This morning, I realized for the first time that my partner of 11 years has aphantasia–difficulty picturing things in his mind’s eye. I, on the other hand, have a very vivid mental camera.
I started thinking about our different reading preferences and wondering to what degree our mind’s eyes affect them. I read a lot of fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror in paperback and audio. My partner is a voracious reader of comics, graphic novels, and manga.
We also have different writing styles. I like to focus on the environment in my writing, and my partner often focuses on mechanics.
So I’m wondering: do you have aphantasia or not, or something in between? What do you like to read, and how does your inner perception affect the way you engage with the books?
I am convinced at this point that “aphantasia” is a problem of language and semantic misalignment, and not a large scale phenomenon of difference in experience.
Can you expand on this? The differences in thought processing between individuals is not limited to the ability or inability to voluntarily visualize. Some people have an internal monologue, some don’t. Some can conjure imagery, sounds, smells, emotion, some can’t. None of these are deficiencies or “conditions” to be cured, just differences in mental processing.
We’ll never be able to experience someone else’s reality, but I don’t believe that my complete lack of voluntary visualization vs. my husband’s professional reliance on his ability to visualize vividly is simply down to an inability for us to communicate about the way we think.
Excellently put.