Richard Emery

I recently discovered that I had aphantasia (age 69). When I tried to explain this to some grandkids by asking them if they could see a Christmas tree in their mind, one of them (age 11 and scary smart, started using multi-syllabic words correctly by 3rd birthday), said that he couldn't see it either. Then he made what I think may be the most insightful comment on teh subject, saying that while he couldn't visualize the tree itself, he could visualize the concept of a Christmas tree. I told you he's scary smart...

My fix has been to use absolute directions (NSEW) instead of right/left/up/down. That seems to be easier for me to latch onto. I only recently discovered that I had aphantasia (age 69). Up to then, I had always assumed that talking about mental pictures was just poetic license! When I explained this to my wife, she looked at me and said that now she understood better why sometimes I seemed to deliberately misunderstand her directions. She has adapted her directions to me to reflect the fact that it doesn't do much good to tell me where something is by using nearby structures, or two rights and a left...