In my mind’s eye

 

In my mind’s eye

Now at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)

It might be assumed that the ability to visualise something is a practice everyone can indulge. ‘Counting sheep’ to aid sleep is one form of visualisation. Revisiting a favourite location in one’s mind is a pleasant occupation, but suppose you couldn’t? Some people lack the ability so to do. They may have difficulty recalling faces but will still be able to recognise people when they meet them. Imagining a scene is difficult for them and detailed descriptions will not conjure pictures in their minds, but they may be excellent at abstract problem-solving and code-breaking.

Inability to visualise mental images is called aphantasia and was first described in 1880 by Francis Galton (1822-1911). At that time, visualisation was largely disbelieved. It was not extensively studied until 2015, when Adam Zeman (1957-) of the University of Exeter, coined the term aphantasia. 

The extreme opposite of aphantasia is hyperphantasia, in which people have the ability to visualise events or places with almost photographic detail. Dreams can be overwhelmingly realistic, and mental images may be intense.

The table below sets out simplistically the differences between aphantasia and hyperphantasia.

Trait	Aphantasia	Hyperphantasia
Mental images	None	Extremely vivid
Thinking style	Verbal / logical	Visual / sensory
Memory	Conceptual	Image‑based
Emotional response to imagination	Lower	Stronger

So, for some people, the ‘mind’s eye’ does not function, and they may be astonished at the idea that others can ‘see with their mind.’