Aphantasia

Whoa! You mean you can SEE the apple?

I’ve just had a huge mind-blowing revelation. 

Thanks to my daughter’s piercing questioning, we think I have Aphantasia.

Try this: Imagine an apple, make it green, rotate it. 

Can you see it in your mind's eye? In your head? Can you change the image?

When i try, I can’t see the green apple, and so of course I can’t rotate it!

Now my mind is blown - how can my normal be so different from everyone else's?

Do I even have a ‘mind’s eye’? 

When I ‘picture’ things, I don’t actually see them - I THINK ABOUT THEM

I suppose I see images without actually seeing them. It’s hard to explain. I thought ‘picturing’ things wasn’t as literal as it seems it is for most people, I thought it was just metaphorical. I thought it was just an expression!

If you are experiencing the world differently from other people, how do you know – until someone asks you a question and the answer results in their wide open, surprised eyes? And then it hits you like a sledge-hammer – the world is a very different place for the rest of the world (well, about 98% anyway).

Forgive me as I tell you what you already know: you can see things in your head (the back of your head?). This baffles me as much as it baffles my daughter that I don’t actually see pictures of the things I’m thinking about.

This is a snippet of our revelatory conversation:

Her: Can you see a red triangle?          

Me: No, but I know what it looks like

Her: What can you see?          

Me: Nothing, just dark – but I KNOW what a red triangle is

Her: But try and see a triangle              

ME: can sort get a passing glimpse of a tray of plastic shapes from the classroom

Her: What colours are they?                 

Me: Greys

Her: Can you make pictures in your mind?     

ME: I can sort of see some photos and some places I’ve visited – the images are translucent and skipping around, but there - like trying to remember a dream. Maybe it's because I’ve spent a long time studying them

Her: What colours can you see?         

Me: Greys

Her: Picture a plant 

Me: Oh yes, I got another glimpse

Her: Where is it?                        

Me: Over there, by the chair

Her: (Laughs) I mean where in your head! Wait, you've made a projection of it?        

Me: Sort of

Much surprised hilarity followed as my daughter eeked out more and more examples of things my brain doesn’t do, and more things that I can ‘nearly’ see, see fleetingly before they slip away, and then only in shades of grey.

It’s made me feel as if I’ve been missing out all my life. For example, I can’t see faces – I can’t create an image in my mind of any family or friends. Apparently, most people can. This makes me sad.

Perhaps this is why I have a terrible memory for names – I can now understand how much easier it is if you can picture faces in your mind!

Perhaps this is why I need to DO things to learn, and struggle with learning in the abstract

Perhaps this is why I take so many photos – other people can retrieve the images in their head.

When I draw, I don’t know what it’s going to look like until it’s done. There are illustration techniques you can follow to get consistency for characters, but painting and sketching… the result is always a surprise. With creating and decorating lettering pages, I try and imagine a floral wreath but it just doesn’t come. I have to let it develop on the page. Even when I collage, I just cut free hand and somehow the shapes usually work, I don’t even know what guides my hand. As for painting, I struggle to create a new landscape and even when I use a photographic source, I can’t be sure what my interpretation will look like until it’s done.

Whatever medium I’m working with I don’t have a finished image in my mind, I get a sense of what I want and keep going until it feels right.

My artistic life is a constant surprise!

I can’t always see things in my mind’s eye

It’s called aphantasia

edit - I'm watching 'The One Show' on BBC - they are running a story on this. Apparently it's linked to many other 'signs' I didn't include in my original post (I'm not calling the symptoms or conditions), they include difficulty in remembering things and have trouble with following directions
A whole group of animators in Pixar have elements of aphantasia too. And most of us only find out by chance that we have it. I suppose this will start to change as people talk about it more!