Aphantasia
2026-07-02

It recently clicked for me that the "image" in "imagination", "eye" in "mind's 
eye", "picture" in "picture yourself", "visualize", "daydream" and similar 
language are not metaphors, and in fact most people have some capacity to think 
in terms of "visual" images. This is utterly alien to me--it isn't something I 
have ever done or even known to be possible, and it's kind of blowing my mind 
to learn that other people have this ability.

After some googling I learned there is a word for this: aphantasia. This means, 
more or less, "doesn't have a mind's eye". A bit on the nose if you ask me, and 
I do feel like there is an odd bias in the framing. Somewhere between 1-4% of
people are aphantasic, so it isn't "normal", but still.

Anyway, I'm fascinated by this now, and it has me thinking more about the ways
people perceive and process the world around them.