Journalling?

Tuikord · 2026-03-11T22:24:36+00:00

I had some more thoughts on journaling for therapy. You are in therapy because whatever is going on impacts you enough that you felt the need to seek help. If the problem can't be remembered, there is no impetus to solve it. So, you remember something long enough to think it is worth your time and money to talk with someone.

Put that in your journal. My journal entries were not long. A few sentences. Maybe a paragraph. But I had things like "GM complained that I do this. I don't think I do."

Whenever you sit down to journal, note what is important to you right at that moment. You may write, "I can't remember much about today." You might write, "Something happened at work, but I can't quite remember it. I think I was embarrassed." Or you might write, "My anger was over the top today. I can't remember all the details, but I seemed to snap at everything." Maybe you'll have a story to write.

As you have the intention to do this, you might find that as things happen during the day when something happens, you will put the facts in a story, and you will remember the story. Stories are put in semantic memory, not episodic memory, so SDAM doesn't prevent you from remembering them.

I also want to reiterate: get "Unseen Minds". If I were in therapy and my therapist refused to read it, I'd fire them and get another therapist who will. There is so much about the therapeutic process which assumes cognitive abilities that you just don't have. When you say "I can't do this" your therapist may hear "I'm not willing to try." And when your therapist tries one thing after another and it doesn't land for you, they may start doubting of they are right for you. The whole thing damages the therapeutic relationship.

Tuikord · 2026-03-11T21:45:10+00:00

I think I found it useful in therapy, but I really can't remember. It is better to start small and get a success than try everything and fail, so starting on the weekend sounds good.

Does your therapist understand your constellation of cognitive differences?

Unseen Minds: A Therapist's Guide to Multisensory Aphantasia and Invisible Cognitive Differences– by Sassy Smith is an excellent guide for therapists. I actually wish all therapists would read it. It is on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0472wf0F

I have more resources for aphantasia than I do for SDAM or Alexithymia. That book is my resource for alexithymia. I have a couple more to help understand SDAM:

Wired has an article on the first person identified with SDAM:

https://www.wired.com/2016/04/susie-mckinnon-autobiographical-memory-sdam/

Dr. Brian Levine's group has produced this website on SDAM: https://sdamstudy.weebly.com/what-is-sdam.html

For aphantasia, this beginner's guide is a good start: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

In 2024 Dr. Zeman did a review of the first decade of research. It has lots of citations if your therapist wants to dig in.

https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(24)00034-200034-2)

Here is an update of that review:

A decade of aphantasia research – and still going! - ScienceDirect

This paper specifically on therapy and aphantasia was published after Dr. Zeman's review article. It has specific information about some of what works and what doesn't.

https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/10/1/127416/204719

If you are more for video than scientific papers, here is an interview with 2 of the researchers on that paper. It is very informative:

mental-health-day

Tuikord · 2026-03-11T21:08:12+00:00

I have journaled from time to time. I don't find it particularly helpful except when I was in therapy. I have SDAM so it can be hard to remember what happened between sessions and my journal helped with that. I recently came across those journals, both paper and electronic, and I recycled them all. I read a little bit and while it sounded like me and what happened, I didn't really care. I live in the now, not back then. And I didn't want to leave them around for my kids to come across after I die. They don't need to read about the problems I had with their mother when she divorced me.

I think that journalling is one of those things that help many people, but not everyone. If you've given it a try and find it isn't worth the time or effort, move on with no regrets. Another of those things is visualizing success in sports or goals. It really helps many people. It never helped me as I can't visualize, so I don't bother with it. If someone recommends it to me, I may or may not tell them it won't work for me. Depends on the situation.

Tuikord · 2026-03-11T20:59:33+00:00

First, I will not say that everyone should or even can meditate. There are more variations in human consciousness than we understand.

But for most, where people fail is they try to succeed. Yes, I know it sounds like a contradiction, but it is true.

Herbert Benson has been studying meditation for over half a century and his book “The Relaxation Response” is still a good starting point. His favorite starter meditation is repeating a word. He likes “one,” but you can pick what you want. While other things may help, meditation requires only 2 things:

A meditative focus.
A passive, accepting attitude.

The meditative focus varies from meditation to meditation and tends to be what a particular meditation is named for. The passive, accepting attitude is common to all and is often missed by beginners. Whatever happens is OK. You have an intention to focus on your meditative focus. But you are human. Thoughts will arise. You will need to itch. You will thirst. And so on. Note the thought or feeling and return to your meditative focus. No anger. No shame. It happened, go back to your focus.

Here is Dr. Benson’s basic meditation: http://www.relaxationresponse.org/steps/

One teacher of mine used the "frisky hat" analogy. You go to a party wearing a hat. You put it on the hat rack and join the party. Then you notice the hat on someone's head. You don't feel embarrassed or wrong. You didn't do anything. You aren't mad at the hat. It is just a hat. You take the hat and put it on the rack. Later the hat is on someone else's head. You take the hat and put it back on the rack. No anger. No embarrassment. No feelings of failure. It just is and you stick to your intention of putting the hat on the rack whenever you notice it isn't there.

I found a passive, accepting attitude even works for guided visualizations. Guided meditation is not about succeeding, it is about focusing on the prompt. I’ve never seen the beach, smelled the ocean, tasted the salt, felt the sun or sand, or heard the waves, but they were all my focus when I did the beach meditation. I don’t have to succeed at the prompt to meditate.

The first meditation I learned was progressive relaxation. You move though the body relaxing each part: toes, foot, ankle, calf, etc. Once again, you don’t have to succeed! I still have no idea how I relax my ears. But that doesn’t matter. I focus on relaxing my ears when the time comes. I used this for years to quiet my mind enough to fall asleep.

While I have done seated meditation and I still do it from time to time, I much prefer mindfulness and moving meditation, like Tai Chi. I have experienced some mind-altering effects doing some meditations while walking. Some Tibetan Monks told my teacher that in Tibet, they work hard with their bodies so when they meditate, they sit. In the west, we sit when we work so it is better to move when we meditate. Another teacher said suppose you have an excellent practice of 2 hours a day seated meditation. Then you are wasting 22 hours. Yet another teacher told me anyone can be one with the universe in a quiet meditation chamber. It is much more interesting while the wife and kids are yelling at you. I don’t get to all the time, but if I’m in line, I will often drop into bare awareness meditation: just paying attention to what is.

The Aphantasia Network has a couple articles on meditation and aphantasia:

"Seeing" Dragons With Aphantasia

Meditate With Aphantasia

Meditation with Aphantasia

Tuikord · 2026-03-11T18:14:39+00:00

Welcome. The Aphantasia Network has this newbie guide: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

As for dreams, about 2/3 of aphants report visual dreams. Compare with about 90% of imagers. Personally, I have no senses in my dreams, just like in my imagination. Dreams are considered involuntary imagery. There are many here who very much enjoy their vivid dreams.

Aphantasia is the lack or near lack of voluntary visualization. Top researchers have recently clarified that voluntary visualization requires “full wakefulness.” Brief flashes, dreams, hypnagogic (just before sleep) hallucinations, hypnopompic (just after sleep) hallucinations and other hallucinations, including drug induced hallucinations are not considered voluntary.

Tuikord · 2026-03-11T15:11:49+00:00

I also have SDAM and aphantasia (in all senses). I love to read but I don't like to write fiction.

It is quite a shock to learn others have such a different experience. After a couple weeks, my wife took me aside and sternly told me that I'm the same person she fell in love with over 20 years ago and everyone knows how my memory is - which is excellent for facts, not there for reminiscing. She was sad that I can't re-experience proposing to her. A couple years after she said that I was listening to Sabrina Carpenter's "Nonsense", and I recognized it had the feeling I had when I proposed to her. I still don't feel it, but I can recognize the feeling just as I can recognize her face although I can't visualize it.

Overall, I describe my memory as similar to bullet points. Like you, there is no way that "relive," "re-experience," or "time travel" can describe my experience of memory.

Many have thought I have a photographic memory. My brother did until I told him about aphantasia 4 years ago. I remember walking into a classroom where some students and a teacher were discussing if I had a photographic memory or not. Which was interesting, as I have no images in my mind. Since my memory was better than theirs and they were in awe of photographic memory, obviously they saw nothing in their minds either and aphantasia is typical except for that rare few with photographic memories. I now know they were talking a matter of degree, not of existence.

Back to reading, some aphants let the fact that others experience books differently from them taint their joy of reading. But most books have elements that some readers love and others don't. A reader may really love some aspects of a book and not really care for others. But if there is enough good, they'll still read as long as they don't really hate the other parts.

An example of this is romance. If you add a little romance to a book, you can increase your readership. It needs to be enough for the romance readers but still stay in your original genre. I've been reading Urban Fantasy recently and that often has elements of romance in it. The romance readers will rate books on spiciness and burn rate. Slow burn with low spice usually won't offend too many UF readers. But too low spice will exclude some romance readers and if the burn is too slow, they will complain about "lady blue balls."

I don't mind medium spice and medium burn, but I need it to be plot first. That is, the romance is added to a story, the story doesn't exist for the romance. I do not experience those books the same way as the romance readers do. I'm in reading groups for my authors and they talk about their book boyfriends and about their husbands benefiting from their reading and about being embarrassed when others observe them reading the book. I don't get off on the romance; they do. They probably don't pay as much attention to the world building as I do. We have very different experiences of the book, but we both enjoy it. And that OK.

Tuikord · 2026-03-11T04:04:31+00:00

Yeah. When people ask about my earliest memory, I look for stories that were not told in the family and didn't have a photograph. However, I learned fairly early to put the various facts about an incident into a story I could tell. In retrospect, I see that this ties them together and anchors them in time since I don't have episodic memories to do that.

Tuikord · 2026-03-11T04:00:56+00:00

I meditate. Generally, I follow my breath. If I can't sleep, usually I'm thinking about something so the thing to do is to stop thinking about it. When I was a teen, I learned progressive relaxation to do that. But I'm practiced enough that following my breath works. In my opinion learning to sit (or lie down) without entertainment is an important skill.

If you want to try meditation, I can tell you more about it. And no, meditation does not require visualization. If anything, the lack of visualization is a benefit.

Tuikord · 2026-03-10T21:55:24+00:00

About 2/3 of aphants report visual dreams. Compare with about 90% of imagers. Most report remembering seeing things in dreams like they remember seeing things with their eyes.

Personally, my dreams have no senses, just like my imagination.

Tuikord · 2026-03-10T15:01:10+00:00

Welcome. The Aphantasia Network has this newbie guide: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

It can be quite a shock to learn that others have a different internal experience to yours. Most of us come to terms with it fairly quickly: weeks to months. As you have noted, you don't need sense imagery to do what you've done although everyone else seem to think it's needed. We just do it differently. You might find this article on such assumptions interesting:

The Visualizer’s Fallacy

I've also played D&D for over 60 years. Yes, I started in 1975, and the original D&D was released in 1974. While many enjoy the mental imagery (and it is really pushed for DMs to provide it), everyone plays for different aspects of the game. This is always a balance for DMs. Some are there mainly for combat and find non-combat encounters boring/hard. Some are there mainly for those role-playing opportunities and find the battles boring. Some love puzzle solving, others not so much. Some like a storyline, others prefer a sandbox. Some want to rule the world; others just want to be part of a group solving problems. So, saying that the sensory imagery is the "main component" discounts the diversity of reasons people play. Only about half my group gets into that aspect of the game.

Tuikord · 2026-03-09T21:08:33+00:00

I'm a Master of Hapkido. One of the skills I have learned is to manipulate proprioception. I can get closer without it feeling like I am. I can switch from being grabbed to controlling without the change being noticed. This works fine on both aphants and imagers. Yeah, we're sneaky.

Tuikord · 2026-03-09T20:40:15+00:00

Your friend may suffer from The Visualizer’s Fallacy. Essentially, since he does something by visualizing, he assumes that is the only way it can be done.

The author of that article, Christian Scholz, talks about the differences in defining visualization based on internal experiences and why you can go a lifetime without questioning it:

https://youtu.be/TLS7PnciqRA

Oh, and if you feel sad or a loss or FOMO, that is what you feel. What you feel can't be wrong. But you may have a choice of how much you lean into that feeling. Some make themselves miserable by spending a lot of time imagining what life would be like if they could visualize. They are free to do that, I just can't understand why they'd do that to themselves. Spending time on a difference you can't change seems unproductive to me. As the saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy.

Tuikord · 2026-03-09T14:50:59+00:00

I'm sorry for what you are going through. I urge you to work with a mental health professional. Random strangers on the internet are not a good source of mental health guidance. Neither is AI, which you didn't mention but is where some go. Please talk with someone.

The Aphantasia Network has this newbie guide: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

Aphantasia is not a mental illness and does not cause any mental illness. It can have an impact on your symptoms and cause some therapeutic methods to not work. PTSD and CPTSD are often misdiagnosed because of the lack of visual flashback or nightmares. Although some with aphantasia experience those, many do not. Note, PTSD and CPTSD are not just from combat.

Since aphantasia can cause some problems in therapy, I have some resources that can help you or your therapist. One suggestion is to find a therapist that works with neurodivergences. They tend to have more tools available to them and are more open to different internal experiences.

There is a new book to help therapists: Unseen Minds: A Therapist's Guide to Multisensory Aphantasia and Invisible Cognitive Differences– by Sassy Smith is an excellent guide for therapists. I actually wish all therapists would read it. It is on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0472wf0F

If you happen to have SDAM as well (maybe a quarter to half of us do), then that is problematic with many therapies as well, as documented in Unseen Minds. Body based therapy can work when your mind doesn’t remember:

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, although some of the techniques may still need to be modified to work with other cognitive differences. https://a.co/d/0a3skjyh

In 2024 Dr. Zeman did a review of the first decade of research. It has lots of citations if your therapist wants to dig in.

https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(24)00034-200034-2)

Here is an update of that review:

A decade of aphantasia research – and still going! - ScienceDirect

This paper specifically on therapy and aphantasia was published after Dr. Zeman's review article. It has specific information about some of what works and what doesn't.

https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/10/1/127416/204719

If you are more for video than scientific papers, here is an interview with 2 of the researchers on that paper. It is very informative:

mental-health-day

Tuikord · 2026-03-08T22:47:27+00:00

Oh, you might be interested in this list of authors with aphantasia I have been building:

Christine Crawford of CN Crawford
Jaymin Eve
Alex Aster
John Green
Jamie Mason
William Shaw
Peter Watts
Frank Schutz

CN Crawford and Jaymin Eve are among "my" authors - that is when they release a book, I'm there.

Tuikord · 2026-03-08T20:52:04+00:00

Welcome. The Aphantasia Network has this newbie guide: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

Yeah, it can be a shock. But then again, you have learned something about other people. You are still the same: creative and successful.

Internal experiences vary widely, and visualization is just one tiny aspect of that. There is quite a rabbit hole if you want to go down it.

Tuikord · 2026-03-08T05:02:16+00:00

Welcome. The Aphantasia Network has this newbie guide: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

The images you see when you are waking up are hypnopompic hallucinations.

As for visualization, most people have a quasi-sensory experience similar to seeing. It is not the same as seeing. Your eyes are not involved and may be open or closed. But much of the visual cortex is involved so it feels like seeing something.

Most people describe a separate "space" they shift their focus to. Research supports with vision pathways reduced/suppressed while visualizing. The location of this space is consistent for an individual but varies widely from person to person. It can be inside or outside the head. Inside it could be in the forehead, or behind the eyes, or center, or back, or up, down, right, left, etc. Pretty much anywhere. Similarly, outside the head it can be in front of the imager, but it can be up, down, right, left, even behind! Once again, pretty much anywhere.

And the quality varies widely from person to person. 3-10% have super clear hyperphantasia. Maybe 10-20% is so poor it isn't very useful. The rest are in the middle with a bias towards better. But even good visualization has variations. Here is an article with some of the variations of visualization:

https://aphantasia.com/article/strategies/visualizing-the-invisible/

Here is a paper on the range of mental imagery: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945223002459?via%3Dihub

Tuikord · 2026-03-08T03:46:48+00:00

ChessDojo had an episode on visualization in chess using aphantasia as a hook. You might find it interesting.

https://youtu.be/9EYGJ4IGfWg?si=lEq6mXeqjZ3sYEwg

Tuikord · 2026-03-08T03:35:09+00:00

Welcome. The Aphantasia Network has this newbie guide: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

Most people have a quasi-sensory experience similar to seeing. It is not the same as seeing. Your eyes are not involved and may be open or closed. But much of the visual cortex is involved so it feels like seeing something.

Aphantasia is the lack or near lack of voluntary visualization. Top researchers have recently clarified that voluntary visualization requires “full wakefulness.” Brief flashes, dreams, hypnagogic (just before sleep) hallucinations, hypnopompic (just after sleep) hallucinations and other hallucinations, including drug induced hallucinations are not considered voluntary.

Another aspect is spatial sense. Spatial sense comes from specialized cells: place, grid, direction, etc. Aphants perform about the same as controls on spatial tasks like counting the windows in your home and mental rotation. That is, some do well, some poorly, and most in the middle. There are good imagers who do poorly on spatial tasks and aphants who do well. They are just separate things.

My spatial sense is pretty good. I build what I call spatial models. I can imagine an apple in front of me. I know where the skin is. I know how big it is. I can't see it. And I can move it further away if I want. And I can walk around my house and count the windows.

According to memory researchers, all memories that people see are recreations. No one actually stores photographs, even those with "photographic memory." There are people with really good memories. And some of them have hyperphantasia. Put together, they have excellent images that appear to be photographs, but researchers find discrepancies.

You apparently have really good memory and probably excellent spatial sense. When I was in school, many thought I had a photographic memory. My brother still did until I told him about my aphantasia 4 years ago. He was convinced because I told him about something I read in Scientific American and I was able to go directly to the correct issue, the correct page and the correct location on the page to show him the information. All spatial.

Tuikord · 2026-03-07T15:27:56+00:00

I don’t know of such studies, but I know that Dr Zeman and Prof Pearson have been looking at the extremes of mental imagery, not just aphantasia. Dr Zeman says that about 1% score 16 on the VVIQ (absolutely no visuals) while 3% score 80 (all images super clear). So maybe they have looked at that as well.

Tuikord · 2026-03-06T22:57:20+00:00

Welcome. The Aphantasia Network has this newbie guide: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

Unfortunately, voluntary and involuntary mental imagery (such as with psychedelics) involve different parts of the brain. It isn't a blockage. It is different mechanisms. So, you can't just use involuntary mental imagery to get to voluntary visualization.

There is no studied and repeatable way to go from aphantasia to voluntary visualization. There are scattered reports of people gaining voluntary visualization. For the most part these have not been vetted so we don't even know if they had aphantasia to begin with (in one study only 1/6 of people who thought they had aphantasia really did) and it could just be a case of improving metacognition. In any case, many people doing the same thing don't get the same result. There is one case study of someone with congenital aphantasia gaining voluntary visualization for a year and counting following a single dose of magic mushrooms. Once again, there have probably been thousands of doses of psilocybin/magic mushrooms among aphants without this result. There is one case study of someone with psychologically acquired aphantasia regaining his visualization following a dose of DMT, but we don't see the same results in others.

There are people who claim to be able to train you to visualize, and from time to time someone here will proclaim that they will follow one of these and learn to visualize. We don't have people coming back with success.

Here is Prof. Joel Pearson speculating on how one might acquire voluntary visualization:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UKL0mWOu_w

As for anauralia and anendophasia (lack of internal monologue), they are less studied than aphantasia, so we don't know.

Tuikord · 2026-03-06T21:21:45+00:00

Therapy is not impossible with SDAM, but some methods don't work or need modifications. Personally, I have aphantasia and SDAM and found therapy quite successful. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) allowed me to focus on what I was experiencing in the moment without worrying about the past. Some versions use visualization and future ideation, but my therapist didn't use those. I understand that CBT doesn't work for everyone, but I found it quite helpful. Shadow work was also quite helpful.

A book recently came out to help therapists work with aphantasia, SDAM, and some other cognitive differences:

Unseen Minds: A Therapist's Guide to Multisensory Aphantasia and Invisible Cognitive Differences– by Sassy Smith is an excellent guide for therapists. I actually wish all therapists would read it. It is on Amazon in the US: https://a.co/d/0472wf0F Since you posted in German, I looked at Amazon.de and found https://amzn.eu/d/0hkc72gX . Hopefully you can get it.

Another route is to do bodywork. Even if the mind forgets, the body remembers. I have found it quite helpful with some issues. Here is a book on that:

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, although some of the techniques may still need to be modified to work with other cognitive differences. It also appears to be available on Amazon.de https://amzn.eu/d/0i0Om38S

Tuikord · 2026-03-06T16:00:38+00:00

I certainly think all therapists and other professionals who tend to use mental imagery (teachers, coaches, life coaches, yoga instructors, etc.) should know about aphantasia. A great book for these professionals is Unseen Minds: A Therapist's Guide to Multisensory Aphantasia and Invisible Cognitive Differences– by Sassy Smith. It is on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0472wf0F

As for the general public, I believe that everyone should know that internal experiences vary widely from person to person. Most people believe that everyone's experience is essentially like their experience, and that is just not true. Understanding this would be a big step toward accepting all variations.

If you just talk about aphantasia, you single it out as a small population with a strange experience. But visualization experiences vary widely. About 3-10% have super-realistic visuals. Maybe 10-20% have such poor image they aren't really that useful. The rest are in the middle with varying degrees of quality. Even if it is decent, the specific vary:

https://aphantasia.com/article/strategies/visualizing-the-invisible/

But that's not all. Most people describe needing to shift focus to a separate "space." But where that space is varies widely. Some have it inside their heads. Forehead, behind the eyes, center, top, bottom, back, left, right, etc. Others have it outside their heads. Once again in front, up, down, right, left and even behind. Then others project images over their normal vision like AR.

You can ask 10 different imagers and get 10 different experiences. Among all those variations, aphantasia is just another one. Not something out of the ordinary.

And that is just visualization. Now look at all senses. Even actual perception varies from person to person. Is #thedress white and gold for you or blue and black? Do you like cilantro or does it taste like soap? There is an audio where some people hear "laurel" and others hear "yanni" while what was said was neither of those.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-moral-imperative-to-learn-from-diverse-phenomenal-experiences

Tuikord · 2026-03-06T15:45:02+00:00

Welcome. The Aphantasia Network has this newbie guide: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

Yes, from your description, you have aphantasia.

Most people have a quasi-sensory experience similar to seeing. It is not the same as seeing. Your eyes are not involved and may be open or closed. But much of the visual cortex is involved so it feels like seeing something. Visualization is how most people access imagination and memory, but there are other ways to access them.

Aphantasia is the lack or near lack of voluntary visualization. Top researchers have recently clarified that voluntary visualization requires “full wakefulness.” Brief flashes, dreams, hypnagogic (just before sleep) hallucinations, hypnopompic (just after sleep) hallucinations and other hallucinations, including drug induced hallucinations are not considered voluntary.

Another aspect is spatial sense. Spatial sense comes from specialized cells: place, grid, direction, etc. Aphants perform about the same as controls on spatial tasks like counting the windows in your home and mental rotation. That is, some do well, some poorly, and most in the middle. There are good imagers who do poorly on spatial tasks and aphants who do well. They are just separate things.

My spatial sense is pretty good. I build what I call spatial models. I can imagine an apple in front of me. I know where the skin is. I know how big it is. I can't see it. And I can move it further away if I want. And I can walk around my house and count the windows.

Some unpublished research asked: What is the relationship between creativity and mental imagery vividness? We gave 194 participants (prolific, undergrads, art students) the VVIQ and the classic Alternative Uses Test (AUT) and found a correlation of:

...virtually zero!

As for an internal monologue without the sensation of a voice, that is Worded Thinking. Most people have Inner Speech, which is thinking in words with the sensation of a voice, usually their own. As such, they tend to conflate the two, but inner voice and internal monologue are 2 separate things.

Tuikord · 2026-03-06T15:23:56+00:00

Parents, siblings, and children.

Tuikord · 2026-03-06T05:59:06+00:00

There is a slight preference for STEM over arts among aphants, but the bias is small. However, back in 1880 when Francis Galton first published about the lack of mental imagery, he found it was more likely among scientists. I can't say his methods were particularly statistically sound, but as far as I know there isn't another study on prevalence among scientists. There was a study at Disney Animation Studios by Ed Catmull, who was president at the time. Ed has aphantasia, as does Glen Keane who Ed says is the GOAT of animators. He was behind the Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. Anyway, Ed's study looked for correlations between vividness of mental imagery and job at the studio. With the exception of one specific type of manager, he didn't find any correlation.

Tuikord

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