The Shock of the Unknown in Aphantasia: Learning that Visual Imagery Exists

Qualia are private. We don’t know how another person perceives the outside world: the color of the ocean, the sound of the waves, the smell of the seaside, the exact temperature of the water. Even more obscure is how someone else imagines the world in the absence of external stimuli. Most people are able to generate an internal “representation”¹ of a beach — to deploy imagery — when asked, “picture yourself at a relaxing beach.” We can “see” the beach in our mind’s eye even when we’re not really there. But no one else has access to these private images, thoughts, narratives. So we must rely on subjective report.

The hidden nature of imagery (and qualia more generally)² explains why a significant minority of humans are shocked and dismayed when they learn that other people are capable of generating visual images, and the request to “picture a beach” isn’t metaphorical. This lack of imagery often extends to other sensory modalities (and to other cognitive abilities, such as spatial navigation and autobiographical memories), which will be discussed another time. For now, the focus is on vision.

Redditors and their massive online sphere of influence were chattering the other day about this post in r/TIFU: A woman was explaining her synesthesia to her boyfriend when he discovered that he has aphantasia, the inability to generate visual images.

TIFU by explaining my synesthesia to my boyfriend

“I have grapheme-color synesthesia. Basically I see letters and numbers in colors. The letter 'E' being green for example. A couple months ago I was explaining it to my boyfriend who's a bit of a skeptic. He asked me what colour certain letters and numbers were and had me write them down.  ...

Tonight we were laying in bed and my boyfriend quized me again. I tried explaining to him I just see the colors automatically when I visualize the letters in my head. I asked him what colour are the letters in his head. He looked at me weirdly like what do you mean in "my head, that's not a thing"

My boyfriend didnt understand what I meant by visualizing the letters. He didn't believe me that I can visualize letters or even visualize anything in my head.

Turns out my boyfriend has aphantasia. When he tries to visualize stuff he just sees blackness. He can't picture anything in his mind and thought that everyone else had it the same way. He thought it was just an expression to say "picture this" or etc... ”

There are currently 8652 comments on this post, many from individuals who were stunned to learn that the majority of people do have imagery. Other comments were from knowledgeable folks with aphantasia who described what the world is like for them, the differences in how they navigate through life, and how they compensate for what is thought of as "a lack" by the tyranny of the phantasiacs.

So I just discovered that not being able to visualize things in my head is real and it's called aphantasia. Thanks reddit for changing my life.

— Cylie (@CJ_Kuehl) June 24, 2019

reddit just made me realise i might have aphantasia (inability to picture something in your mind) if i try visualise a red star i get to somewhere between 1 and 2 pic.twitter.com/Y9EYNXEnbG

— daz (@Dt967) June 24, 2019

There's even a subreddit for people with aphantasia:

And for people on reddit, come check us out on https://t.co/WO6iGxct76.

— ᛠᛞᚩᚱᛁᛗᚦᚱᛁᚦ ᛚᚪᛝᛖᚱᚾᚪᛗᚪ (@Eadorim) June 25, 2019

How did I find out about this? ³  It was because my 2016 post was suddenly popular again!

Imagine These Experiments in Aphantasia

That piece was spurred by an eloquent essay on what's it's like to discover that all your friends aren't speaking metaphorically when they say, “I see a beach with waves and sand.” Research on this condition blossomed once more and more people realized they had it. Online communities developed and grew, including resources for researchers. This trajectory is akin to the formation of chat groups for individuals with synesthesia and developmental prosopagnosia (many years ago). Persons with these neuro-variants have always existed,⁴ but they were much harder to locate pre-internet. Studies of these neuro-unique individuals have been going on for a while, but widespread popular dissemination of their existence alerts others – “I am one, too.”

The Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) “is a proven psychometric measurement often used to identify whether someone is aphantasic or not, albeit not definitive.” But it's still a subjective measure that relies on self-report. Are there more “objective” methods for determining your visual imagery abilities? I'm glad you asked. An upcoming post will discuss a couple of cool new experiments.

ADDENDUM (July 21 2019): the follow-up post is finally here!
Is there an objective test for Aphantasia?


Footnotes

¹ This is a loaded term that I won’t explain – or debate – right now.

² Some people don’t believe that qualia exist (as such), but I won’t elaborate on that, either.

³ I don’t hang out on Reddit, and my Twitter usage has declined.

⁴ Or at least, they've existed for quite some time.


Further Reading

Aphantasia Index

The Eye's Mind

Bonus Episode: What It's Like to Have no Mind's Eye, a recent entry of BPS Research Digest. There's an excellent collection of links, as well as a 30 minute podcast (download here).

Imagine These Experiments in Aphantasia (my 2016 post).

Involuntary Visual Imagery (if you're curious about what has been haunting me).

In fact, while I was writing this post, intrusive imagery of the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal in Delta BC (the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria Island) appeared in my head. I searched Google Images and can show you the approximate view.

I was actually standing a little further back, closer to where the cars are parked. But I couldn't quite capture that view. Here is the line of cars waiting to get on the ferry.

During this trip two years ago (with my late wife), this sign had caught my eye so I ran across the street for coffee...

'I Do Not Exist' - Pathological Loss of Self after a Buddhist Retreat

Eve is plagued by a waking nightmare.

‘I do not exist. All you see is a shell with no being inside, a mask covering nothingness. I am no one and no thing. I am the unborn, the non-existent.’

– from Pickering (2019).

Dr. Judith Pickering is a psychotherapist and Jungian Analyst in Sydney, Australia. Her patient ‘Eve’ is an “anonymous, fictionalised amalgam of patients suffering disorders of self.”   Eve had a psychotic episode while attending a Tibetan Buddhist retreat.

“She felt that she was no more than an amoeba-like semblance of pre-life with no form, no substance, no past, no future, no sense of on-going being.”

Eve's fractured sense of self preceded the retreat. In fact, she was drawn to Buddhist philosophy precisely because of its negation of self. In the doctrine of non-being (anātman), “there is no unchanging, permanent self, soul, or essence in living beings.” The tenet of emptiness (śūnyatā) — that “all things are empty [or void] of intrinsic existence” — was problematic as well. When applied and interpreted incorrectly, śūnyatā and anātman can resemble or precipitate disorders of the self.

Dr. Pickering noted:

‘Eve’ is representative of a number of patients suffering both derealisation and depersonalisation. They doubt the existence of the outer world (derealisation) and fear that they do not exist. In place of a sense of self, they have but an empty core inside (depersonalisation).

How do you find your way back to your self after that? Will the psychotic episode respond to neuroleptics or mood stabilizers?

The current article takes a decidedly different approach from this blog's usual themes of neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopharmacology. Spirituality, dreams, and the unconscious play an important role in Jungian psychology. Pickering mentions the Object Relations School, Attachment Theory, Field Theory, The Relational School, the Conversational Model, Intersubjectivity Theory and Infant Research. She cites Winnicott, Bowlby, and Bion (not Blanke & Arzy 2005, Kas et al. 2014, or Seth et al. 2012).

Why did I read this paper? Sometimes it's useful to consider the value of alternate perspectives. Now we can examine the potential hazards of teaching overly Westernized conceptions of Buddhist philosophy.¹ 


When Westerners Attend Large Buddhist Retreats

Eve’s existential predicament exemplifies a more general area of concern found in situations involving Western practitioners of Buddhism, whether in traditional settings in Asia, or Western settings ostensibly adapted to the Western mind. Have there been problems of translation in regard to Buddhist teachings on anātman (non-self) as implying the self is completely non-existent, and interpretations of śūnyatā (emptiness) as meaning all reality is non-existent, or void?
. . .

This relates to another issue concerning situations where Westerners attend large Buddhist retreats in which personalised psycho-spiritual care may be lacking. Traditionally, a Buddhist master would know the student well and carefully select appropriate teachings and practices according to a disciple’s psychological, physical and spiritual predispositions, proficiency and maturity. For example, teaching emptiness or śūnyatā to someone who is not ready can be extremely harmful. As well as being detrimental for the student, it puts the teacher at risk of a major ethical infringement...

I found Dr. Pickering's discussion of Nameless Dread to be especially compelling.

Nameless Dread

I open the door to a white, frozen mask. I know immediately that Eve has disappeared again into what she calls ‘the void’. She sits down like an automaton, stares in stony silence at the wall as if staring into space. I do not exist for her, she is totally isolated in her own realm of non-existence.

The sense of deadly despair pervades the room. I feel myself fading into nothingness, this realm of absence, unmitigated, bleakness and blankness.We sit in silence, sometimes for session after session. I wonder what on earth do I have to offer her? Nothing, it seems.

ADDENDUM (June 18 2019): A reader alerted me to a tragic story two years ago in Pennsylvania, where a young woman ultimately died by suicide after experiencing a psychotic episode during an intensive 10-day meditation retreat. The article noted:

"One of the documented but rare adverse side effects from intense meditation retreats can be depersonalization disorder. People need to have an especially strong ego, or sense of self, to be able to withstand the strictness and severity of the retreats."

Case reports of extreme adverse events are rare, but a 2017 study documented "meditation-related challenges" in Western Buddhists. The authors conducted detailed qualitative interviews in 60 people who engaged in a variety of Buddhist meditation practices (Lindahl et al., 2017). Thematic analysis revealed a taxonomy of 59 experiences across seven domains (I've appended a table at the end of the post). The authors found a wide range of responses: "The associated valence ranged from very positive to very negative, and the associated level of distress and functional impairment ranged from minimal and transient to severe and enduring." The paper is open access, and Brown University issued an excellent press release.


Footnote

¹ This is especially important given the appropriation of semi-spiritual versions of yoga and mindfulness, culminating in inanities such as tech bro eating disorders.


References

Blanke O, Arzy S. (2005). The out-of-body experience: disturbed self-processing at the temporo-parietal junction. Neuroscientist 11:16-24.

Kas A, Lavault S, Habert MO, Arnulf I. (2014) Feeling unreal: a functional imaging study in patients with Kleine-Levin syndrome. Brain 137: 2077-2087.

Lindahl JR, Fisher NE, Cooper DJ, Rosen RK, Britton WB. (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges  in Western Buddhists. PLoS One 12(5):e0176239.

Pickering J. (2019). 'I Do Not Exist': Pathologies of Self Among Western Buddhists. J Relig Health 58(3):748-769.

Seth AK, Suzuki K, Critchley HD. (2012). An interoceptive predictive coding model of conscious presence. Front Psychol. 2:395.


Further Reading

Derealization / Dying

Feeling Mighty Unreal: Derealization in Kleine-Levin Syndrome

A Detached Sense of Self Associated with Altered Neural Responses to Mirror Touch



Phenomenology coding structure (Table 4, Lindahl et al., 2017).

- click table for a larger view -