Thanks Joe. That’s a great insight. One point: I can touch type just fine. For me, visualising the keyboard wasn’t necessary, you can look at it while you develop muscle memory for where letters are in relationship to each other. But I dare say if you can peck just fine there’s no need to learn. But I’m a counter case to your suggestion that it might be to do with aphantasia.

Hi. As a therapist myself, it's only since I've discovered my own aphantasia that I've come to realise just how profoundly visual some clients are. I've always been careful to pay attention to how visual clients are, and using that in my work. If they use visual language and imagery and respond to visual language, I use more of it. But I don't think I'd really 'got' how different their experiences are from my own. And it's helped me understand why some therapies, that invoke visual imagery (the Swish pattern, for example) just don't resonate with me and why they do work so well for some clients. Incidentally, I've noticed that not surprisingly a high degree of visual imagery ability is associated with certain professions, such as grpahic designers and (usually though interestingly not always) architects. I wonder if much work has been done on correlating visual imagery ability with professions and artistic callings? For example it's no coincidence that James Joyce, who had such dreadful eye problems, doesn't use a lot of visual imagery in his work.

Would someone who was profoundly aphantasic be able to experience a visual image for the first time this way? Would that be a dramatic experience for them? Or would it be something like the faintest tremour of a hitherto paralysed muscle, so subtle that they wouldn't be able to tell for sure they'd experienced anything at all? And at the other extreme, do we think that perhaps it might be possible to make a hyperphantasic 'suffer' by over-stimulating to the point where they found it unpleasant?

Thanks Joe. That’s a great insight. One point: I can touch type just fine. For me, visualising the keyboard wasn’t necessary, you can look at it while you develop muscle memory for where letters are in relationship to each other. But I dare say if you can peck just fine there’s no need to learn. But I’m a counter case to your suggestion that it might be to do with aphantasia.

Hi. As a therapist myself, it's only since I've discovered my own aphantasia that I've come to realise just how profoundly visual some clients are. I've always been careful to pay attention to how visual clients are, and using that in my work. If they use visual language and imagery and respond to visual language, I use more of it. But I don't think I'd really 'got' how different their experiences are from my own. And it's helped me understand why some therapies, that invoke visual imagery (the Swish pattern, for example) just don't resonate with me and why they do work so well for some clients. Incidentally, I've noticed that not surprisingly a high degree of visual imagery ability is associated with certain professions, such as grpahic designers and (usually though interestingly not always) architects. I wonder if much work has been done on correlating visual imagery ability with professions and artistic callings? For example it's no coincidence that James Joyce, who had such dreadful eye problems, doesn't use a lot of visual imagery in his work.

Would someone who was profoundly aphantasic be able to experience a visual image for the first time this way? Would that be a dramatic experience for them? Or would it be something like the faintest tremour of a hitherto paralysed muscle, so subtle that they wouldn't be able to tell for sure they'd experienced anything at all? And at the other extreme, do we think that perhaps it might be possible to make a hyperphantasic 'suffer' by over-stimulating to the point where they found it unpleasant?