Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today, I'm very excited
Speaker 1: to have Michelle Ruth Bernstein on the podcast. Michelle is
Speaker 1: a creativity researcher, writer, Kennedy Center teaching artist, and adjunct
Speaker 1: faculty member at Michigan State University. Her new book is
Speaker 1: called Inventing Imaginary Worlds from Childhood Play to Adult Creativity
Speaker 1: Across the Arts and Sciences. First of all, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being on the show. A huge fan
Speaker 1: of your work, well, thanks for asking me, and I
Speaker 1: loved your new book. I mean I followed your work
Speaker 1: for a very long time and was it very excited
Speaker 1: to see you put a lot of it into this
Speaker 1: book summarizes I think, probably over a decade of your research.
Speaker 1: Would you say that's correct, Yeah, I would, because I've
Speaker 1: been working on the book for yeah, ten ten or
Speaker 1: more years in one way or another. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: was first excited just by the title, and then and
Speaker 1: then I got a chance to read the book, and
Speaker 1: it very much lives up to the title. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd be lying if I didn't say there was a
Speaker 1: big personal interest in this book. I invented lots of
Speaker 1: imaginary worlds. I think that my whole childhood was one
Speaker 1: big imaginary world. I can't remember, thinking back my childhood
Speaker 1: of anything, any aspect of reality that I remember. All
Speaker 1: I remember or my fantasies. Weird. Is that weird? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's weird. It means that you
Speaker 1: were important to you and they actually obviously fulfill some
Speaker 1: kind of function for you. They very much did, They
Speaker 1: very much did. That's correct. How did you get interested
Speaker 1: in this topic and how did observations of your own
Speaker 1: children maybe play a role? Oh? Yeah, they played a
Speaker 1: big role, I think. First of all, you know, I
Speaker 1: had written with my husband the book Sparks of Genius,
Speaker 1: and we were looking at various imaginative thinking skills and
Speaker 1: one of them was play and I really enjoyed doing
Speaker 1: the research on that and it was one of my
Speaker 1: favorite tools, so to speak. And I remember when I
Speaker 1: was doing the research that a lot of the we
Speaker 1: were reading a lot of memoirs, autobiographies, interviews what people
Speaker 1: creative people had to say, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: were talking about how important their childhood play was in
Speaker 1: one way or another. And that really stuck with me,
Speaker 1: and I thought, wouldn't it be interesting Because these people,
Speaker 1: various people were bringing it up so consistently, it seemed
Speaker 1: to me, whether they were artists or scientists or whatever,
Speaker 1: that play really had something to do with adult creativity
Speaker 1: that I was kind of interested in that potential link.
Speaker 1: So there was that, you know, kind of curiosity about that.
Speaker 1: And then I realized sort of at the same time,
Speaker 1: but my daughter was playing in a very complex way,
Speaker 1: which I didn't do as a child, so it was
Speaker 1: very new to me, and I was fascinated by what
Speaker 1: she was doing, and I paid a lot of attention
Speaker 1: and asked her a lot of questions, and basically around
Speaker 1: the age of nine, she made up a language, which
Speaker 1: is kind of typical for that age group to make
Speaker 1: up secret languages and things like that. Well, she just
Speaker 1: sort of kept at it, and then I would start
Speaker 1: asking her, well, who speaks this language, you know, or
Speaker 1: you know, where do they speak this language? And Eventually
Speaker 1: she started writing little stories, you know, maybe one line stories,
Speaker 1: but and she would It was a pictogram language, so
Speaker 1: she drew the she drew the pictogram that meant, you know,
Speaker 1: the word, then she would translate the word underneath into
Speaker 1: you know, letters, and then she would, you know, tell
Speaker 1: you how you would pronounce it. I mean, so she
Speaker 1: was very involved in the language. And from there she
Speaker 1: just kept going. I think because we were interested in
Speaker 1: supportive she, she just kept going and started writing a
Speaker 1: lot of stories, and then she drew pictures, and then
Speaker 1: it was this whole world that she was, you know,
Speaker 1: involved in developing. And as she grew older, you know,
Speaker 1: she did it for about nine or ten years, so
Speaker 1: that's like nine to nineteen. Everything she was learning in school,
Speaker 1: in particular, she'd come home and she would transpose it
Speaker 1: into her world. So if she was learning about holidays
Speaker 1: in fifth grade, she'd come home and so, well, what
Speaker 1: are the holidays that my people have? You know, and
Speaker 1: she'd make them up. And she was enamored with those
Speaker 1: eyewitness books. I don't know if you've ever seen them.
Speaker 1: They're kind of visual dictionaries or visual encyclopedias for children,
Speaker 1: and she would write down what she had decided about
Speaker 1: her holidays in the same way that the eyewitness books did.
Speaker 1: So there'd be pictures and a little bit of text,
Speaker 1: and more pictures and a little bit of text explaining
Speaker 1: the holidays. And she did that with many, many, many
Speaker 1: subjects that caught her interest in school. Now it gowns
Speaker 1: on me that you said that you know, you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, as children do. But I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: convinced that this is a typical behavior for a nine
Speaker 1: year old. Is this really typical to do such elaborate
Speaker 1: complex It seems pretty special to me. Oh no, I
Speaker 1: didn't mean that that was typical. What I meant was
Speaker 1: well typical, maybe not even for making up languages. But
Speaker 1: there are around the age of nine children, I don't
Speaker 1: know what percentage. I think we probably don't have any clue.
Speaker 1: We'll make up language, you know, to have a secret language,
Speaker 1: and it might not go any farther than that in
Speaker 1: some cases, and in my daughter's case it did go farther.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I don't think that's as typical as you know,
Speaker 1: other forms of play. Definitely not. But also I think
Speaker 1: that from the kinds I did try to determine rates
Speaker 1: of worldplay amongst you know, college students who would have
Speaker 1: been kids around they would have been children, you know,
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties, maybe, And yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I've got that right. And I found that, you know,
Speaker 1: given a basic definition of world play, I had about
Speaker 1: twelve percent of students whom I felt I could I
Speaker 1: could see from their responses that they and they filled
Speaker 1: out a questionnaire that yes, that looked recognizably like world play.
Speaker 1: So twelve percent is it's not negligible, It's maybe not
Speaker 1: fifty percent. It's not, you know, really typical. But I
Speaker 1: think more children do it than we realize or than
Speaker 1: we recognize. Yeah, and you make a lot of really
Speaker 1: interesting points here book about implications for identifying various potentialities,
Speaker 1: so to speak. I'm dancing around the word giftedness, but
Speaker 1: I'll just say, in particular, you use a phrase in
Speaker 1: the book called child centered giftedness. Could you unpack that
Speaker 1: phrase a little bit? I find that a really interesting phase.
Speaker 1: And how does that differ from do you think that's
Speaker 1: the predominant way we viewed giftedness in the school system
Speaker 1: as child centered? Did I use that phrase? Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't even remember using that phrase. I think what I
Speaker 1: was trying to tease on, you know, saying creative giftedness
Speaker 1: is different than intellectual giftedness, and very interesting, Well, that
Speaker 1: seems to be the case. I mean, maybe I'm making
Speaker 1: a pronouncement that other people would dispute, but I agree,
Speaker 1: I would agree with you for what it's worth. It's
Speaker 1: it's very difficult for us to know who's going to
Speaker 1: be creative. I mean, we've try all sorts of things,
Speaker 1: we have all these tests that don't seem to work,
Speaker 1: and we don't really know who's going to end up,
Speaker 1: you know, being the adult genius or or even just
Speaker 1: a regular good creative person. So I tried to look
Speaker 1: at what we know or don't know about creative giftedness
Speaker 1: as something separate, like not I cur related, just they
Speaker 1: have the ability or the potential to be to make things,
Speaker 1: to make new and novel and effective things. And so
Speaker 1: looking at that, I thought, you know, having read a
Speaker 1: bunch of the literature that looks at prodigies and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and prodigies aren't necessarily creative either, although they
Speaker 1: do start very young to you know, to develop a
Speaker 1: high level of skill in a discipline, and an adult discipline.
Speaker 1: But even prodigies don't necessarily end up being creative. So
Speaker 1: seeing a child who's like really great at writing or
Speaker 1: really great at the violin or something as a child
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they're going to be creative either. And I
Speaker 1: came across someone saying, you know, maybe we should be
Speaker 1: looking at things that are germane to childhood, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I had a different twist on that. I said,
Speaker 1: let's look at play, because all children play, and we
Speaker 1: can maybe look at the way they play and determine,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, this child's playing in such a way
Speaker 1: that I think they have potential to be creative when
Speaker 1: they're adult. Absolutely. So I mean what you're doing as
Speaker 1: a consequence of that making that argument is you're really
Speaker 1: highlighting creativity is something different than other skills that we
Speaker 1: tend to We do tend to highlight in education and
Speaker 1: educational context and talk about a lot of things maybe
Speaker 1: we're neglecting. So do you think that that can play
Speaker 1: be developed? Tough question because I I know the answer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Play is by definition, you know, goalless has no goal,
Speaker 1: it's spontaneous, it's self generated. So that is a very
Speaker 1: good question. So I do try to look a little
Speaker 1: bit at how if, if this kind of play, world play,
Speaker 1: if this kind of thing is already in some ways
Speaker 1: in the schools, And I found that some kinds of
Speaker 1: curriculum do try to imitate what it means to make
Speaker 1: up a world. But of course the children may or
Speaker 1: may not be interested in what's that world because it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily their world. It's you know, it's a curricular world.
Speaker 1: It's it's a teacher said let's do this. So it's
Speaker 1: a balancing act. But I think that I think that
Speaker 1: children can become engaged, you know, depending on who they
Speaker 1: are and the time of day and whatever. Children do
Speaker 1: get engaged and things that go on in the classroom,
Speaker 1: and you you, you could, you know, you could introduce
Speaker 1: worldplay in such a way that you would also allow
Speaker 1: them their own scope for pursuing and just giving them
Speaker 1: the idea and maybe they'll go with it, and maybe
Speaker 1: they won't. You use the word world play just now
Speaker 1: nowep in mind that my audience, probably for most of them,
Speaker 1: it's the first time they ever encountered in such a word. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's because I made it up, because right, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying because my audience is stupid, I'm saying it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I made it up, because I made it up exactly
Speaker 1: what ye word mean? Okay, well, I think it means
Speaker 1: to invent an imaginary world, playful invention of an imaginary world,
Speaker 1: And so I gave it the name world play. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this because when I first started
Speaker 1: reading what literature was out there, I came across the
Speaker 1: word paracosm, and I thought, oh, that sounds so clinical,
Speaker 1: and and I thought, well, you know, I was trying
Speaker 1: to put a word to what I was doing, and so,
Speaker 1: but then I realized later that paracosm was actually coined
Speaker 1: by one of my heroes, who you know, preceded me
Speaker 1: in the field of this research, was Robert Silvey from
Speaker 1: the middle of the century, and he jumpstarted the study
Speaker 1: of imaginary worlds as a form of play, not as
Speaker 1: a form of you know, a clinical mental illness or
Speaker 1: something which had been heavily I think up to the
Speaker 1: time when he started doing his work, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of prejudice against this kind of play. People weren't
Speaker 1: sure what it is. It's sort of like they had
Speaker 1: the same kind of over tones as imaginary companions. You know,
Speaker 1: if he did that kind of thing. There was really
Speaker 1: something wrong with who you weren't socialized properly or whatever.
Speaker 1: So so really, when I realized that my hero was
Speaker 1: he's one who coined paracosm, and I thought, Okay, it's
Speaker 1: not such a bad word. But so what I what
Speaker 1: I tend to do is use the word paracosm for
Speaker 1: imaginary world. It's like a synonym for imaginary world. And
Speaker 1: world play is to me more of a verb sort
Speaker 1: of thing, you know, the act of inventing an imaginary world,
Speaker 1: the act of playing in an imaginary world. So I
Speaker 1: use both words, and I also use inventing imaginary worlds.
Speaker 1: So just to give you know a little bit more,
Speaker 1: a few more ways of discussing and thinking about about
Speaker 1: the subject. Do you do any creative writing yourself? You're
Speaker 1: a terrific writer in this book, you know, there's so
Speaker 1: many quotes that I just love. I'm just curious. Do
Speaker 1: you do any creative writing? Yeah? I do. I do,
Speaker 1: and my daughter does too. Yeah. Actually, you know, when
Speaker 1: she was doing all this world play when going through
Speaker 1: junior high in high school, and I thought, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: she's going to be a writer, you know, she's just
Speaker 1: pouring out these stories, and I thought they were terrific.
Speaker 1: Of course I would, I was her mother. But you know,
Speaker 1: she was getting a live practice in writing and I
Speaker 1: and she was writing for a child at a quite
Speaker 1: a high level. And but interestingly enough, what happened in
Speaker 1: college was she got very interested in well, she was
Speaker 1: first very interested in where language comes from, and so
Speaker 1: she started studying that, you know, in the social sciences.
Speaker 1: But then also she started getting into biology and looking
Speaker 1: at evolution of communication in animals, et cetera. So she
Speaker 1: is now a zoologist and a conservationist. But she she
Speaker 1: did pursue poetry through college, took some classes, got a
Speaker 1: couple of poems published in The New Yorker. In fact,
Speaker 1: what yeah really definitely Yeah, two poems in there. But
Speaker 1: will you send me links to them and I can
Speaker 1: put them on the show notes. Okay, I'll try to
Speaker 1: find them. Yeah. Yeah. So she had that capacity, but
Speaker 1: she chose science. So I mean, in some ways she
Speaker 1: validated my whole point. One of my major points was
Speaker 1: to say, okay, you know, previous research says that if
Speaker 1: you intent imaginary world as child, as a child, you're
Speaker 1: going to want to be a novelist or a poet
Speaker 1: or something like that, or maybe an artist, but that
Speaker 1: was about as far as they'd go. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make sense, you know. And in fact, with
Speaker 1: my MacArthur's study, I demonstrated that you can find world
Speaker 1: play in the background of creative people, no matter what
Speaker 1: they're doing what they end up doing, and I thought
Speaker 1: that there were elements that would prepare you in good
Speaker 1: ways for science too. So some ways she validated my
Speaker 1: my my hypothesis because she went into science absolutely, I
Speaker 1: you know, I was. I started off in music as
Speaker 1: an opera singer. You did ainger. Yeah, I did not
Speaker 1: get accepted into the psychology program because in my SAT
Speaker 1: scores were not high enough. So I got accepted into
Speaker 1: this school. I wanted to study psychology, and I got
Speaker 1: accepted in the opera program and then transferred in. But
Speaker 1: I to this day, I don't know if it makes
Speaker 1: any sense to say this, but I feel like I
Speaker 1: have an artist, an artist's soul. Yeah, I'm doing science,
Speaker 1: but I don't, uh. I don't only get excited by
Speaker 1: by discovery. I love discovery, but I feel like discovery
Speaker 1: without constantly thinking of possibilities for future worlds is not,
Speaker 1: you know, without without the opportunity to do that, I
Speaker 1: feel like I don't feel complete. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think too. You know, I'm sure I've read
Speaker 1: that people have argued that the pool of individuals that
Speaker 1: art draws from and science draws from is really the
Speaker 1: same pool of individuals. You know, It just they for
Speaker 1: some reason in there, you know, they have the same
Speaker 1: kind of interest in self sustained discovery and process and learning,
Speaker 1: and they either for one reason or another, going towards
Speaker 1: the sciences or they go towards the arts. But there
Speaker 1: they've got a lot of the same personality traits or
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them, or maybe we should
Speaker 1: say creative artists and creative scientists. I've noticed that if
Speaker 1: you'll get the difference between professional artists and professional scientists,
Speaker 1: you actually notice huge personality differences. Yeah. Well, yeah, there
Speaker 1: are there are differences, I mean, and I don't really
Speaker 1: want to go into them because it's not the subject.
Speaker 1: I mean, I hear a lot about it because my
Speaker 1: husband's research and he's a scientist. Bob's a scientist and
Speaker 1: an artist, and it's written a lot about You're talking
Speaker 1: about Bob honestine. Yeah, if I've written, you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of books with and we're planning on writing some more. Really,
Speaker 1: you guys have more in store for you guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're trying to get back to it. And it just
Speaker 1: took me. This detour was a little long for me
Speaker 1: to write this book. But any today just started up again,
Speaker 1: just started up again. Yeah, we get into some of
Speaker 1: the niggaray details of your studies, particularly your MacArthur Genius
Speaker 1: Award or MacArthur Fellowship study. What prompted you to study
Speaker 1: play among MacArthur grantees and what did you find? Okay,
Speaker 1: well that was at the very beginning of my research
Speaker 1: into imaginary World. So it was, you know, it was
Speaker 1: twelve years ago already something like that, and I was thinking, okay,
Speaker 1: what's gonna you know, I had I had read a
Speaker 1: little bit. There wasn't that much there was Sylvie's work on.
Speaker 1: It was just focused on children, and I had this
Speaker 1: idea that you know, as I said before, that there
Speaker 1: could be a relationship between the way you play or
Speaker 1: some kind of connection, some kind of felt connection between
Speaker 1: the way you play as a child and what you
Speaker 1: end up doing as an adult because you know, creative
Speaker 1: individual are often talking about childhood play or so I said, well,
Speaker 1: so I should be able to find a group. Maybe
Speaker 1: I could find a group that I could you know,
Speaker 1: I could query them about their play when they were young,
Speaker 1: and ideally a group that was you know, a creative
Speaker 1: group somehow we feel that they were creative, and ideally
Speaker 1: also a group that wasn't just artists made up of artists.
Speaker 1: So I mean, the MacArthur group was practically, you know,
Speaker 1: handmade for my study. And I knew about them because
Speaker 1: my husband had a MacArthur and so I just thought, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe he could help me contact all these people. And
Speaker 1: so that's why the first paper I wrote, which was
Speaker 1: based which you know, looked at this study, was written
Speaker 1: with Bob because he was instrumental in getting me access
Speaker 1: to the MacArthur fellows and also instrumental in working out
Speaker 1: the statistics with me. So absolutely, okay, so what did
Speaker 1: you find? So basically what I found, I think is
Speaker 1: that well, first of all, yeah, well I was looking
Speaker 1: at I wanted to get a sense of rate and
Speaker 1: such and such. But I found that well, I got
Speaker 1: at least somewhere around one hundred MacArthur's to fill out
Speaker 1: my query. Yeah, that's tough. That's tough. And I thought
Speaker 1: that was a really good response rate, you know, for
Speaker 1: something coming out of the blue. And I think what
Speaker 1: I found basically is that MacArthur and I MacArthur fellows
Speaker 1: had world play. Those who said they had world play were,
Speaker 1: you know, across the board in all the different fields.
Speaker 1: You know, it kind of it didn't matter. It wasn't
Speaker 1: more artists than scientists. It was just a smattering and all.
Speaker 1: And in the proportions you would expect considering the purpose
Speaker 1: ortion of MacArthur's that were in those fields, the proportions
Speaker 1: matched up pretty well. That you know, I was just
Speaker 1: kind of across the board there was worldplay, which was
Speaker 1: something I was hoping to find, and I did find
Speaker 1: that instead of finding just only artists wrote back to me,
Speaker 1: but it was a mix of everybody. And then I
Speaker 1: compare them, of course to another group, and I compared
Speaker 1: them to Michigan State University students. So I did the
Speaker 1: same kind of querying with them and found some interesting
Speaker 1: differences between the two groups. And I think that's where
Speaker 1: something you know, worthy of looking at crops up. I mean,
Speaker 1: because for instance, students expected world play to the artists.
Speaker 1: The students who were artists expected to have world play
Speaker 1: in their lives, did have worldplay in their lives, expected
Speaker 1: to do it professionally. And the students who were scientists
Speaker 1: were studying to be scientists, did not expect it. And
Speaker 1: that was like almost completely you know, tip topsy turvy
Speaker 1: from from what the Macarthurs were. So I had high
Speaker 1: rates of of you know, compared to the students. The
Speaker 1: rate of worldplay amongst amongst the MacArthur's scientists was highly significant.
Speaker 1: So that's the kind of thing. I found that the
Speaker 1: significance was very high in all the fields, not necessarily
Speaker 1: the arts. So because and I you know, I had
Speaker 1: a smallish group. So I'm not saying this is like
Speaker 1: you know, the end statement about about the relationship between
Speaker 1: the different disciplines or between you know, creative adults and students.
Speaker 1: But but it just sort of said, oh, there's something
Speaker 1: here that we need to look at. Absolutely only you
Speaker 1: find did they report that they that this was a
Speaker 1: contribute to their adult creativity, Like do you think there
Speaker 1: was a causal link there between because that's just an association, right,
Speaker 1: what kind of evidence did you find for maybe a
Speaker 1: causal link. Well, of course, the way I the way
Speaker 1: that study was conducted, the evidence for causal link would
Speaker 1: have simply been people's you know, there's statements about they
Speaker 1: saw a link, you know, they saw a connection. So
Speaker 1: I did ask one of the questions was, do you
Speaker 1: see any connection between the way you played as a
Speaker 1: child and the way you where you work as an adult?
Speaker 1: And you know, I forget what it was, but some
Speaker 1: some some subset of the MacArthur said yeah, there's a connection,
Speaker 1: and they sometimes yeah. I mean if I hadn't, you know,
Speaker 1: I would have the study would have gone off in
Speaker 1: a different direction completely because a lot of what it
Speaker 1: did subsequently was built on trying to understand what I
Speaker 1: got out of MacArthur's. But I also ended up being
Speaker 1: able to inner view a number of people who said
Speaker 1: interesting things in the query and found that, yeah, for
Speaker 1: some individuals there was a very close connection of some sort,
Speaker 1: you know, between the way they played and what kinds
Speaker 1: of things they were trying to do as adults. I mean,
Speaker 1: one example is Laura Otis, whom I talk about in
Speaker 1: my book at some length, and she was kind enough
Speaker 1: to give me several interviews I've actually met her and
Speaker 1: done some things with her subsequently. But you know, she
Speaker 1: had an imaginary world, really, you know, definitely, no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. Imaginary world when she was young, and she
Speaker 1: would tell stories to herself, auto stories when she was
Speaker 1: quite young, and then around age of nine or ten,
Speaker 1: she would she started writing them down, and she drew
Speaker 1: some pictures and maps and things like that as well.
Speaker 1: And as an adult she studied science. She would thought
Speaker 1: she was going to be a scientist, a neuroscientist, but
Speaker 1: then she went back to school and went and got
Speaker 1: a degree in literature. And so now she's a professor
Speaker 1: of literature, but her specialty is looking at the literature
Speaker 1: of science, and and she writes novels. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know that. I don't know that she's gotten any
Speaker 1: of her novels published, but she's quite serious about She's
Speaker 1: written more than one, and she's you know, so she's
Speaker 1: she's doing in some ways the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not part of her it's her avocation at
Speaker 1: this point rather than her vocation, but it's very serious
Speaker 1: for her. And so she's she's, you know, in some
Speaker 1: ways recapitulating what she did as a child writing stories.
Speaker 1: But she also expressed and I have, you know, talked
Speaker 1: about it in the book, you know, other aspects of
Speaker 1: the two enterprises that seem to be the same for
Speaker 1: her or similar excellent. Do any of these imaginary worlds
Speaker 1: involve some sort of grandiose like like a future self
Speaker 1: version of the person? So it's it's it is an
Speaker 1: invention of imaginary world, but that imaginary world is like
Speaker 1: that person as an adults, really successful and famous. Because
Speaker 1: I believe you defined it that way, you'd actually get
Speaker 1: higher incidences of world play among you mean, like a
Speaker 1: Walter Mitty sort of thing, maybe Walter Mitty or I
Speaker 1: mean I personally had in my imaginary world where I
Speaker 1: was a speaker or an inspiration. I literally had fantasies
Speaker 1: and I remember I remember being in the shower and
Speaker 1: thinking about myself as an adult giving inspirational talks to people.
Speaker 1: What in the world that is that? What is that? Yeah? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't come across a lot of that,
Speaker 1: but there's definitely definitely instances of that. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: for instance, of Jerome's singer you know, oh yeah, fired psychologist,
Speaker 1: but he's written himself in some of his books about
Speaker 1: his early world play, and and it involved alter egos
Speaker 1: like that, very strongly conceived alter egos. That because I
Speaker 1: bring this up because one of E. Paul Torrence's key
Speaker 1: findings in his longitudinal study of creative achievers. But he
Speaker 1: started he studied them when they were in elementary school
Speaker 1: and then followed them up to see what differentiated the
Speaker 1: creative achievers from those who were lower in creative achievement
Speaker 1: as well as personally meaningful creative creative behaviors. He found
Speaker 1: that one of the things that was most distinguishable was
Speaker 1: the extent to which these children fell in love with
Speaker 1: a future image of themselves as children. And so I'm
Speaker 1: trying to I'm just wondering if that can be a
Speaker 1: subset of your world play, where children who have a
Speaker 1: very elaborate imaginary world, but that imaginary world involves their
Speaker 1: future self, if that could be part of your role playing.
Speaker 1: It certainly was for me, and I think it significantly
Speaker 1: helped create the kind of person I am today because
Speaker 1: I held on to that future image of myself despite
Speaker 1: my reality, which was unfavorable because I special education. So
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering, Yeah, now that's really interesting. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't come across enough of that to pique my
Speaker 1: interest in following that particular line. But what I did find,
Speaker 1: which I think might be related, is that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I found this over and over again. I found this
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, memoirs, historical Figures in Current People,
Speaker 1: and also in the Robert Sylvie book, which is the developer,
Speaker 1: what is it called the Development of Imagination, where they
Speaker 1: that book basically consists of giving you case studies, you know,
Speaker 1: the information from all the case studies. And I put
Speaker 1: over that book and found lots and lots of the
Speaker 1: individuals that he talked to or interviewed the children felt
Speaker 1: they had a very strong sense of themselves in childhood
Speaker 1: as a creator, the sense of the self as a creator,
Speaker 1: and so that's kind of a strong sense. They often
Speaker 1: use the word like God like, godli like or you know.
Speaker 1: The Brontees were had that same sense of themselves, and
Speaker 1: they called themselves genies, you know, the kind of genies
Speaker 1: that come out of a lamp, so to speak. And
Speaker 1: they when they played together, these siblings, the Bronte siblings
Speaker 1: had these imaginary worlds that lasted from through childhood through
Speaker 1: young adulthood, and when they played together. Initially they were
Speaker 1: playing together a foresome they were they were genies. They
Speaker 1: they their role in the play was as the genies,
Speaker 1: so they could make you know, they could come in
Speaker 1: as gods and if someone had died that they wanted
Speaker 1: to resurrect, they could do that and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Not every child has that same kind of ego involvement,
Speaker 1: I guess what you might call it, because and that's interesting.
Speaker 1: The Sylvie book they did try to look at that,
Speaker 1: and they found, you know, a variable response. Some children
Speaker 1: would be ego involved that way, they would be a
Speaker 1: character in that world or a god in that world
Speaker 1: or something, and others would be removed. So that was
Speaker 1: a variable that you could say, well, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: in this instance they're ego involved, and they are very
Speaker 1: naturalistic in their approach, and you know, in this case
Speaker 1: they're not ego involved and whatever. So they had kind
Speaker 1: of a few scales which they tried to use to
Speaker 1: kind of understand the different types of imaginary worlds. My
Speaker 1: mom would definitely agree with you with that expression ego involved.
Speaker 1: I was a child. I think I was only child.
Speaker 1: I think it might have some aspect of this story,
Speaker 1: this part of the puzzle. I think, you know, do
Speaker 1: you do you find higher incidences of worldplay among only
Speaker 1: children by any chance? Well, you know, I didn't have
Speaker 1: I didn't have the information to ask that question. But
Speaker 1: that's that's a good question because I think one of
Speaker 1: the a fairly basic characteristic of world play is that
Speaker 1: it's solitary play. Now, sometimes it's you know, with one
Speaker 1: or two others that are very in so I call
Speaker 1: that like intimate play. You know who those people are.
Speaker 1: They're always the same couple of people that you share
Speaker 1: this world with, you know, usually siblings or very close
Speaker 1: friends or something, but not a large group. If the
Speaker 1: group gets too large, you lose control of the world,
Speaker 1: you know, it becomes something else. So it's not playground stuff.
Speaker 1: It's so it's either solitary or small group get together.
Speaker 1: And whether that means that they're more likely to be
Speaker 1: only children, I have no idea. My don't is not
Speaker 1: an only child, because I did. She was the oldest,
Speaker 1: and her brother, who was a year and a half younger, uh,
Speaker 1: never did get interested in worldplay, although she tried at
Speaker 1: least once I know of, to get him involved. Her
Speaker 1: world was called car kar nothing to do with the vehicles,
Speaker 1: but that was what she called them. And so she
Speaker 1: got him to be involved for like one day and
Speaker 1: he invented the world of truck and that was like
Speaker 1: he really wasn't into it, so that it didn't last further,
Speaker 1: It didn't last long. He played with her a lot
Speaker 1: of other things, and I talk quite a bit about
Speaker 1: the way they played, which I thought, you know, was interesting,
Speaker 1: but no, he you know, some kids just don't go there,
Speaker 1: they're not interested. Do you think that this could be
Speaker 1: a way of identifying creative giftedness and children that could
Speaker 1: be supplemented alongside the use of i Q tests, I do,
Speaker 1: I really do. I think More generally, I'd say, take
Speaker 1: a look at how they play spontaneously. No not not
Speaker 1: in school necessarily, but what they do on their own
Speaker 1: for play, and see how complex it is, See what's
Speaker 1: going on in that play. It doesn't always have to
Speaker 1: be what doesn't have to be the same kind of
Speaker 1: you know, there are lots of kinds of imaginary worlds.
Speaker 1: So I mean, some children may write stories about the
Speaker 1: same place over and over again, the same characters and
Speaker 1: develop that world in that way. Some kids, you know,
Speaker 1: might make up. Well, I don't know what they in
Speaker 1: the past they would do. They would make big train
Speaker 1: systems or ship systems or whatever, you know, whether they
Speaker 1: would do you know, they had this kind of focus
Speaker 1: on a system, on developing a I don't know what
Speaker 1: else to call it, you know, a kind of organism,
Speaker 1: a social organism, thing that works, and there's not that
Speaker 1: many people. That was another thing that Sylvie found. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes there are people orient a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the world, and sometimes there are no people in the world.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure there are differences in terms of autistic
Speaker 1: tendencies and other individual differences like schizoid tendencies, and I
Speaker 1: bet they're all sorts of fascinating individual differences predicting content
Speaker 1: of world play. I'm so interesting. I bet narcissism as well,
Speaker 1: probably predicts the ego involvement. You know, that might be true.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't go into some of those things.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not trained as a psychologist, so I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll open I'll see what I can do to get
Speaker 1: people interested in this, and then you know, they're going
Speaker 1: to have their own They're going to have their own
Speaker 1: point of view and their own things they're going to
Speaker 1: want to and they're going to want to study. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that be interesting though, to really look at different individual
Speaker 1: differences predictors of the content there, the flavor of the world,
Speaker 1: or or the kind of structure of it. Yeah, really interesting.
Speaker 1: Sure there's there might be some kind of relationship there,
Speaker 1: you know, but I wouldn't I wouldn't know what it
Speaker 1: is at this point. Yeah. Well, it makes me want
Speaker 1: to do more research on that myself. Good. That's really
Speaker 1: good stuff. So do you think that in an increasingly
Speaker 1: wired and collaborative age, that privately constructed worldplay has a future? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a little right from your book, by the way. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I you know, I thought I can't not look at
Speaker 1: video games and you know, online realities. I again, I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert in any of that, but I mean
Speaker 1: it's just so it's just something that has to be
Speaker 1: you know, looked at and kind of get a handle on,
Speaker 1: because a lot of what video games seem to be
Speaker 1: delivering to kids is this sense of being in an
Speaker 1: imaginary world and if they can if that's you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going on the premise that Okay, around certain age,
Speaker 1: around nine years old, ten years old, this kind of
Speaker 1: this kind of thing becomes very very fascinating to children.
Speaker 1: I mean you can find studies of fork building and
Speaker 1: things like that. You know, it starts happening around that age.
Speaker 1: So kids are coming more interested in this kind of
Speaker 1: sense of creating their own world in some way away
Speaker 1: from the home base, you know, whether they build forts
Speaker 1: or find special places and then have big play scenarios
Speaker 1: around them. I mean I used to do that, but
Speaker 1: I think that's more typical playing outside, you know, in
Speaker 1: a fourth that you've built. So I said, okay, so
Speaker 1: with video games and things, now we're handing these kids
Speaker 1: these things on a plate in sense, I mean they
Speaker 1: can buy the game. They don't have to go outside
Speaker 1: and make a ford anymore because they can do all
Speaker 1: this stuff online and it's got the same flavor, the
Speaker 1: same adventuresome flavor, and a lot of the kids I did,
Speaker 1: you know, I did try to interview a number of
Speaker 1: kids who were very interested in who did play video
Speaker 1: games and told me that they what they liked about
Speaker 1: it was like feeling like they're in another world. So
Speaker 1: so I, you know, I have a chapter looking at
Speaker 1: what they were experiencing, what they were getting out of
Speaker 1: out of the play with the video games and the
Speaker 1: online the online encounters, the online realities, And I think
Speaker 1: basically what I what I ended up thinking was that,
Speaker 1: you know, there are elements that are very much the same,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as the whether it's online or
Speaker 1: whether you made it up yourself, But the crucial difference
Speaker 1: is you didn't make it up yourself. Yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: packaged imagination. Yeah, it's prepackaged. So no matter what, even
Speaker 1: the kids, I mean, some kids think that they have
Speaker 1: they have unlimited choice et cetera in the games. But
Speaker 1: as I talked to them, as the kids I talked
Speaker 1: to got older and older, like the high schoolers, they
Speaker 1: began to realize, no, you know, it's kind of constrained
Speaker 1: by whoever built the game, you know, and then you
Speaker 1: know you have so although there seems to there is
Speaker 1: a lot of choice, et cetera, you're still constrained by
Speaker 1: someone else's imagination. So so bottom line was it's not
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing as making up your own. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I thought that there are ways
Speaker 1: of you know, just like with anything else, there are
Speaker 1: ways of using the games too, as jumping boards, you know,
Speaker 1: for your own imaginary worlds, especially if you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to play with them twenty four to seven, you know,
Speaker 1: and you're really fascinated by it, and their mom says,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got to turn it off. You know,
Speaker 1: you're only allowed to play with it for an hour
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. So a lot of the kids
Speaker 1: I was talking to were not allowed to play constantly,
Speaker 1: so away from the game, they would they would still
Speaker 1: play it, but now they would be making it up themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, And I thought that was that's I thought,
Speaker 1: that's the interesting part. That's the part where we can
Speaker 1: can use the technology. And then I thought, you know too,
Speaker 1: if kids can make up their own imaginary if they
Speaker 1: can make up their own video games, then they can
Speaker 1: make up their own imaginary world as a video game,
Speaker 1: you know. And there are you know, forays into doing that.
Speaker 1: It's still very difficult because it's a tough it's a
Speaker 1: tough thing to master's degree programs. That there's a mester
Speaker 1: program at Cardika Melon you can create your own creating
Speaker 1: video games. Yeah. Well, I mean like as a child,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm saying that there could be a
Speaker 1: continuity between that. Yeah, as a child and as an adult.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this we tend to treat as though
Speaker 1: like this plaque stuff is only for kids. Well that's
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about them. But what I was thinking like,
Speaker 1: there are programs like the Scratch program out of MIT
Speaker 1: where they're trying to make it possible for children who
Speaker 1: are not programmers and can't be can't be programmers at
Speaker 1: a very young age, but they can learn to. They
Speaker 1: get sort of like the building blocks and they can
Speaker 1: put them together and start, you know, making things, making videos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to look at I go, I'll put a
Speaker 1: link to the Scratch program and we'll look into that
Speaker 1: a little bit more. Yeah, you know, what it looks
Speaker 1: like is going to change. I mean, how children choose
Speaker 1: to build their worlds will change as our technologies change,
Speaker 1: as our technologies of expression change. That's just you have
Speaker 1: to expect that, you know. So they're going to use
Speaker 1: paper and pencil to write a story, then they're going
Speaker 1: to use the computer to write the story. Then, you know,
Speaker 1: it depends how we as adults. You know, what kinds
Speaker 1: of expressive forms, are artistic forms or whatever are really
Speaker 1: important to the culture, and that's what the children will
Speaker 1: be using. I think to develop their imaginative you know,
Speaker 1: their imaginary worlds, and so I think we have to
Speaker 1: expect that they would change what it looks like, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily what goes into the making of it, the
Speaker 1: imagination and the making of it and doing it yourself
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. Do it your self imagination.
Speaker 1: I like that for you. Yeah, well, yeah, we need
Speaker 1: I like it. Just that that phrases this end of
Speaker 1: my head. So let's end this just the interview talking
Speaker 1: about implications for education. You know, you talk about ways
Speaker 1: that worldplay can be harnessed for classroom objectives or could
Speaker 1: be integrated into the classroom seamlessly. Do you think society
Speaker 1: like education has created this false dichology between learning and play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so to some extent. I know, it's a
Speaker 1: really it's a really complex issue how best to train
Speaker 1: children for the for the grown up world. But if
Speaker 1: we're serious about training them to have or trying to
Speaker 1: develop in them as much creative potential as we can,
Speaker 1: and the behaviors and the attitudes and the understandings that
Speaker 1: always being creative, and I think we have to at
Speaker 1: least make some room for that in our curriculum because
Speaker 1: we're not you know, it's not just going to happen
Speaker 1: if we need more of it, and people say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need more people who are who are able to
Speaker 1: be flexible and change and you know, take on new
Speaker 1: problems throughout their lives and and be creative about it.
Speaker 1: So I think I've done. How can teachers do that? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm no pundit about this stuff, but I think that
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's too bad that there
Speaker 1: is when there's no room in the curriculum for some
Speaker 1: kind of playful learning. And I don't mean just whatever
Speaker 1: you want to do, but there you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: stuff you can do with that's playful, that that taps
Speaker 1: into the child's you know, interests, the interests and their
Speaker 1: play needs as well and allows them to use them
Speaker 1: in the classroom at times, not all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to part of education is transfer of knowledge,
Speaker 1: you know, and we have to do that too, but
Speaker 1: we could also try to transfer the behaviors and attitudes
Speaker 1: of creative imagination. And that takes a different you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like, you know, you can't read the manual
Speaker 1: and learn how to do it. It's not you can't
Speaker 1: read the manual learn how to ride a bike. You
Speaker 1: have to do it. Yeah, that's how you learn to
Speaker 1: be creative by doing things that are creative at your
Speaker 1: you know, at your level, you know, as appropriate to
Speaker 1: where you are, and when you're very young, especially playful.
Speaker 1: Being playing is when children are at their most you know,
Speaker 1: personally creative. I think love that you say and relate
Speaker 1: to that you see of this quote. Children who cannot
Speaker 1: play do not develop the impulse control, the negotiating skills,
Speaker 1: the problem solving tools, or the collaborative capacity is necessary
Speaker 1: seed in modern society. So there are some deepiplications here
Speaker 1: of not encouraging these capacities, right, right, And that's just generally,
Speaker 1: that's just out and that's just the literature, you know,
Speaker 1: that's not my contribution necessarily to understanding. Summary. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a summary of what people. Yeah, and I really love
Speaker 1: this other. I just have to say another juicy quote
Speaker 1: in the private country of the mind, this might be
Speaker 1: one of my favorite quotes of all times, you know,
Speaker 1: up there with JFK quotes or in the private country
Speaker 1: of the mind. You create visions of the way things were,
Speaker 1: in the way they might be. You enter into imagined
Speaker 1: realms and shape an alternative space and time. To one
Speaker 1: degree or another, we all do. Yeah, is there anything
Speaker 1: you want to add or any last words you want
Speaker 1: to say for this interview? Well, I think feeding off
Speaker 1: of that that quote, which I think comes from the
Speaker 1: beginning of the book, what I'm really trying to say is,
Speaker 1: although we haven't necessarily recognized it yet, world play or
Speaker 1: however you want to call it, in venting imaginary world
Speaker 1: is something that we do throughout our lifetimes. But as adults,
Speaker 1: we tend to think that it's not play anymore. We
Speaker 1: don't understand it as play. It becomes part of our work.
Speaker 1: Those of us who are engaged in creative problem solving,
Speaker 1: maybe not, or maybe those are the ones who do
Speaker 1: understand that they're playing still, and the rest of society
Speaker 1: thinks no play is no good. When you're an adult,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be playing. You should just be working hard.
Speaker 1: And what I'm saying is when when we're at our
Speaker 1: creative best, where we've got this sense of play, and
Speaker 1: it permeates what we're doing throughout our lifetimes. And I
Speaker 1: guess part of what I tried to do with the
Speaker 1: book was to help us recognize that wonderful I highly
Speaker 1: recommend people read the book, and I hope it gets
Speaker 1: in the hands of lots of educators and policy makers
Speaker 1: as well. Thank you so much for the important work
Speaker 1: you do and for being on my show today. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for asking me. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to The Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I
Speaker 1: hope you found this episode just as informative a foker
Speaker 1: listen if I did. If you don't like, to read
Speaker 1: the show notes for this episode or her past episodes,
Speaker 1: if you go to the Psychology Podcast dot com