My three-year-old cousin looks aggrieved when I can’t correctly identify the tractor in the chaotic pink lines of his drawing. My cousin, a few years older, is walking around the garden with an invisible goat on a leash, feeding it grass, a pancake, cheese… much to the amusement of the oldest of the siblings, who is playing nearby with spooky baby dolls—while building little houses for them, where a leaf serves as a trampoline and a sock as a plate, she intently and enthusiastically invents conversations between the dolls. I watch them like this, laughing… until my “young adult” mind switches to a sad mood, which at the same time sparks an idea for another article. Why aren’t lilac groves palaces and mazes anymore? Why is a blank sheet of paper an unsettling specter instead of an opportunity to depict a fantastic, dreamlike scene? Where has that extremely vivid imagination gone—the one that allowed us to see the world in more vivid colors as children, that added the prefix “un-” to “ordinary”—and why did we have to lose it as we grew older?
I’ll admit right away that the article’s title is intentionally a bit misleading. Psychological theories suggest that our capacity for imagination and fantasy not only does not diminish with age, but in fact does not even reach its peak during childhood!
Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky developed a sophisticated theory of the development of creativity, imagination, and fantasy. In his work, he built upon the works of famous predecessors and colleagues such as Wundt, Bühler, and Ribot.
Before discussing the theory itself, however, we must first explain certain concepts; imagination, fantasy, and creativity are all closely related, but they are not interchangeable.
In her book, psychology professor Alena Plháková defines imagination as “a mental process that leads to the formation of mental images, which are mental representations of past sensory or emotional experiences”; in other words, we use imagination to conjure up internal images of objects or events we have encountered in the past.
Using imagination, we then combine, reshape, and alter these “memory images,” thereby creating “images that are not merely a reproduction of previously perceived reality, but in which something has been altered or is new”.
To avoid confusion, it should be noted that Vygotsky does not distinguish between the aforementioned “imagination” and “fantasy.” Furthermore, he uses his own term “creative imagination,” which is close to Plháková’s definition of “fantasy.”
Vygotsky considers creative imagination to be “the characteristic that distinguishes the world of culture from the world of nature”. If we relied solely on memorized past experiences in life, we would indeed be able to adapt to familiar situations, but it would not be possible to build on those experiences and thus respond to any unexpected changes. Creativity and imagination are therefore not abilities reserved for children, artists, and scientists—they are “the foundation of all higher mental activity” present in each of us.
It remains a popular belief that imagination is at its richest and most developed during childhood, and that we gradually lose it as we age. Children’s imaginations stray so far from reality, and children are so absorbed in their own ideas, that this claim seems self-evident…
…but scientifically speaking, it is not entirely true. Adults differ from children in the level of their creative imagination—specifically, this ability is less sophisticated in children. Vygotsky explicitly states that creative imagination is not fully developed until adulthood (with the most intense development occurring during adolescence). The difference in creative imagination and fantasy between children and adults lies primarily in the amount of experience—children have, of course, had less time to explore the world so far, and therefore their reservoir of experiences is poorer compared to the complexity of adults’ experiences.
The most intense development of imagination occurs during adolescence. Vygotsky speaks of “convergence of intellect and imagination”; In this context, “intellect” refers primarily to the capacity for conceptual (abstract) thinking, which fully develops between the ages of 12 and 18.
“A child can imagine considerably less than an adult, but considers the products of their imagination to be more real and has less control over them,” writes Vygotsky. In fact, imagination is more complex in adulthood, as it is based on stronger constructs and allows for far richer combinations.
It cannot therefore be said that adult imagination is poorer than a child’s; the truth, however, is that this ability changes over the course of a lifetime. As our understanding of how the world works grows, we gain experiences upon which our creative imagination builds and which refine it… yet there is an undeniable dark side: the demands of the real world and the fear of failure. For many adults, the loss of illusions sparks cynicism or a certain numbness that pushes creativity and imagination into the background. Vygotsky, however, emphasizes that although this developmental trend appears in a significant portion of us, it is not a “loss” of imagination, but merely a decline to a less advanced level of this ability, to the peak of which we can return with some effort and patience.
