Special english Issue No. 16/2003/1: "Childrens's Fantasies and Television"

The formation of inner pictures- an overview Inner pictures arise from experience; they are always connected to emotions and closely linked to interactions. The ability to "image " is innate and begins in babyhood. Hence television does not have the power to "out-image " children, but it does have a high level of responsibility for providing supportive and not obstructive images. Does television have the power, the negative potential to "out-image " children? Before adding a number of further considerations on the subject, it is worth looking at the way inner pictures actually come about and how they can be influenced by television (in both the positive and the negative sense). To begin with, I would like to invite you to create as many vivid and colourful inner pictures of your own as possible while you are reading this. Allow me to start off with a little quiz question: "What has a darker shade of green- a frozen pea or a branch from a fir tree in winter?" This is by no means a general knowledge question. It is more a suggestion how to become aware of the way we usually answer such non-memorizable questions in daily life: absolutely naturally and spontaneously we form an image in our imagination- you have raised the pea and the fir branch to the surface before your mind's eye-, drawing on a specifically human ability