HF
Hank Fay
@hankfay
Joined over 4 years agoPhD psychologist, in practice for 25 years. Software developer for 25 years, still at it. Looking back, discovered my "difference" at age 6, in 1950.
@hankfay
Joined over 4 years agoPhD psychologist, in practice for 25 years. Software developer for 25 years, still at it. Looking back, discovered my "difference" at age 6, in 1950.
The year is 1963 and I have the cushiest summer job ever: I get to drive a pickup truck, from the regional newspaper, to 35 or so homes each day and pick up the money from the news kids who, back in the day, delivered the paper to customers. People still read the paper to get their local news and sports news, mainly. I was filling in for the regular collectors who each got a 2-week vacation. I was told I would need a city directory to find my way. To get to 471 East Podunk St. one looked up Podunk St. on the map to get the coordinates. Each block (e.g., 121 - 243) had its own entry, in the form of the letter and number marking the map's "block" corresponding to the street's "block". So, that first morning, I climbed into the company Ford 150, looked up the first house on the route, found it on the map, and put the map down. I looked out the front of the truck, and realized I didn't know where to go. Rinse and repeat: I tried that 4 more times. With the same result. I had a choice, as I sat there perspiring -- the truck had no A/C, and I was in a desperate situation. I had no problem with going back and admitting my inability. But that would leave the company hanging, and having been raised by parents who always, without exception, "did the right thing" regardless of consequence, I couldn't leave the company hanging. So, I said to myself, I would drive on the current street and hope that I recognized when to turn left (that much I knew). And, thankfully, when I got to a certain point I "felt" the road on which to turn left. That's when I learned that the memory was there, but I couldn't access it visually -- but that it was in fact being recognized, and I could "feel" the experience of recognition. I become better and better at feeling the experience of recognition beyond words. Imagine what it would be like if you went to a psychologist and that psychologist recognized what you hadn't verbalized to him. So I was very lucky that my disability was of the variety where the image is in fact seen, but unconsciously, which then gets reflected in gut-level experience. Otherwise -- I can't imagine what I would have done. But of course, I would have done something, and it likely would have worked out. I just can't imagine it.
As a PhD Psychologist, and it seems about 95% aphantasic, I had a huge advantage in working with patients over my 25 years of clinical practice. It took me about 10 years to get fully beyond the theoretical approaches I had learned: client-centered therapy, behavior therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, family therapy, and some gestalt therapy. With those as "ground" rather than "figure" I learned to fully connect to the patient's present experience and allow myself to be led to what would work for that person, in the here-and-now. I was not distracted by the "details" of what I knew: that was the secret sauce. Most often my patients who had been in therapy previously (about half) would remark: "Hank, talking to you is like talking to a regular person!" I would joke "well?" as I smiled, they would say "Oh, you know that I mean!" and then we would have a good laugh -- and go on. The proof was in the pudding. The average number of visits decreased by 15 to 30 at the start of my career to 4 to 6 visits. They, not I, determined whether they now saw themselves as being "past" the matters that brought them in. In a very real sense, I took the "heart" of each approach. That would have been much more difficult, I am thinking, if I had not been aphantasic.