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The mental realities prior to the emergence of reasoned thought are not confined solely to early childhood. They persists throughout life, long after cause and effect, logic, and modernity have exerted their supremacy on the processes of thought. I like to think of these embryonic realities as proto-rationals that enable the imagination to generate and explore worlds that are not of necessity bound to the physicality and credibility of what is generally accepted as normal reactions/experiences to the world at large.
Unbounded in this way, such thoughts seem to extract the deep-seated, poetic construction of life that underpins and informs many of the initial stages of creativity. Many ancient myths entail such realities, and following Giambattista Vico’s argument, act as enablers to generate, to make human types that become the cornerstones of culture and its history.
The hierarchy of mental states that places rational thought at its apex is a product of rational thought itself, and accordingly often masks, and even occasionally denigrates, the beauty and insights in alternative processes of thought. Counter-wise, the mental realities constructed by these alternative processes are just as truthful and coherent in their own lights, as those traditionally generated by rational thought when faithfully adhering to its requisite logic. To my mind, the task of understanding the coherency and truth function of proto-rationals is the challenge I think this genre poses to both the writer and the reader.
Apropos, in this genre I have concentrated on, a) children’s reactions to, and interpretations of, the adult world they are immersed in; b) adults whose realities are generated and dependant upon derangements of one sort or another.