Aphantastic

 

Aphantastic   

finding yourself in a hole at the bottom of a hole of solitude realizing only writing can save you.

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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 Aphasia.to

Aphasia is a condition that affects your ability to communicate. It can affect your speech, as well as the way you write and understand both spoken and written language.

Aphasia typically occurs suddenly after a stroke or a head injury. 

Ihave all three

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

Aphantastic 

APHANTASTIC

It’s Aphantastic to put a name on something the very thing that drove 

me to suicide. For the last eighteen 

years, I have been writing black-

hole 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 mind's eye.

Unable to cling to images of my own 

sons, my childhood and my 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 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 adverts. 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.