Yup, they basically can’t imagine any sensation. Not sight, not sound, nothing. Yet they’re a capable and successful person. I have no idea what the experience is like in their head
It is called aphantasia and, like many things, works as a spectrum from slightly reduced imagination of one sense to totally blank imagination of all senses.
I have totally blank imagination at least for visual and smell/taste. limited imagination for sound and, as far as I can tell as good as no limitations for imagination of touch/texture based things.
So when i want to imagine a wall height, ruffling, wet, cold, red velvet curtine that was pissed on… Well all that i can come up with is imagination of how touching the wet, cold fabric feels like.
At the same time I know that it should smell awefull and I know all the facts about the curtine like its color, length, width, that you would need to imagine it but it is like reading a technical documention without any kind of pictures or smells, but with very faint and limited sound and the full vivid range of touch based sensations.
I have no issues dreaming, conjuring vivid images while sleeping is not limited at all, but I can only remember them as a list of bullet point facts. The images themself are gone as soon as i am fully woken up.
I would say the things where it limits or complicates my live the most are:
When I try to do any kind of visual artistic expression. I can only barely do that and it is a painfully slow process, everything i draw looks like it comes from the hands of a small kid. I tried to learn the technics but just can’t perform the transformation in my head to get anything to paper. So everything has to be done in tiny iterativ steps. Arts class was always pain for me in school.
When I have to solve some kind of “transform the shape into another and compare them” puzzle in games or real life (Ikea manuals for example).
I am the worst eye witness, because i can’t relive visual memories in my head. I have no visual memories at all, only a abstract, very limited, list of facts. Like remembering scenes from a movie that you have only, in a haste, read the script for.
and many more things where visual imagination is relevant.
Visual imagination is the only thing I really miss, the other senses barely matter for my, when it comes to imagination, but not beeing able to close my eyes and picture my wife in my mind at all is often painful for me.
Yup, they basically can’t imagine any sensation. Not sight, not sound, nothing. Yet they’re a capable and successful person. I have no idea what the experience is like in their head
It is called aphantasia and, like many things, works as a spectrum from slightly reduced imagination of one sense to totally blank imagination of all senses.
I have totally blank imagination at least for visual and smell/taste. limited imagination for sound and, as far as I can tell as good as no limitations for imagination of touch/texture based things.
So when i want to imagine a wall height, ruffling, wet, cold, red velvet curtine that was pissed on… Well all that i can come up with is imagination of how touching the wet, cold fabric feels like. At the same time I know that it should smell awefull and I know all the facts about the curtine like its color, length, width, that you would need to imagine it but it is like reading a technical documention without any kind of pictures or smells, but with very faint and limited sound and the full vivid range of touch based sensations.
I have no issues dreaming, conjuring vivid images while sleeping is not limited at all, but I can only remember them as a list of bullet point facts. The images themself are gone as soon as i am fully woken up.
I would say the things where it limits or complicates my live the most are:
Visual imagination is the only thing I really miss, the other senses barely matter for my, when it comes to imagination, but not beeing able to close my eyes and picture my wife in my mind at all is often painful for me.