There isn’t one single clinical term for adults who have imaginary friends, but psychologists most commonly use the phrase “imaginary companion” (or IC) to describe a vivid imaginary character that a person treats as real. In children, this is considered a normal part of development, with up to 65% of kids creating one at some point. In adults, the experience is less common but far from unheard of, and it spans a wide spectrum from deliberate creative practice to a rich inner social life that simply never faded after childhood.
Depending on the form it takes, you might also hear terms like “paracosm,” “tulpa,” or “fantasy proneness.” Each describes a slightly different version of the experience, and none of them automatically signals a mental health problem.
Imaginary Companions in Adults
“Imaginary companion” is the broad umbrella term used in developmental and personality psychology. It covers invisible friends as well as personified objects, like a stuffed animal or doll treated as if it has its own personality and feelings. Research at Claremont Colleges found that roughly 63% of people surveyed reported having some form of imaginary companion during childhood, whether an invisible friend, a personified object, or both. A smaller but meaningful number carry the habit into adulthood.
Adults who maintain or create imaginary companions tend to use them for emotional regulation, self-motivation, and working through difficult situations. A person might conjure an encouraging inner figure when facing self-criticism, or imagine a calm, wise character to channel patience during conflict. These aren’t hallucinations. The person knows the companion isn’t real. They’re choosing to engage their imagination as a psychological tool, the way someone might talk to themselves in the mirror before a job interview, just more elaborate.
Fantasy Proneness: A Personality Trait
Psychologists sometimes describe adults with especially vivid inner lives using the term “fantasy-prone personality.” This refers to people who score high on measures of imaginative absorption, meaning they slip easily into daydreams, feel deeply immersed in stories, and may maintain rich inner worlds complete with characters. Research using the Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings (a standard questionnaire for measuring this trait) has found that fantasy-prone individuals are more likely to report intense sensory imagination, vivid memories, and ongoing relationships with imagined figures.
Fantasy proneness exists on a continuum. At the mild end, it looks like a strong imagination and a love of storytelling. At the more extreme end, some research has linked very high fantasy proneness to elevated scores on measures of dissociative experiences and a higher likelihood of meeting criteria for certain personality patterns. But this doesn’t mean having an imaginary friend is a disorder. It means the same trait that fuels a harmless creative inner life can, in some people, overlap with psychological difficulties. Most fantasy-prone adults function perfectly well.
Paracosms: When It’s a Whole World
Some adults don’t just have an imaginary friend. They have an entire imaginary world, complete with its own geography, history, languages, and cast of characters. Psychologists call this a “paracosm.” The term was coined to describe the elaborate fictional universes that often originate in childhood and sometimes persist or evolve throughout a person’s life.
The Brontë siblings are a famous example. As children, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne created detailed imaginary kingdoms with complex political systems and ongoing storylines that influenced their later novels. Many writers, game designers, and other creative professionals describe similar experiences. Child development researcher Marjorie Taylor has studied paracosms as an extension of the imaginary companion phenomenon, finding that children (and later adults) use these invented worlds as a way of orienting themselves in reality, not escaping from it.
Tulpas: Intentionally Created Inner Beings
A more niche but growing community takes the concept of an adult imaginary friend several steps further. “Tulpamancy” is a practice in which a person deliberately creates what they call a tulpa: a mental entity that is experienced as having its own personality, opinions, emotions, and even free will, while sharing the creator’s mind and body. Practitioners describe their tulpas as sentient companions who can disagree with them, surprise them, and offer genuine emotional support.
The concept originally drew from European interpretations of Tibetan Buddhist meditation practices, first popularized in the West by French explorer Alexandra David-Néel in the 1920s. Contemporary tulpamancy has little to do with its spiritual origins. It’s practiced mostly by secular individuals who connect through online forums and chat servers. For many practitioners, the experience sits somewhere between a very advanced imaginary friend and a form of deliberate psychological self-modification. They know the tulpa exists within their own brain, but they experience it as a separate consciousness sharing the same mental space.
How This Differs From Dissociative Disorders
One reason people search for terminology around adult imaginary friends is to understand where the line falls between imagination and something clinical. The key distinction is awareness and control. A person with an imaginary companion knows it isn’t real and chooses when to engage with it. A person experiencing dissociative identity disorder (formerly called multiple personality disorder) has distinct identity states, sometimes called “alters,” that have their own sense of self and can take control of behavior, often with gaps in memory between switches.
Alters are not imagined. They arise from the brain’s response to severe, repeated trauma, typically in early childhood. They operate independently in ways the person may not be aware of or able to control. An imaginary companion, by contrast, does only what you imagine it doing. It doesn’t act on its own, take over your body, or create memory gaps. The subjective experience is fundamentally different, even if the surface description (“a person in my head”) might sound similar.
Why Adults Create Imaginary Friends
The reasons are surprisingly practical. Adults describe using imagined figures to counter harsh self-talk, drawing on an encouraging character the way you might think of advice from a mentor you admire. Some create a protective inner figure to help them set boundaries they struggle with on their own. Others use an imagined wise or patient character to practice responding calmly in situations that normally trigger frustration.
Loneliness is another common driver. People who live alone, work in isolation, or have limited social networks sometimes develop inner companions that provide a sense of connection. This doesn’t replace real relationships, but it can serve as a buffer during periods when social contact is scarce. Creative professionals, particularly writers, often describe their characters taking on a life of their own, speaking in distinct voices and making unexpected choices during the writing process. This is so common among novelists that it’s almost unremarkable within that community.
The personality research paints a consistent picture: adults who maintain imaginary companions tend to score higher on openness to experience, one of the five major personality dimensions. They’re typically more creative, more empathic, and more comfortable with ambiguity. These are the same traits associated with artistic ability, strong perspective-taking skills, and rich emotional lives.