News7 mins ago
Can You See Pictures In Your Head? I Can't
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It was only recently that I found out that most people can easily see pictures in their head. I wonder if that is why I cannot recognise people I know if they are not in the usual places I know them from, such as local shopkeepers, the barber, my window cleaner.
I cannot draw, nor remember a sequence of numbers for a few seconds. I don't know if that is because I don't have a snapshot in my mind's eye.
If you are like me, do you also have these problems?
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What I do have, and I have discovered many people don't, is a memory smell. I can see a picture of a sash window and immediately smell putty, or can smell grass if somebody is mowing on the tv. It comes from nowhere and sometimes I have to struggle to remember where I know that smell from. It's a nuisance when I smell burning.
Just interested to know if anyone else is in the same boat
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I can picture stuff if I try, but it's hardly at the level of film standard detail. If I want detail I then picture closer and mentally add the detail required. It's all just imagination after all. Maybe based on something seen previous; or maybe something just created by the mind. It's not like seeing with your eyes, it's about imagination.
When I read this article a few months ago, I found if extremely unsettling because I related to it. What I can see is very fleeting and I can't hold on to the mental picture.
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//When you read that description of James Bond, what happens? How can you not imagine what he looks like?//
I saw the Bond films before I read the books so to me he always looked like Connery! However I read the Rebus books before seeing a TV version and couldn't believe John Hannah, totally wrong, much as I liked him. I see that Dalgleish is on tonight, he's also Roy Marsden to me.
We used to know a DJ on Forces radio and he said people often told him he didn't look at all how they 'saw' him.
Having read nearly all the Bosch novels i imagined him to be a world-weary, no-nonsense type of guy, intensely professional and determined. Then, when i first saw the series, Titus Welliver (who i had never seen before) was my imagination come true.
I feel sorry for you Barry. I can imagine you running around your house, trying to detect where the smell of burning is coming from. I never had a problem with that 'cos i always knew that it would be coming from the kitchen where my ex would be incinerating a meal.
It's a variety of synaesthesia - gness has the version where colours are associated with words :
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Oddly, I was discussing this only last night (in out local community centre bar). I too have aphantasia. I could, for example, look at my closest friend for ages but, upon turning away, then be totally unable them to picture them in my mind. If you asked me to describe them, it would only be because I'd thought of some words (such as "Gosh, hasn't Jean lost a lot of weight lately!" or "Pete's going really thin on top these days!") while looking at them. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell you whether they were tall or short, fat or thin, or anything else at all.
That's why (along with his fantastic technical abilities, of course) I always marvelled at the late Woodelf's ability to recall scenes that, because of his total blindness, he'd not actually seen for many decades:
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