Research Catalog
Invisible companions : encounters with imaginary friends, gods, ancestors, and angels
- Title
- Invisible companions : encounters with imaginary friends, gods, ancestors, and angels / J. Bradley Wigger.
- Author
- Wigger, J. Bradley
- Publication
- Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2019]
- ©2019
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Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFE 19-11078 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Description
- 239 pages : illustrations (some color); 24 cm
- Summary
- From the US to Nepal, author J. Bradley Wigger travels five countries on three continents to hear children describe their invisible friends--one-hundred-year-old robins and blue dogs, dinosaurs and teapots, pretend families and shapeshifting aliens--companions springing from the deep well of childhood imagination. Drawing on these interviews, as well as a new wave of developmental research, he finds a fluid and flexible qualiy to the imaginative mind that is central to learning, to co-operation, and paradoxically, to real-world rationality. Yet Wigger steps beyond psychological territory to explore the religious significance of the kind of mind that develops relationships with invisible beings. Alongisde Cinderella the blue dog, Quack-Quack the duck, and Dino the dinosaur are angels, ancestors, spirits, and gods. What he uncovers is a profound capacity in the religious imagination to see through the surface of reality to more than meets the eye. Punctuated throughout by children's colourful drawings of their see-through interlocutors, the book is highly engaging and alternately endearing, moving, and humorous. Not just for parents or for those who work with children, Invisible Companions will appeal to anyone interested in our mind's creative and spiritual possibilities.
- Subject
- Genre/Form
- Cross-cultural studies.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-234) and index.
- Contents
- Introduction : See-through knowing -- Life-givers -- Flexible -- Logic and imagination -- Sharing -- Wild mind -- Who knows what? -- Ancestors and angels -- Gods and godsibbs -- Original knowing -- Friends of God.
- Call Number
- JFE 19-11078
- ISBN
- 9781503609112
- 1503609111
- 9781503609181 (canceled/invalid)
- LCCN
- 2018045204
- OCLC
- 1048934813
- Author
- Wigger, J. Bradley, author.
- Title
- Invisible companions : encounters with imaginary friends, gods, ancestors, and angels / J. Bradley Wigger.
- Publisher
- Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2019]
- Copyright Date
- ©2019
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-234) and index.
- Research Call Number
- JFE 19-11078