5 ms·

As someone with recently diagnosed aphantasia - it’s surreal that 99% population sees things that aren’t there / literally halucinates, and that it’s considered

As someone with recently diagnosed aphantasia - it’s surreal that 99% population sees things that aren’t there / literally halucinates, and that it’s considered normal!

b800h 2y ago
So you can't picture your mother's face in your mind's eye (which may or may not be there?) It's not the same as hallucination.
- FumblingBear 2y ago
  Can only answer for myself, but yes—I am completely unable to picture my parents.
- SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
  I'm not completely aphantasic, but the way you phrase the rhetorical contains exactly the massive divide that exists in experience. You believe that such an act is obviously easy, whereas for myself, it is difficult and less an image than a fleeting impression that is more conceptual than it is visual.
bondarchuk 2y ago
Yeah, it's quite peculiar how inaccurate the classic discourse around "seeing things" and "hearing voices" turned out to be. Rather than seeing/hearing vs. not seeing/hearing things the dichotomy should probably be something like "having the sense that what you're seeing/hearing is part of your own thoughts vs. externally imposed".
notRobot 2y ago
Questions, out of curiosity: What is your experience of dreaming like? What is your experience of recalling memories like? What is your experience of recalling media you've watched like? What is your experience of imagining like? What is your experience of reading like?
- Semaphor 2y ago
  I also have it. Dreaming: Normal, and I see stuff. This is apparently normal, but also why I thought I don’t have aphantasia. I even have lucid dreams. Recalling: Similar to imagining things, I usually describe it as a not seeing something, but having the memory of having seen something. Recalling media: Same as other recall. I might be able to still describe parts of it, but I see nothing. Imagining: A memory of those things, very, very rough. More like recalling a dream that is already fading. If I try to imagine a landscape, it would be like a memory of having seen a child’s water painting: 2 mountains, blue water, round sun, roughly. Reading: I love reading, very avid reader. I could never get into Lord of the Rings, and this is apparently somewhat common for people with aphantasia. All those detailed descriptions? They are just that for me, descriptions. I can’t see any of it. Now descriptions of things happening, I can totally get into that. But I don’t see anything. For most of my life I thought people were being metaphorical when they said "imagine X in your mind". I didn’t realize anyone would actually see something. There is also a fantasy writer, Mark Lawrence, who has aphantasia and wrote about it: http://www.marklawrence.buzz/story/aphantasia/ http://www.marklawrence.buzz/story/aphantasia/
  - SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
    For the record, I love Lord of the Rings. But yes, there is something about detailed description of objects in books that rarely lands for me. The words have to in and of themselves convey a kind of conceptual beauty, or call upon a great metaphor or the like, otherwise they will bore me since I see very little and will mostly just get annoyed trying to keep all the details in my head.
- SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but I would call myself "near aphantasic" and the answer to all these is that they are almost entirely conceptual rather than visual. What little visual impression I can form is extremely fleeting, incomplete, low fidelity, and in short nothing like actually seeing something. At some level I can tell my visual system gets activated, but it's completely different from truly seeing something.
- 2y ago
canes123456 2y ago
It is very much a spectrum. People that literally halucinates things are just as rare. I am much closer to the aphatasia side of things. I can picture things in my mind but is extremely different from "seeing" things. It more like remembering how something looks. Also, all the stats on this are kind of bullshit because of how hard it is to describe. People just map on "picturing" to whatever they do.
tbrake 2y ago
"Seeing" something in your imagination isn't a literal hallucination. It's an altogether separate form of visualization that doesn't interfere optically.
theogravity 2y ago
How do you get diagnosed?

As someone with recently diagnosed aphantasia - it’s surreal that 99% population sees things that aren’t there / literally halucinates, and that it’s considered normal!

b800h 2y ago

So you can't picture your mother's face in your mind's eye (which may or may not be there?) It's not the same as hallucination.

FumblingBear 2y ago
Can only answer for myself, but yes—I am completely unable to picture my parents.
SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
I'm not completely aphantasic, but the way you phrase the rhetorical contains exactly the massive divide that exists in experience. You believe that such an act is obviously easy, whereas for myself, it is difficult and less an image than a fleeting impression that is more conceptual than it is visual.

bondarchuk 2y ago

Yeah, it's quite peculiar how inaccurate the classic discourse around "seeing things" and "hearing voices" turned out to be. Rather than seeing/hearing vs. not seeing/hearing things the dichotomy should probably be something like "having the sense that what you're seeing/hearing is part of your own thoughts vs. externally imposed".

notRobot 2y ago

Questions, out of curiosity: What is your experience of dreaming like? What is your experience of recalling memories like? What is your experience of recalling media you've watched like? What is your experience of imagining like? What is your experience of reading like?

Semaphor 2y ago
I also have it. Dreaming: Normal, and I see stuff. This is apparently normal, but also why I thought I don’t have aphantasia. I even have lucid dreams. Recalling: Similar to imagining things, I usually describe it as a not seeing something, but having the memory of having seen something. Recalling media: Same as other recall. I might be able to still describe parts of it, but I see nothing. Imagining: A memory of those things, very, very rough. More like recalling a dream that is already fading. If I try to imagine a landscape, it would be like a memory of having seen a child’s water painting: 2 mountains, blue water, round sun, roughly. Reading: I love reading, very avid reader. I could never get into Lord of the Rings, and this is apparently somewhat common for people with aphantasia. All those detailed descriptions? They are just that for me, descriptions. I can’t see any of it. Now descriptions of things happening, I can totally get into that. But I don’t see anything. For most of my life I thought people were being metaphorical when they said "imagine X in your mind". I didn’t realize anyone would actually see something. There is also a fantasy writer, Mark Lawrence, who has aphantasia and wrote about it: http://www.marklawrence.buzz/story/aphantasia/ http://www.marklawrence.buzz/story/aphantasia/
- SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
  For the record, I love Lord of the Rings. But yes, there is something about detailed description of objects in books that rarely lands for me. The words have to in and of themselves convey a kind of conceptual beauty, or call upon a great metaphor or the like, otherwise they will bore me since I see very little and will mostly just get annoyed trying to keep all the details in my head.
SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
Not the person you're replying to, but I would call myself "near aphantasic" and the answer to all these is that they are almost entirely conceptual rather than visual. What little visual impression I can form is extremely fleeting, incomplete, low fidelity, and in short nothing like actually seeing something. At some level I can tell my visual system gets activated, but it's completely different from truly seeing something.
2y ago

canes123456 2y ago

It is very much a spectrum. People that literally halucinates things are just as rare. I am much closer to the aphatasia side of things. I can picture things in my mind but is extremely different from "seeing" things. It more like remembering how something looks. Also, all the stats on this are kind of bullshit because of how hard it is to describe. People just map on "picturing" to whatever they do.

tbrake 2y ago

"Seeing" something in your imagination isn't a literal hallucination. It's an altogether separate form of visualization that doesn't interfere optically.

theogravity 2y ago

How do you get diagnosed?