For me, having a mind’s eye and having the ability to visualise, something that so many people take for granted, is a superpower. I am unable to do this and have never been able to do this. I now know that I have congenital aphantasia but for most of life I wrongly assumed that everyone was just like me.
Aphantasia is the absence of a mind’s eye or scientifically, the inability to visualise things through conscious thoughts. The condition was first noted in 1880 when pioneering work exploring the role of visualisation began. However, it was over 130 years later before ‘aphantasia’ was coined and the condition formally described. This was mainly as a result of the work of Dr. Adam Zeman and his colleagues at Exeter University, UK. After publication of their work in 2015 I first became aware of the condition during a radio interview with Dr Zeman. Listening to this was one of those rare and amazing eureka moments in life; where everything you think you know about yourself and the world around you is instantly turned upside down. Actually, I am guilty of a bit of hyperbole here because in reality I made a note of it and apart from a short chat with my wife got on with the other demands in life for a number of years. Thus it was post pandemic before, prompted by another radio interview with Dr Zeman, I devoted some quality time to explore what this really meant to me.
I can remember being a child at school and the teacher asking the class to use their mind’s eye to do something. I can’t recall what but I know that it was common occurrence particularly when there was some form of creative writing to be done. When asked to use my mind’s eye I would think about what I was told to imagine and used this thinking to help me write. I had no inkling that my classmate could be conjuring anything real to see in their minds. I wasn’t a very enthusiastic writer and my work was usually the minimum that could be got away with. At that time I generally found writing and reading fiction boring. I can only now imagine what sort of reader and writer I could of been if I had been able to conjure real dragons and pirates in my mind!
My first really opportunity to recognise my lack of visualisation ability happened in my early twenties. Diagnosed with scheuermann's disease, a spinal condition, I had enrolled on a weekend self-hypnosis course in an attempt to manage my back pain. I knew little about hypnosis but had read that some people had used it for pain relief. I was also aware of stage performers who would ‘hypnotise’ the more ‘suggestive’ members of the audience and then get them to do silly things to the amusement of everyone else. There were allegations that these stage hypnotists were frauds and that everything was staged or that hypo-suggestive people were somehow just gullible individuals. Thus I arrived with perhaps more than a healthy dose of scepticism. Within minutes of the course presenter starting we were all asked to picture in our mind’s eye the number 4 written in chalk on a blackboard. The presenter was very specific about everyone seeing and said that most people could. We were asked to put up our hands up if we could. I looked around the room and everyone had their hands up. I am a little ashamed to say it now but I put my hand up too. I thought it really odd that everyone was saying they could do this ‘impossible’ thing. Perhaps they were all somehow these ‘suggestive’ people - the sort who could be easily hypnotised into thinking they’re a chicken or a kangaroo. I really was blind to the possibility that it was me that was not right. And thus this opportunity to realise the real meaning of a mind’s eye escaped me.
With hindsight, not realising that I was unable to visualise like other people, seems ridiculous. Particularly as I can now recall other situations when I could of been more aware of the difference. For example, like many people I loved the Harry Potter books and I recall classroom’s of children each sat with their own copy of a book during ‘Everybody Reading In Class’ (ERIC) time. As the series progressed I was even caught up in the need to race out at midnight to get the latest book and read it before someone in school blurted out what happened. Later, when the first film was released I and my wife Catherine, another fan of the books, keenly anticipated it. For me seeing the stories brought to life was amazing but for Catherine, someone who can visualise quite well she had already created a visual world in her head. For her, she already had strong visualisations of what the characters should look like. I recall her now exclaiming very strongly that a particular character was all wrong. I remember thinking that she must have a strong visual interpretation based on reading the books. People all have different strengths and weaknesses and I was already well aware that Catherine had a better autobiographical memory than me and could remember details that I would have no idea about. For example, what people wore, where they were sat etc. Thus bringing to life the people and places of a book just seemed to me to be just a product of her thinking more about these things that me. I was clueless that Catherine, like the majority of people, actually truly pictured this in her mind’s eye.
Like most aphantasics, described in the literature, I can dream. My dreams, at least what I am aware of them, lack vividness or vibrancy and are mainly monochromatic. Nevertheless I can, at times, recall people, places and events in my dreams. When afforded a lay-in I have often experienced the netherworld, between sleep and consciousness, where I have had the most awareness and memory of my dream visualisations. I had learnt that some writers and other creative thinkers could manipulate their dreams to help them explore imaginary worlds and ideas. I have tried this with very limited success. For example, I remember going to bed trying to restart a dream I could recall having woke up to. I don’t know whether I achieved this because I dropped off to sleep. But I recall just beginning to visualise the scene I remembered from the dream before I was asleep. I have also tried to initiate a dream based on some creative idea of my own. Again just as I begin to imagine the scene I am asleep. However, when I have come to write the next day I often make better progress suggesting that perhaps that my dream was influenced.
I state that I have complete aphantasia but this does not mean that I don’t have any visualisations at all. I can sometimes close my eyes and be lost in my thoughts and have images of various vividness presented to me by my mind. They are usually incomplete and fleeting and I can never ‘look’ at them deliberately. Any attempt to focus my attention on them results in any image swirling away into a void of nothingness. Thus, I am left wondering whether I actually saw anything or just the idea of an image. I have tried to see whether I could train my brain to be better at visualisations. I have attempted this just after waking up with my eyes closed and have been able to picture a sun at sunset. I chose this because I had spent fifteen minutes watching the sunset the evening before. The image I could 'see' was like looking at the sun through black paper. I definitely felt that I was 'seeing' something that was recognisable as the sun even if it was at the edge of perceptability. I would liken the experience to looking at something on a screen with the brightness turned down to almost zero.
Is aphantasia a disability? On a day by day basis the ability to visualise is not essential. After all I have got through life without this and it is hard to miss something you’ve never experienced. But, I am left wondering what differences it would have made to my life. Would it of aided my ability to learn? Would it have made me better able to remember details about people? How could these differences, in turn, have affected how I feel about myself, my confidence and even my personality? I therefore have lots of unanswered questions but perhaps these ponderations are inherently unanswerable. It is of course equally possible that my aphantasia has been compensated by other cognitive strengths. Perhaps I am better off? Thus, it is probably best not to think of aphantasia as a deficit and feel somehow disabled but chalk it up as yet another example of the multitude of ways in which humans differ.
