Abstract
Under the duress of illness, children and others act to reframe meaning through imaginal coping, the use of spontaneous expressive forms such as play, humor, pretense, narrative, ritual, and metaphor. Such non-literal forms of discourse utilize the human capacity for as-if thinking or subjunctivity, in a manner not dissimilar to formal play therapy that gives children an agentic role, affective release, and flexibility of meaning. Dense figurative forms such as narrative, metaphor, and character-avatars help children to revisit and reframe the troubles they encounter in illness and treatment, thereby contributing to resilience as evidenced in ethnographic studies. The structures of imaginal coping are typified by a multiplicity of meanings, that is, juxtaposing frames of reference that Arthur Koestler called bisociation. The openness towards alternative interpretive realms in imaginal coping raises notable points of contrast with the reductionist singularity of biomedicine. When adults are open to the flexible imaginings and playfulness as an ongoing means of coping, this can work to scaffold the self-starting resilience of hospitalized or chronically ill children.
Let me tell you the story of one of the greatest laughs I’ve ever gotten in my life. I’m in the cancer ward at Sloan Kettering and I’m visiting a friend who’s dying. He’s got about a month left … And he says to me ‘what are you doing tonight?’ I said ‘I’m going down to the Cellar’ [a comedy club where the comedians are served a snack of hummus]. He couldn’t swallow …. As we’re talking about me going down to the Cellar, he coughs up this horrible thing. And he says ‘I’m so sorry.’ I said ‘It’s okay, it’s getting me in the mood for the hummus.’ I mean it was a big laugh. And he’s dying. And that’s why I say it really was one of the greatest laughs I’ve gotten in my life, because in that moment, he was happy.
Jerry Seinfeld
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Clark, C.D. (2016). Imaginal Coping: Resilience Through a Play of Tropes. In: DeMichelis, C., Ferrari, M. (eds) Child and Adolescent Resilience Within Medical Contexts. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32223-0_10
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