Aphantasia – A Blind Mind’s Eye

For those who don’t already know, Chasing Nightmares has a character with aphantasia, a phenomenon where people are unable to visualize images voluntarily. I share this “condition,” something I discovered only within the last year. I wanted to put something up on here for people who are curious about what that is and how it affects people who have it.

I didn’t even realize this was a thing until I saw a post on social media about it. I went through college with a psych minor and somehow never realized that when people talked about “visualizing” something they were actually able to see it in their head like it was real. Learning that people are capable of this… blew my mind.

I think a lot of people who have it doesn’t realize they do, because they’ve never even heard about it before. You don’t realize other people can do what you can’t. I’m hoping that this character will reach people who are unaware that they experience this phenomenon, perhaps resonate with them, and help them learn something about themselves. Because once you know, a lot of things start to make sense.

Is aphantasia a disorder?

I don’t choose to see it that way, but it can affect my life in some detrimental ways. For one, I experience something called Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM), which is the inability to vividly recall personal events. I’ve talked to some people who describe “rewatching memories,” almost like a movie playing out in their head. This absolutely baffled me, since all I see when I close my eyes and try to think of a memory is darkness.

My inability to replay memories can make it difficult for me to recall any details at all. I’ve always had a hard time remembering events that happened to me, and I think many of my “memories” are secondhand products of people telling stories about events where I was present. I don’t personally remember it, but I can remember the story. I have very few memories from my childhood that I believe are actually my own recollection, not someone else’s description.

I also have a hard time recognizing and remembering faces, since I can’t visualize them, which partially explains why I struggle to recall names. If I don’t have a face to match it with, how am I supposed to remember one’s name? I’ve been approached by people who seem to know me, but I can’t for the life of me place who they are, which is an incredibly awkward experience.

How does aphantasia impact me as a writer?

After learning about this condition, I did a bit of a deep dive into the internet. A lot of people with aphantasia fall outside the creative spectrum… but not all. It makes sense that people who can’t visualize wouldn’t be interested in becoming artists or directors. Or writers. Despite this, there are actually a surprising number of artists, writers, and other creatives with aphantasia. People like me.

Some people with aphantasia have said they don’t understand the appeal of reading fiction because they can’t visualize what’s happening. Meanwhile, I was an avid reader as a kid and wrote my first novel in middle school. Apparently, the inability to literally play out the scenes in my head didn’t impact my desire to create stories. But I do think it impacts how I create stories.

I’ve always known have a tendency to under-describe things. A lot of times when I get to a part of a book where I need to describe a setting or something else in detail, I’ll mark it and come back to it later. I have to force myself to describe things like that, because if it’s not super important to the scene, I don’t care about it. I can’t see it in my head, so why do the details matter? I also give very minimal descriptions of my characters. Hair color, eye color, ethnicity, sometimes height if it seems relevant (if they’re very tall or very short). Finer details don’t matter to me. I’ve heard people talk about never being satisfied with adaptation casting because it never matches the image in their head, which until last year I couldn’t understand. I rarely took issue with casting as long as they matched the description given by the book. Sometimes even if they didn’t. Why do we care if someone’s eyes are blue instead of green? Now I’m realizing people have an actual image in their head for these characters, and it’s slightly different for everyone. So trying to fit a real person to that would be difficult.

People with aphantasia have to deal with facts and concepts in their heads instead of visuals. You might be able to visualize an apple in all its red, shiny glory, but I only have associations. I know an apple is red, or sometimes green. I know if the light hits it the right way, it has a sheen. It might have a stem, perhaps a leaf. I know all of these things. But I can’t see it. When I imagine scenes for my writing, I make a list of details in my head. I know my character is going to do or say this thing, but I can’t see it.

How does aphantasia affect a dreamwalker?

Let’s get back to Chasing Nightmares and the character who experiences aphantasia. If you haven’t read the book, there will be some minor spoilers ahead, so please consider reading it before you continue.

Cat Knight has aphantasia. She’s known something was different about her for a long time, though I don’t think she had a name for it until she was a teenager.

If you have read the book, here are some things you may or may not have picked up on:

1. The doors. This one is obvious because Ash actually comments on it. The doors that Cat conjures to move between (and out of) dreams are always different–when she asks for a door, she gets whatever the dreamer conjures.
2. Cat’s blurry face. When Ash first meets Cat and TJ, she describes Cat’s face as being unable to make up its mind. When dreamwalkers project their image into a dream, they’re telling a dreamer what to see. Well, Cat doesn’t have a clear mental image of herself, so unless the dreamer knows her, the details are uncertain. In Tiernan’s dream, TJ provides the details after noticing Cat’s face.
3. The oar. In the first chapter, Cat is somewhat surprised to find an oar in her hands. She summoned something long to use as a weapon, but in her haste didn’t spend much effort in conceptualizing exactly what she wanted. Since she can’t precisely visualize something like a fighting staff, the dreamer’s mind fills in the gaps and gives her something close–like an oar.
4. Having TJ create the dream version of their father. People’s faces are incredibly detailed, and the smallest difference is how we tell people apart. Since Cat doesn’t have a mental image of Robert in her mind, recreating him to perfection would be extremely difficult.
5. Her own dreams. Cat dreams in darkness. I want to note that not everyone with aphantasia dreams without images (I’m pretty sure that I do, though I hard a hard time remembering my dreams). It’s usually defined as an inability voluntary visualize things, so the involuntary dreams don’t always count. Some people can’t visualize voluntarily or involuntarily.

Want to see more of Cat? Shattered Daydreams, Dreamscapers Book #2, will explore some of the other ways Cat’s aphantasia impacts her life, both good and bad.