Tom, I appreciate and agree completely with the actual substantive content of this essay. The style of it, however, is driving me crazy. The structure of "it's not this, it's that" is a hallmark of ChatGPT. If you ask the AI to edit that out or at least reduce it to just one per every six paragraphs, it would really help! Oh and I have another example of famous people with aphantasia who nonetheless excel in artistic/creative roles: Ed Katmull, the former CEO of the Pixar & Disney animation studios, has aphantasia. Moreover, he polled all 270 of the studios' employees and found that all of the NON-artists were better visualizers, while all of the ARTISTS had some degree of aphantasia!!! Interestingly, the *most* aphantasic employees were the ones who were both artists and computer programmers. I myself am a very talented artist as well, so there's that, too. I'm retired from making art and not at all famous, but I did somehow end up on Wikipedia. Aphantasia *helps* people become more skilled at art (if they have the interest in art to want to sit down and practice drawing from life) because we're more easily able to see exactly what's in front of us, whereas stronger visualizers get distracted by their internal "shortcuts," which can be incorrect and lead them astray. So we can create very accurate representations. And once we have enough practice with that, it's absolutely possible to be very creative with what we produce. I close my eyes and can't see anything, but if I start putting lines down on paper, I then have a visual in front of me and can experiment with molding it, adding here, erasing there, and ultimately creating something entirely new.

I *strongly* disagree with your assertion that people with SDAM can't empathize! I'm aphantasic (visually). I believe I have SDAM because (1) I can't re-experience my memories and (2) instead I remember things via the narrative I tell myself about them. (The closest I get to re-experiencing is when I retell to myself a conversation -- only possible with very recent conversations or with ones I've retold so many times that I have them memorized.) And (3) I seem to have relatively fewer memories of my life compared to other people my age. And yet I absolutely DO empathize! Reading a character's experience in book feels to me like I'm living the experience myself, not visually, but in the only way I know how -- emotionally! I've erupted into tears from sad words in a book as well as from sad words expressed to me in person! Please do not spread the false idea that people with SDAM can't empathize. It's this kind of incorrect assumption that made a lot of people think autism meant a lack of empathy! There's a name for not having empathy, and that's called being a sociopath. And I highly doubt you are a sociopath. It sounds to me like you're making assumptions about what it means to have SDAM and multisensory aphantasia, and it just "makes sense" to you that what you thought was empathy was merely sympathy. Stop that! Your feelings are real! And just because you can't visualize on command and can't re-experience your old memories on command does NOT stop you from feeling emotions triggered by a new experience or by someone else's sharing of their experience!!!!

Tom, I appreciate and agree completely with the actual substantive content of this essay. The style of it, however, is driving me crazy. The structure of "it's not this, it's that" is a hallmark of ChatGPT. If you ask the AI to edit that out or at least reduce it to just one per every six paragraphs, it would really help! Oh and I have another example of famous people with aphantasia who nonetheless excel in artistic/creative roles: Ed Katmull, the former CEO of the Pixar & Disney animation studios, has aphantasia. Moreover, he polled all 270 of the studios' employees and found that all of the NON-artists were better visualizers, while all of the ARTISTS had some degree of aphantasia!!! Interestingly, the *most* aphantasic employees were the ones who were both artists and computer programmers. I myself am a very talented artist as well, so there's that, too. I'm retired from making art and not at all famous, but I did somehow end up on Wikipedia. Aphantasia *helps* people become more skilled at art (if they have the interest in art to want to sit down and practice drawing from life) because we're more easily able to see exactly what's in front of us, whereas stronger visualizers get distracted by their internal "shortcuts," which can be incorrect and lead them astray. So we can create very accurate representations. And once we have enough practice with that, it's absolutely possible to be very creative with what we produce. I close my eyes and can't see anything, but if I start putting lines down on paper, I then have a visual in front of me and can experiment with molding it, adding here, erasing there, and ultimately creating something entirely new.

I *strongly* disagree with your assertion that people with SDAM can't empathize! I'm aphantasic (visually). I believe I have SDAM because (1) I can't re-experience my memories and (2) instead I remember things via the narrative I tell myself about them. (The closest I get to re-experiencing is when I retell to myself a conversation -- only possible with very recent conversations or with ones I've retold so many times that I have them memorized.) And (3) I seem to have relatively fewer memories of my life compared to other people my age. And yet I absolutely DO empathize! Reading a character's experience in book feels to me like I'm living the experience myself, not visually, but in the only way I know how -- emotionally! I've erupted into tears from sad words in a book as well as from sad words expressed to me in person! Please do not spread the false idea that people with SDAM can't empathize. It's this kind of incorrect assumption that made a lot of people think autism meant a lack of empathy! There's a name for not having empathy, and that's called being a sociopath. And I highly doubt you are a sociopath. It sounds to me like you're making assumptions about what it means to have SDAM and multisensory aphantasia, and it just "makes sense" to you that what you thought was empathy was merely sympathy. Stop that! Your feelings are real! And just because you can't visualize on command and can't re-experience your old memories on command does NOT stop you from feeling emotions triggered by a new experience or by someone else's sharing of their experience!!!!