{"id":528,"date":"2025-11-26T07:04:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T07:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2025\/11\/26\/meet-the-aphantasics-those-who-cant-see-mental-images\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T07:07:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T07:07:53","slug":"meet-the-aphantasics-those-who-cant-see-mental-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2025\/11\/26\/meet-the-aphantasics-those-who-cant-see-mental-images\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Aphantasics, Those Who Can\u2019t See Mental Images"},"content":{"rendered":"

because the words prompted no mental images, it was almost as if reading bypassed the visual world altogether and tunnelled directly into their minds.<\/p>\n
Aphantasics might skip over descriptive passages in books \u2014 since description aroused no images in their minds, they found it dull \u2014 or, because of such passages, avoid fiction altogether.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/head><\/p>\n
When aphantasics recovered from bereavement, or breakups, or trauma, more quickly than others, they worried that they were overly detached or emotionally deficient. When they didn\u2019t see people regularly, even family, they tended not to think about them.<\/p>\n
M.L.: \u201cI do not miss people when they are not there. My children and grandchildren are dear to me, in a muffled way. I am fiercely protective of them but am not bothered if they don\u2019t visit or call. \u2026 I think that leaves them feeling as if I don\u2019t love them at all. I do, but only when they are with me, when they go away they really cease to exist, except as a \u2018story.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
It was so easy for hyperphantasics to imagine scenes as lifelike as reality that they could later become unsure what had actually happened and what had not.<\/span><\/p>\n
The more I read about this, the more I think that for those at either end of the phantasic scale, their inability (or extreme ability) to see things in their minds is a major component of what we think of as personality.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u2014 Read on kottke.org\/25\/11\/meet-the-aphantasics-those-who-cant-see-mental-images<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
because the words prompted no mental images, it was almost as if reading bypassed the visual world altogether and tunnelled directly into their minds. Aphantasics might skip over descriptive passages in books \u2014 since description aroused no images in their minds, they found it dull \u2014 or, because of such passages, avoid fiction altogether. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,14,7,19,9,37,18,36,32],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-attention","tag-common-sense","tag-consciousness","tag-knowledge","tag-memory","tag-neuroscience","tag-point-of-view","tag-reading","tag-senses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":529,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions\/529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}