Profs and Pints Online presents: “Our Imaginary Friends,” a look at Tulpamancers who create other beings in their minds, with Samuel Veissière, assistant professor, cognitive anthropologist, and co-director of the Culture, Mind, and Brain Program at McGill University.

[This talk will remain available in recorded form at the link given here for tickets and access.]

Meet the Tulpamancers, a new subculture of young people who gather anonymously on the Internet to discuss their relationships with imaginary friends—they call them Tulpas—who live inside their head.

Tulpas are not mere hallucinations or wishful thinking. According to their “hosts,” they have a life and mind of their own, a personality, and are as reliable and unpredictable as anybody else. In some cases, Tulpas can even take over, or “possess”, their hosts’ bodies.

Tulpamancers may hear voices inside their head and live in rich imaginary worlds that other people have no access to, but they are not mentally ill, and they do not subscribe to quirky, unscientific New Age beliefs. Rather, they are fully aware—and proud—of having mastered advanced visualization techniques to tap into uncharted corners of their mental power.  They also report that their Tulpas provide them with the joys, guidance, and increased well-being of real friendships.

But how weird and uncharted is Tulpamancy?

In this talk, anthropologist and cognitive scientist Samuel Veissière, who conducted the first ethnographic and psychological study of Tulpamancers, explains how Tulpamancy harnesses and illuminates fundamentally normal mechanisms of the human mind.  Making detours through his research on ancient Tibetan meditation techniques, social media addiction, romantic love, and the birth of religion, Dr. Veissière retraces the cultural and evolutionary steps that gave us uniquely social minds, and explains that in many ways, human thinking already works like Tulpamancy.

Profs & Pints Online: Our Imaginary Friends