As I have Aphantasia I never visualize when not dreaming. Before I learned about Aphantasia, I would have been amazed to learn that anyone visualizes while they read. I am curious to the extent that visualizing helps learning to see what kind of handicap I faced as a student. I have a PhD in economics.
Interesting that you can visualize while dreaming. From what I remember hearing about aphantasia, I thought dreams would be non-visual too. Maybe that can also vary with the individual.
Have you ever looked into lucid dreaming? That is, dreams when you’re aware that it’s a dream. The awareness lets you control it to some degree, by consciously shifting your expectations. There’s a technique called Wake-Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD) where you can shift from a waking state to a dreaming state without losing awareness. I’m wondering if the technique would be possible for you, and if you could learn to daydream (and then visualize) from the practice.
Based on reading the Reddit Aphantasia forum, some people with aphantasia can visualize when they dream, while others can’t. I have been actively trying to lucid dream for a while with a small amount of success although I have never tried WILD. I will look into it.
I’m wondering if an aphantasiac would be able to work up to the final Two colored circles meditation.
(PU.CC.6.ADV) (Advanced) Creating a figure in a perceptual uncertainty
A practitioner forces the perception to see any arbitrary red figure appear on the blue surface (or blue figure on the red surface).
Because this (supposedly) works on your actual visual field instead of your internal mind’s eye, you might be able to do it and learn to create mental visualizations that way. (You’d have to be staring at the figure though.)
It looked like some of the other psychonetic practices might make it easier to achieve a WILD as well. If you could learn to do that quickly and easily, it might be useful as a surrogate mind’s eye, or the practice might help you find yours or develop one.
I wonder to what extent people choose their fields/topics based on their visual imagination capacity. It seems possible that there are some fields that depend much more on a facility for algebra than for geometric intuitions. I’m studying biology, where the three-dimensional structure of molecules is of fundamental importance.
When I’ve first learned about the phenomenon, I’ve seen discussions by professional artists, designers, architects, animators and the likes, that managed to work in these areas despite their aphantasia. It’s been a while and I m not able to find the links, and it was not formal study to begin with, but it’s so counterintuitive that I wanted to share anyways.
Interesting! So how do you think about e.g. a bivariate normal distribution? To me it looks like either a bunch of dots in the shape of a fuzzy circle or ellipse, or a correspondingly shaped hill on a 2D plane, depending on what the problem needs. I can’t imagine how to think about it without having such mental images.
As I have Aphantasia I never visualize when not dreaming. Before I learned about Aphantasia, I would have been amazed to learn that anyone visualizes while they read. I am curious to the extent that visualizing helps learning to see what kind of handicap I faced as a student. I have a PhD in economics.
Interesting that you can visualize while dreaming. From what I remember hearing about aphantasia, I thought dreams would be non-visual too. Maybe that can also vary with the individual.
Have you ever looked into lucid dreaming? That is, dreams when you’re aware that it’s a dream. The awareness lets you control it to some degree, by consciously shifting your expectations. There’s a technique called Wake-Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD) where you can shift from a waking state to a dreaming state without losing awareness. I’m wondering if the technique would be possible for you, and if you could learn to daydream (and then visualize) from the practice.
Based on reading the Reddit Aphantasia forum, some people with aphantasia can visualize when they dream, while others can’t. I have been actively trying to lucid dream for a while with a small amount of success although I have never tried WILD. I will look into it.
Did you ever try WILD? Did it work?
I recently saw What’s up with psychonetics? and thought of you.
I’m wondering if an aphantasiac would be able to work up to the final Two colored circles meditation.
Because this (supposedly) works on your actual visual field instead of your internal mind’s eye, you might be able to do it and learn to create mental visualizations that way. (You’d have to be staring at the figure though.)
It looked like some of the other psychonetic practices might make it easier to achieve a WILD as well. If you could learn to do that quickly and easily, it might be useful as a surrogate mind’s eye, or the practice might help you find yours or develop one.
I wonder to what extent people choose their fields/topics based on their visual imagination capacity. It seems possible that there are some fields that depend much more on a facility for algebra than for geometric intuitions. I’m studying biology, where the three-dimensional structure of molecules is of fundamental importance.
A mechanic engineer once told me that anyone wanting to be one should be able to visualize in 3-D or they will struggle.
Seems to fit with your view—and I suspect also for any chemical engineering as well.
When I’ve first learned about the phenomenon, I’ve seen discussions by professional artists, designers, architects, animators and the likes, that managed to work in these areas despite their aphantasia. It’s been a while and I m not able to find the links, and it was not formal study to begin with, but it’s so counterintuitive that I wanted to share anyways.
Interesting! So how do you think about e.g. a bivariate normal distribution? To me it looks like either a bunch of dots in the shape of a fuzzy circle or ellipse, or a correspondingly shaped hill on a 2D plane, depending on what the problem needs. I can’t imagine how to think about it without having such mental images.
I don’t normally think about them, and if I needed to I would just find some image on the Internet.