Aphantasia (the inability to visualize) has a name now!

Finally remembering to crosspost this from tumblr! I've mentioned my inability to visualize in passing a number of times—it's one of those quirks of my brain which I take for granted but which hugely impacts how I navigate the world, like the dyscalculia and cat-thing and the general crazy; and every few years or so I google those things, and it seems that since the last googling and this one, someone gave a name to the thing!



aphantasia has a name now!!!

I haven’t been this shook since I googled “number specific dyslexia” (it’s called dyscalculia which, yes, ty, is obvious in retrospect)

for the longest time I thought people were speaking metaphorically when they talked about visualization, because I can also imagine the concept of something; I talk about thinking in sentences because I can give things descriptors, I can absolutely think about things. I’ve just never in my life voluntarily seen an image in my head.

(I have involuntary images—I absolutely dream in full image & color (and sound and smell and sensation). I occasionally involuntarily visualize when falling asleep, and I hate it!! my whole life, everything I’ve seen or “seen” when awake has been Real, or at least In Front of My Eyes; I have no visualization-is-normal buffer for fake images—so my brain process the flashes of visualization I occasionally experience when entering sleep state as Also Real, and it’s profoundly unsettling when it’s shit like “probably a monster”)

(for this reason, I’ve intentionally never tried to train myself to visualize, or to encourage near-sleep-state visualization. my mental state isn’t stable on a good day; I don’t want a richer and more suggestible imagination)

I’m also partially face-blind & as mentioned dyscalculic, which I find have some overlap in both origin and effect (like: spacial reasoning is hard when your brain doesn’t numbers, and made harder when you’re brain doesn’t images—no tools to cross-check/estimate)

fwiw, I largely compensate with kinetic imagining; I can’t visualize a square but I can imagine what it would be like to draw a line around a square. I also use this as a memory aid—I don’t imagine what things looked like/what I saw; I imagine associated movement/what I did). I can also imagine sound, sensation, taste; everything but sight; I just don’t find them useful in compensating for lack of sight.

I started to figure out that most people literally see pictures in their head and giving voice to my experience when I was ~20; I’ve encountered one (1) other person with aphantasia. but in 2015 someone did a study and gave the thing a name! apparently it effects 1-5% of the population; like most things, it occurs to a degree/on a spectrum—some people have weak images, some people don’t even have sound/sensation images or memory. it seems to be largely congenital, but some people develop it

this article is my favorite for summing up definitions/most research, and explores some of what I’ve discussed above, including alternate forms of processing visual information.

aphantasia is crucial to how my brain works; it also has a significant impact on how I read. I don’t skim over visual descriptions, but I may as well—they have zero impact on my reading experience or concept of a book. “show, don’t tell” methodology is a pile of garbage when creators interpret it literally—descriptions should be multi-sensual (I love authors who include scent in particular), but more than that should be given some sort of interpretation. “the room was 15 feet tall and 45 feet long”? I have no idea what that means. “the room was empty and vast, dwarfing its occupants” gives me a way to interpret the information & builds atmosphere. contextualize! please!

this is absolutely the reason I don’t read most horror (especially the supernatural horror which I theoretically enjoy—as opposed to crime/murder/psychological horror, which I find tedious in book form). a lot of it is people seeing scary stuff and I don’t … visualize the scary stuff, so I am not also seeing the scary stuff, so it is not scary. give me a Caitlín R. Kiernan (interpretations of scale, multisensual descriptions, psychological effect and a strong interior view) over a Clive Barker (“he saw a gigantic wheel constructed out of living corpses”—okay, I have literally no concept of that, but sure, sounds cool) any day.

it’s less that I think authors should cater to this admittedly-minor population of which I am a part; more that it legitimately makes for better writing which is accessible to more readers & makes for a richer experience for normative readers.

(the “everything I see is real” effect has a minor positive effect on visual horror—there’s still that cognitive dissonance, I still see the limitations of special effects, but I benefit (in the sense that I am more scared) b/c my brain has little buffer re: not everything it sees is real)

massive tl;dr: this can’t-visualize thing I’ve experienced for my entire life has a name & some studies now! it is real! if you find weird-brain things interesting, you might want to google it.

Reviews: Tomie, Ito; Julius Cesar, Shakespeare; Semiosis, Burke; Her Body and Other Parties, Machado

Title: Tomie
Author: Junji Ito
Translator: Naomi Kokubo
Published: VIZ, 2016
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 745
Total Page Count: 266,515
Text Number: 862
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After being murdered and dismembered, Tomie comes back to life—again and again, multiplying each time, repeating a cycle of violence by and towards women. This is a profoundly feminist narrative, in the sense that it's about feminist issues: about the jealousy, necessity, praise and condemnation that surrounds female beauty; about inter-community conflict between women, and the violence inflicted on them by men; about liebestod, the relationship between sex and death. It's also a hot mess. There's an overarching premise and occasional interconnected story, but most are one-off experiments with concept, and the concepts aren't as haunting as in Ito's better work; there's internal inconsistencies, some repetition, and it all runs overlong. And I'm not convinced that the actual execution does good by such prickly and complicated themes; among other flaws, it's objectifying—but that they are there, so complicated and so pointed, intrigues me. Thus I am ambivalent, but I'm glad I read the thing.


Title: Julius Caesar
Author: William Shakespeare
Published: 1623
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 100
Total Page Count: 266,615
Text Number: 863
Read Because: co-read with my mother
Review: To put the iconic murder at the center of the play rather the climax changes everything. Some of the final battle is lost in a script—this would benefit from the energy of production—so the ending somewhat falters. But to explore the absence of Caesar, to shift the focus to Brutus and to consequences, makes for significantly more interesting structure and themes. But I confess this feels something like a dress rehearsal for Othello, insofar as both plays concerns manipulation, motivation, and consequence, and this play can't but pale in comparison. I found it more interesting than personally effecting—but the best of the language is very good.


Title: Semiosis
Author: Sue Burke
Narrator Caitlin Davies, Daniel Thomas May
Published: Macmillan Audio, 2018
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 365
Total Page Count: 266,980
Text Number: 864
Read Because: reviewed by Kalanadi, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Human refugees to an alien planet discovered an unexpected form of sapience. This has a great central concept—alien sapience; consent within symbiotic relationships; the relationship between personhood, body, and community; definitions of first contact and communication—and the extended timescale and diversity of PoVs compliments it well. The secondary thought experiment about community/utopia building is less interesting and compounded by weak dialog (especially glaring in audio). Occasionally, a high concept is sufficiently engaging that the narrative doesn't need to be particularly good—which isn't to say that this is bad (it's fine; overambitious, sometimes, but fine), but I was absolutely here just for the premise and it delivers—it's pulpy, engaging, creative; surprisingly fun, given the political content and darker moments.


Title: Her Body and Other Parties
Author: Carmen Maria Machado
Published: Graywolf Press, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 245
Total Page Count: 267,225
Text Number: 865
Read Because: multiple recommendations, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Eight stories (some longer, perhaps novelettes) about women's bodies, gender, and sex explored via the speculative. Machado makes fantastic use of metaphor—the women who wear colored ribbons, the women who fade into air, are concepts which exist alongside multifaceted and recognizable explorations of prejudice; the fantastic isn't a poor mimic or mere reiteration, but rather adds depth and distinct, evocative imagery to the conversation. Some of these speculative metaphors don't work for me personally, some are too constrained or on the nose; the focus on sex and gender can preclude other issues—this is pointedly intersectional, but sometimes feels too familiar to other feminist works. But one of the middle stories is effectively regional gothic for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit—and that that exists here says more than I can about the tone of this collection, about its thematic focus, its playfulness and strangeness. It's a memorable debut, effective, intelligent, powerfully written; unsettling, confrontational, but addicting.