In my last post, I talked a little about aphantasia, what it is and how it works. Having aphantasia means I have no “mind’s eye” and don’t get images in my head based on what I’m reading or hearing. You can find out more information about aphantasia and a whole truckload of fascinating facts about everything from the “mind’s eye” to the difference between visualizers and conceptualizers at the Aphantasia Network if you want to go down a very large rabbit hole.
I wanted to share a few more interesting things about aphantasia that you might not be aware of, though. It’s a spectrum in which you can see no images in your head (aphantasia), see only vague images (hypophantasia), see clear images (phantasia), or see vivid and detailed images (hyperphantasia). While you might think aphantasia would only include your sense of sight, it actually covers all five senses, and again, there’s a spectrum.
Have you ever thought of your favorite food and been able to practically taste it and feel the texture on your tongue? Or to smell how fresh cookies and breads smell as they bake with just a thought?
If so, you’re experiencing phantasia, which is simply the ability to experience mental imagery with your senses. As with sight, the other senses also fall on a spectrum. For me, I can’t think of my favorite meal and instantly experience the taste of it on my tongue. I don’t smell “vanilla” or “cinnamon” in my head when it’s mentioned in a recipe or conversation. I know what they smell like and could describe it to you, but I’m not mentally reliving those scents.
I don’t even really have a “voice in my head” that narrates my thoughts.
This is actually one of the things that fascinates me more than the lack of mental images. Some people can hear a loved one’s voice when they remember something that person says. They can hear it down to the tone and cadence in which it was said, and that’s really amazing to me because I simply cannot do that.
For other people, they can even read a book and will “hear” characters speak in different voices in their heads. It’s something they can simply do as they read and it just adds to the experience of reading the book.
You might be thinking that if I can’t see, hear, taste, or smell things mentally that my brain is a very boring space. (Okay, and maybe you’d be right sometimes!) And you might wonder if it’s possible to enjoy books or get creative ideas when a person has aphantasia.
So let’s talk about imagination for just a minute.
You might relate the ability to see mental images to actually having an imagination, but the two are not mutually exclusive. My imagination is “vivid” in a way that makes sense to my brain, which is to say that I actually “see” a lot of words come across my “mental screen” in a closed caption style.
For me in particular, I love language and the way words play across a page and how a simple turn of phrase can change the meaning of an entire conversation. So while I can’t imagine two characters sitting in a cafe with mugs of coffee as they talk, I can enjoy the play of language between them and thoroughly enjoy dialogue.
I don’t need to be able to see the leather chairs and the worn wooden tables or hear the soft music playing in the background to enjoy the scene. I don’t even need to know that one man has blue eyes and a scar beside his nose or that his companion has a shiny bald patch on the back of his head and a tattoo of a bear peeking out from under his shirt sleeve. For me, the enjoyment comes out of how the words are put together, the cadence of the scene, and what part it plays in the rest of the story. I want to see how it drives the plot, not what the barista wears as she serves up an Americano.
I share all of this to say that my experience as an aphantasic person is most definitely not universal. It’s just one person’s aphantasia life explained a little bit. I just want to give you an idea of how even something that seems as natural as having mental images can be experienced — or not! — differently by other people.
