Je ne savais pas qu’il avait un nom

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J’ai très certainement une aphantasie complète. J’aimerais donc faire l’objet d’un dépistage et d’un diagnostic officiels, car personne ne me croit. Les tentatives de traitement dans mon cas seraient vaines. Je souhaite participer à la recherche.

Jusqu’à aujourd’hui, je ne savais pas qu’il avait un nom. Cela fait des années que je décris cet état à des personnes (y compris des médecins et des psychologues). Je la décris précisément comme elle est définie, comme “l’incapacité à visualiser des images”. Je la décris également comme “le contraire d’une mémoire photographique”. Cette incapacité en moi est très complète.

Je savais que ma terrible mémoire à court terme y était liée. J’ai utilisé l’intelligence pour compenser. Je dois comprendre les choses, pas les mémoriser. Il n’était pas possible d’apprendre de manière “normale”. Ce problème s’est manifesté pour la première fois lorsqu’il s’agissait de mémoriser les tables de multiplication à l’école. Cela a été facile pour la plupart des gens, mais cela a été une torture pour moi.

D’une certaine manière, cela m’a permis de me spécialiser. Lorsque j’apprends quelque chose, cela reste gravé dans ma mémoire. Les personnes qui mémorisent perdent leurs souvenirs au fil du temps. Les choses que je retiens de l’école restent en moi, alors que d’autres ne se souviennent pas des choses apprises par cœur à l’école.

Je n’ai rencontré qu’une seule autre personne qui m’a décrit le même état. Avant cela, je pensais que j’étais un cas unique. Elle s’est souvenue d’un incident au cours duquel elle a été victime d’un vol alors qu’elle travaillait comme employée de magasin. Elle n’a pas pu décrire le voleur (ce qui a éveillé les soupçons). J’ai été choquée et je lui ai dit que j’étais dans le même cas.

Je le décris souvent aux autres de la manière suivante. “Je peux regarder et étudier votre visage familier pendant un certain temps. Immédiatement après, je pourrais être mis en présence d’un dessinateur de la police et ne pas être en mesure de fournir la moindre description.

Je ne pense pas que la plupart des gens croient ce que je leur dis. C’est tellement rare et extrême (dans mon cas) que les gens ne peuvent même pas comprendre le problème. Je n’ai pas le sens des relations humaines et j’ai des traits d’autisme. J’ai toujours pu compenser, mal et maladroitement, par l’utilisation de l’intelligence.

J’aimerais donc faire l’objet d’un dépistage et d’un diagnostic officiels, car personne ne me croit. Les tentatives de traitement dans mon cas seraient vaines. Par ailleurs, et c’est peut-être lié, je manque cruellement de mémoire musculaire. Je ne sais pas taper au clavier (les cours de dactylographie m’ont mis dans l’embarras). Je ne peux pas jouer au golf. Et je ne sais pas jouer de la guitare. Bien sûr, je PEUX essayer de faire ces activités, mais je suis loin de pouvoir les considérer comme normales.

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I always thought I would be a horrible witness to a crime.  I couldnt  tell a sketch artist how to draw my daughters face if my life depended on it.   I wonder if police sketch artists are even aware of this condition.  I have yet to meet anyone else with aphantasia outside of this group (which makes me think it is rarer than reported, but that is just me).

Hi Lawence,

I could have written much of what you wrote here. I too have complete Aphansia and would love to participate in any research but I would actually like to be interviewed  rather than just taking the questionnaires which I can never really answer in a way that makes me feel that I have communicated completely my experience. I too have known for as far back as I can remember that I was aware that I thought differently in these respects than anyone I knew. However, I never really thought much about it, because I was very good in school and have a very good spatial memory, I simply did not feel any lack.

When I was older I did realize that my memory (short and long term) was not what others would consider up to par, but I got along just fine. Maybe the fact that I was a loner help me not feel the lack. On the multiplication tables, I figured out real fast that I could do the do the calculations as fast as any of my friends could bring up their memory, so it didn’t bother me to just not memorize them. To this day in my seventies I still do the calculations! I too learned that many standard ways of learning would not work for me, I had to understand, then remembering was not a problem. Fortunately, I learned very quickly and did very well on tests including Standardized tests. I was a little slow on more complicated math since I had to do all the calculations, but I was accurate.

I did not meet anyone like me until I was studying philosophy in College. One of my Professors brought up the fact that he could not ‘see’ images in his head as part of our discussion of Empiricism. I actually have a recording of the same basic information he gave about a decade later (early 1980’s) on the same subject.

I was robbed at gun point once, years ago, and was asked to identify the suspect who they had gotten with other evidence. The best I could do was say that he could be the guy. I only remember things about faces, colors etc. that I actually thought while looking at it. His looks did not have anything to deny what I thought, but I had no image in my head to compare with the face before me. Fortunately they convicted him on the other evidence!

One of our family jokes happened when my wife was unable to go shopping with me as she normally did. My objective was to buy a second suit that was noticeably different than the one I already had. It needed to be altered so it was some time before I was able to bring it home and as soon as I showed it to my wife, she said: ‘Frank! that is exactly the same as your other one!’ I didn’t believe it till they were side by side!!

It was things like this that finally convinced my wife that I really couldn’t see in my mind, but she had a hard time believing it and never understood it. Unfortunately, I found out that there was now a name and some science on this about a month after she died last Spring. She would have loved learning about this with me.

That reminds me that, like many people with Aphantasia, I deal with grief differently than most. However, I know that I deal with the loss of my wife better than many would, but Leslie and I were so close and I depended on her in so many ways (and vice versa) that it has been really hard.

Well anyway, I do want to say that Aphantasia is not a handicap! It is just a different way of doing the same things everyone else does. Though it makes us bad witnesses as far as identifying perpetrators, it seems our testimony is usually very accurate and unembellished and so dependable.