"There's an early memory from my childhood, representative of its peak happiness. I'm on a simple, iron child's seat on my father's bike. He's just picked me up from kindergarten and is taking me home through the forest on the way to our house. It is a spectacularly fluorescent Danish spring, and we're travelling through woodland illuminated, from above, by the light-green foliage of the tall beeches only just coming into soft leaves and, from below, by snow-white forest anemones spreading around us in dense, endless carpets.
Bringing this scene to my mind, I don't 'see' anything. I have aphantasia, the neurological condition of being unable to visualise imagery, also described as the absence of the 'mind's eye'. Still, I know that those visual elements were there; they're stored in my mind as knowledge and concepts; and I have particular and strong emotional responses to the thought of the light and colours.
Until very recently, I had always assumed that my experience of reality was typical, and that being able to see only things that are actually there – present and visible in the external surroundings – was normal. But discovering that I have aphantasia brought to my awareness differences in perception and self-conception between me and others that I'd always registered on some level, and felt disturbed by, but had never consciously thought about
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The further I've delved into research on this neurological anomaly, the more extensive its explanatory reach has proven. It has been like finding the master key to my life and personality, and has significantly deepened my understanding of my psychology, my philosophical views, and my aesthetic and literary preferences…"
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