own work on imaginary friends (or companions, as we call them in the academic world) but from my son, who used to have a group of them himself.

I got the whole family tickets to the movie’s opening weekend, keen to see how its companions tallied with my own research as the story unfolded.

It’s no surprise that…

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