A Lack of Imagination

GreenFlashlight · Feb 28, 2020, 11:57 PM

It's not that I can't see things at all in my head. For instance, I had a very clear visual in a dream last night* that I'm still holding onto. But when I think, it's in words, not images, and I think that's part of why I was always shit in art classes.

*I forget the context but I think I was watching some kind of action movie. A big, lumpy monster, based heavily on the Hermetic Evolved (now there's an obscure reference) was getting shot in the back by a hero with a submachine gun, and I can still see the pattern of the bullet holes as the hero swept their gun to try to control the kickback. I can see the look of angry contempt on the monster's face as it turned around, grinding its teeth in an exaggerated chewing expression before spitting out a mouth-sized gob of lead because it had somehow sucked the slugs through its body into its mouth; because its inner flesh was somehow fluid and protean enough to allow such a thing, even though the bullet holes remained in its outer hide, which I could see despite the monster having turned to face the camera because dream logic.

juke · Feb 29, 2020, 12:59 AM

A lot of things play into this aptitude (or lack of). How we spend our time, what we use our brains for, compounds weaknesses and strengths a great deal. I read a fascinating book not long ago called Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf about how transitioning from a society that reads 'deeply' -- with books -- into a society that consumes a larger quantity of digital information in other formats has very literally changed how we think, in the same way that the emergence of written language changed how our brains worked when that became a thing. That won't surprise anybody with any layperson understanding of neuroscience, but it's a thing we don't talk about or consider.

Which is not to say that I think aphantasia is down to 'did you read books as a kid, and/or are you of an age that consumes media very differently' or anything so reductive as that. It's always much more complicated than that. It just makes me wonder what patterns or commonalities you would find, if you were able to profile people who did or did not have aphantasia (which would require even knowing which factors to look at in the first place).

I have a hard time imagining what it would be like to have aphantasia -- somewhat ironically, I guess, since the thing that makes it hard is that I have a vivid and really sensory, detail-oriented imagination. Heh.

Deleted · Mar 1, 2020, 4:03 PM

I've never thought about it much but this thread has me wondering if I have it.

I just see a void when I try to imagine stuff but I do have super vivid dreams. I can even read in dreams. I have had a dream play out fully in text before.

But when awake I just see darkness no matter what I try to imagine.

Gingerlily · Mar 1, 2020, 11:22 PM

@Kanye-Qwest said in A Lack of Imagination:

I also have an internal narrator, and it narrates things like I'm a character in a book, sometimes. If I'm not DOING something, my brain fills the silence and dead space with actual narration. I can also hear this narration in different voices. I was doing mantra meditation for awhile but just saying the word mentally, and the voice I was doing it in kept shifting. Jeremy Irons, Cate Blanchett, Tim Gunn...

Me too! Also if I've been reading something for a while, my internal narrator's style changes, not a voice that I hear but like writer's 'voice'. So if I am working through One Hundred Years of Solitude my inner monologue is super fancy, and that is my most recent example.

Ganymede · Mar 2, 2020, 12:27 AM

Mostly I hear a female version of Alan Rickman reading my words back to me as drily as possible.

Ninjakitten · Mar 2, 2020, 1:50 PM

@Admiral Annoyingly, I'm no longer sure where, but I have read that dreams are apparently separate and imagery for them happens in a different place in the brain. I have definite memory of vivid dreams, including dreaming in text (I very rarely remember dreams at all anymore, but that's a different thing).

...though part of my brain likes to point out that when awake I can only remember them in the same way I remember things I saw IRL, so how do I actually know I ever saw them the way I think I did and that they didn't actually start as the same kind of 'image file code' that real things are stored as in there?

Atomic · Mar 2, 2020, 3:21 PM

@Ganymede

I read that "as dirty as possible".

I don't want to correct myself.

Ganymede · Mar 2, 2020, 3:21 PM

@Atomic said in A Lack of Imagination:

I read that "as dirty as possible".

Cobalt · Mar 2, 2020, 10:04 PM

@faraday said in A Lack of Imagination:

@Apos I also can 'hear' music in my head far more clearly than I can 'see' images. And yeah there are definitely degrees. I know my cabinets are a sort of orangish brownish color, but I couldn't describe the countertops if my life depended on it.

T.H.I.S.

I don't see stuff in my head at all-- with the exception of when I do, it's usually when I don't have control of it: Such as dreams, or if I'm freaked out about something and having a PTSD episode or something.

But I have insane aural recall. Often, especially lately, I will wake up because some music I was listening to the night before, or someone in my apartment started playing while I was asleep, will just put itself on loop in my brain. Do you know how hard it is to go back to sleep when you have "Oh, she's cute but she's psycho, yeah a little bit psycho." stuck in your head?

boneghazi · Mar 2, 2020, 10:20 PM

@Ninjakitten I am really curious about your text dream. I cannot read in dreams at all but can get impressions from the scrambled garbaldygook. Was it a lucid dream?

Cobalt · Mar 3, 2020, 3:46 PM

@Ninjakitten said in A Lack of Imagination:

@Admiral Annoyingly, I'm no longer sure where, but I have read that dreams are apparently separate and imagery for them happens in a different place in the brain. I have definite memory of vivid dreams, including dreaming in text (I very rarely remember dreams at all anymore, but that's a different thing).

...though part of my brain likes to point out that when awake I can only remember them in the same way I remember things I saw IRL, so how do I actually know I ever saw them the way I think I did and that they didn't actually start as the same kind of 'image file code' that real things are stored as in there?

I've also had text dreams. Usually have many, many, many hours of staring at a MU* or reading for a long time. It's usually less that the entire dream is text but just that what I see is a screen of scrolling text. How is yours?

Three-Eyed Crow · Mar 2, 2020, 10:38 PM

I've had dreams about MUing and dreams where I am typing text on a screen, though thinking back on them I don't feel like I'm 'reading' when I'm dreaming about that stuff. The white text on black, scrolling screen is like a lot of other dream imagery that my mind interprets as it will, if that makes any sense.

faraday · Mar 2, 2020, 10:46 PM

@Cobaltasaurus said in A Lack of Imagination:

Do you know how hard it is to go back to sleep when you have "Oh, she's cute but she's psycho, yeah a little bit psycho." stuck in your head?

No, but I can imagine. One time I crashed at a friend's house and they had the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack playing while I fell asleep, and OMG I had that 'coconut' song stuck in my head for ages. I still can't hear it without thinking of that.

Auspice · Mar 2, 2020, 10:56 PM

I've had ABBA's Take a Chance on Me stuck in my head for nearly a week straight.

It's affecting my ability to function at this point.

Darren · Mar 2, 2020, 11:32 PM

@Auspice said in A Lack of Imagination:

I've had ABBA's Take a Chance on Me stuck in my head for nearly a week straight.

It's affecting my ability to function at this point.

Be glad it wasn't Dancing Queen

Cobalt · Mar 3, 2020, 5:13 AM

@Auspice @faraday I think that's the worst part of being an aural thing. Because I don't think in images, but sound, when I hear something and it gets stuck it is SO HARD to get it out.

Atomic · Mar 3, 2020, 2:10 PM

I don't think I have any visualization/auditory issues, save that I might be on the other side of that spectrum. My brain will construct images, not out of whole cloth, but basically... quilting it from the things I see around me. I have to squint sometimes to make sure I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing, and sometimes it's definitely not what was really there.

I also get full blown auditory hallucinations when I go to sleep, but they have been mostly limited to music. Not music I have heard before, but stuff my brain creates, in this case out of whole cloth. I have only managed to get one of them to stick long enough to really remember more than snatches of it.

Or maybe I just totally hallucinate.

boneghazi · Mar 3, 2020, 2:30 PM

When I started taking anti depressants a few years ago the first morning "after" when I was waking up, I heard the entire song of Alice Cooper's Poison to the point where when I woke up I asked my husband to stop being an asshole and turn the music down.

Turns out it was my brain that was the asshole.

Ninjakitten · Mar 3, 2020, 3:46 PM

@nyctophiliac @Cobaltasaurus

I've never felt that I was unable to read in dreams. I don't know whether I actually can/do, exactly, or whether the meaning but when it happens, it feels the same as reading in actual life. And no, not a lucid dream, but it felt very much like playing a MU* -- scrolling text of what was going on.

Ganymede · Mar 3, 2020, 3:55 PM

@nyctophiliac said in A Lack of Imagination:

Turns out it was my brain that was the asshole.

Maybe it wanted to hurt you just to hear you screaming its name.