Robert Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, Op.6, (published in 1837) literally “Dances of the League of David”, is an embodiment of the struggle between enlightened Romanticism and musical philistinism. Schumann credited the two sides of his character with the composition of the work (the more passionate numbers are signed Florestan and the more dreamy signed Eusebius). The work begins with the ‘motto of C.W.’ (Clara Wieck, Schumann’s wife) denoting her support for the ideals of the Davidsbund. The Bund was a work of Schumann’s imagination, members of which were kindred spirits (as he saw them) such as Chopin, Paganini and Clara, as well as the personalized Florestan and Eusebius.
The ability to create an imaginary companion during childhood is an early expression of the special ego aptitudes found in creative individuals in adult life. Such “companions” allow these children to attempt to master creatively a variety of narcissistic mortifications suffered in reality and to displace unacceptable affects. In creative adults who had imaginary companions in childhood, the early fantasies serve as an organizing schema in memory for the childhood traumata. Stimuli in adult life which evoke the earlier traumata may revive the original imaginary companion fantasies.
A long-time popular misconception — espoused by Israella Bash, Ph.D., by the way — is that most children dismiss or forget the imaginary friend once they begin school and acquire real friends. According to one study, by the age of seven, sixty-five percent of children report that they have had an imaginary companion at some point in their lives. Some psychologists have suggested that children simply retain but stop speaking about imaginary friends, due to adult expectations and peer pressure. Still, some children report creating or maintaining imaginary friends as pre-teens or teenagers. Few adults report having imaginary friends.
My Daily Struggles 
Alexis Weissenberg (July 26, 1929 – January 8, 2012) was a Bulgarian born French pianist.
Born into a Jewish family in Bulgaria, Sofia, Weissenberg began taking piano lessons at the age of three from Pancho Vladigerov, a Bulgarian composer. He gave his first public performance at the age of eight.
In 1941, he and his mother tried to escape from German-occupied Bulgaria for Turkey, but they were caught and imprisoned in a makeshift concentration camp in Bulgaria for three months. One day, a German guard – who had enjoyed hearing Alexis play Schubert on the accordion — hurriedly took him and his mother to the train station, throwing the accordion to him through the window. The guard told them, “Good luck,” in German; the next day, they safely arrived in Istanbul.
In 1945, they emigrated to what was then Palestine, where he studied under Leo Kestenberg and performed Beethoven with the Israel Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. In 1946, Weissenberg went to the Juilliard School to study with Olga Samaroff. He also consulted Artur Schnabel and Wanda Landowska.