Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/08/03/i-have-aphantasia-my-minds-eye-is-permanently-closed.html
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I’m a solid “5” on the Aphantasia scale; which might seem odd, since I used to be a constant doodler and even a semi-pro comic book artist and illustrator. However, I could never really picture what I was going to draw, and had to sort of discover the image by taking a line for a walk. I used to start by drawing an eyebrow, and then work out from there.
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I am a 1 on the scale. Enough so that I deconstruct objects visually in my mind. Even as a child understanding complex mechanical things seemed rather simple. On the flip side I have minimal artistic ability. I can build complex things, but zero ability to sculpt, paint, draw, ect… I can visualize a painting, but there is no mental path of putting that on a canvas.
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I also have minimal artistic ability but can visualize objects in 3d space inside my head. I realized I could do this when I was studying drafting in school, it was easy for me to picture the object I was drafting on paper as an actual object in my head that I could examine from all angles.
Edit: I also wonder if people who have aphantasia have an easier time being artistically creative. This comes to mind because of this video I watched some time ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewsGmhAjjjI
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I’m an artist and I’m like… a 4. There’s a place in my head I can imagine what I’m going to draw but it has no connection to my visual system. When I was a kid one of the parts of intelligence tests I always did great on was “can you rotate this shape in your mind” kinds of stuff, I can visualize some complicated things in there, but it’s all ghostly and schematic and it’s not able to override what my eyes are seeing, even if that’s just some random swirls of false color in the darkness because they’re closed.
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My boss has this. It’s been cool learning about it with her, neither of us knew it was a thing until recently.
And checking the subreddit gave me a real “aha” moment. I think Mr. Linkey might be a 4 on the scale. I’m closer to a 1. When we’re moving furniture up stairs, or when we’re doing home reno, we often end up bickering and I could never quite figure out what was going wrong.
I think it’s because I would describe what we had to do (rotate the couch up so we can maneuver the stairs, for example) but he couldn’t picture what I was talking about. With construction projects I figured out that I needed to draw pictures, I couldn’t just explain stuff, but I never considered that it’s because we have completely different capabilities of picturing stuff. This is really helpful to know!
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I have very vivid fantasy imagination but cannot rotate a 3-D object in my mind or understand what something sewn inside-out will look like when it’s done. I had a terrible time with geometry in school.
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My husband is somewhere on the aphantasic side of things. He had no idea until we saw something on netflix about it and he turned to me and said, “omg I have that?!” I personally can’t quite understand how someone could not be able to picture things in their mind. Likewise, some people don’t have verbal internal self-talk, and I can’t comprehend that either.
I’m on the hyperphantasic side. I don’t find it that particularly useful as it still requires being able to articulate your thoughts or express them in some way to share with other people, so yeah I can make up a TV show or musical recording or visualize what I’m writing in a story. Big deal, that’s just in my own head.
It actually hurts my ability to write (my main creative hobby) in that sometimes I get caught up in my idea and I won’t spend enough time describing in the text what I’m imagining.
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I was about 50 y.o. when I realized that when people said ‘picture this’, they really meant it – that the “mind’s eye” wasn’t just a metaphor. I also excelled at 3D rotation questions on IQ tests, but when I close my eyes, I gots nuttin’.
I made a living for a while editing film and video, and in hindsight the ability to remember scenes as descriptions, rather than images, was key.
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I know nothing about motion picture editing and marvel at the completed product. So how is this done? It seems counter-intuitive that description would be more useful than visually linking scenes in the mind’s eye.
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Similar to elephantasia:
“Now, whatever you do, don’t picture a pink elephant-”
“OK, got it - fine.”
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This is really interesting, because it’s so hard to explain the mind’s inner processes like this to people.
Apparently, when you poll people on this question, you get a completely different answer than if you test people 1 on 1, because it’s such an individual experience, it’s difficult to come up with a snappy description that people will agree on.
From all the descriptions here, I’m absolutely a 1 on this scale. If you asked me to imagine and write a story, what’s unravelling inside my head is downright cinematic, and it’s hard to imagine that not being the case for me.
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I feel like my mind’s eye needs glasses. Imagery is elusive and slippery, sometimes clear but more often indistinct. It’s very frustrating, really.
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Agreed. And it provides such a visceral example of how we think differently. Seems like it would be a great example to introduce someone to the idea of neurodivergence in general.
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Or something like a tuner? I range from a 1 to a 4 and sometimes a super 1 with absolute clarity, motion, saturated colour. I’m certain states of being and environment play into the ability to control this. Once or twice after yoga my minds eye was active but empty of any image except a field of the most intense blue.
ETA
I know exactly what you mean, and it is not reflected on the scale proposed.
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I’m probably a 1, which is a bad thing to go with PTSD.
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… I don’t know how we can ever tell if we’re having “different experiences” in the eternal privacy of our own heads, or if we’re describing similar things with different words 
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I’d never heard of this, but as the SFP button still isn’t working, I clicked through to the front page:
I have aphantasia: my mind’s eye is permanently closed
Gail Sherman 6:44 am Sat Aug 3, 2024
Image: Billion Photos / shutterstock.com
I recently found out I have aphantasia, or more accurately, I found out that most people don’t have aphantasia.
Close your eyes and picture a red apple. Can you describe it? In how much detail? How about on a scale of 1 to 5?
Image: Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0
I don’t see anything. I never realized that people meant that they saw things in their heads. If I “picture” an apple, I am thinking about what an apple looks like. I can’t picture anything. I can describe an apple because I know what an apple looks like, but I can’t see it. When I close my eyes, all I see is black and grey. Sometimes when I am listening to music or on the verge of sleep, I see colors, but they are abstract, and I can’t control them.
It would be an understatement to say this freaked me out. According to a study published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, approximately 4% of people see nothing or only a dim image. Discovering something like this in middle age triggered a full-fledged existential crisis. The aphantasia subreddit is filled with people reacting just as I did. “Holy shit, you mean people actually SEE things in their heads?!?” Finding out that your brain is “different” is more manageable when others are similarly alarmed.
I take some comfort in knowing some well-known individuals with aphantasia, including Penn Gillette, author John Green, and neurologist Oliver Sacks. I also enjoyed learning the etymology of the word aphantasia.
When [neurologist Adam] Zeman consulted a classicist friend to come up with a name for it. The classicist suggested adapting Aristotle’s word “phantasia,” for “mind’s eye,” to describe the phenomenon, and the term “aphantasia” was born.
An article on MentorCruise.com outlines a number of possible advantages to aphantasia, including enhanced verbal communication, reduced intrusive images, and reduced cognitive overload.
The Aphantasia Network offers various resources with a wealth of information to help you become better informed about aphantasia. They also sell t-shirts that say, “I can’t picture it.” Heh.
I’m a solid 1 on the scale.
Quite fascinating stuff, thanks Gail Sherman.
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That sounds like such a cool ability. I was gobsmacked when I heard that some mathematicians can visualize mathematical equations in their heads. Human brains are so cool. 
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Wouldn’t the reverse be worse, PTSD + Fantasia; or is not being able to picture your trauma worse than being able to do so? 
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