APHANTASTIC

APHANTASIA 1. the inability to form mental images of objects that are not present.

Saturday, 8 May 2021

Aphantastic 

  

Aphantasia is the inability to visualize mental images, that is, not being able to picture something in one's mind. 

Many people with aphantasia are also unable to recall sounds, smells, or sensations of touch. Some also report prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces. 

The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 but has since remained relativ

ely unstudied. 

Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 conducted by a team led by Professor Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter, which also coined the term aphantasia. Research on the condition is still scarce. The term aphantasia is derived from the Ancient Greek word phantasia (φᾰντᾰσῐ́ᾱ), which translates to 'imagination', and the prefix a- (ᾰ̓-), which means 'without'. Hyperphantasia, where mental imagery is unusually vivid, is the opposite to Aphansia.to

Wow just a name lifted my spirit and inspired me to create this blog  

Aphantastic 

It’s Aphantastic to put a name on some-

thing that drove you to suicide. 

For the last eighteen years I have been 

writing blackhole poetry, my writing has 

pulled me from the ledge, as John Berryman 

called ‘The blind-brow.’ 

\

All those years spent in default mode, telling 

doctors, nurses and psychiatric professionals. 

Who had no clue about the blackness behind 

my eyes, unable to conjure up images from 

my minds eye.

Unable to cling to images of my own sons, 

my childhood and family. It was as if I was 

a blank shell of a man.  At least now I’ve got 

a name, a reason for my anxiety.

I have been trying to form form from a formless 

mind but I knew I knew I was on to something, 

there was a method to my madness. The poems 

were feeding me hope, even it was a dark hope. 

I flicked through YouTube as I stay away from ad-

verts. I watched a guy talking to a professor about 

how he couldn’t hold the images of his dead mother 

in his mind and thought he was going mad and the professor said he had a condition called aphantasia.

Wow just a name lifted my spirit and inspired 

me to create this blog of hope.