To Those With a Mind’s Eye, It’s Called Thinking

Part 3: Aphantasia, Face Blindness, and How I Know People  

When I Learned Not Everyone Thinks in Pictures

When I was a very young mom, I became friends with a woman from church named Renee. We both had two-year-olds and babies. We were naïve, young, financially strapped, and overwhelmed by life and parenting.

One day, Renee told me she truly believed she was going crazy.

She said that all of a sudden, when she closed her eyes, pictures would flash through her mind like a slideshow. Not dreams. Not memories she was trying to recall—just images appearing on their own, and she couldn’t control them or make them stop.

I told her that it must be terrifying. I didn’t know what to make of it. I remember thinking I would be freaked out, too, if pictures started popping into my head without my permission.

Later, I told my mother what Renee had said, fully expecting her to suggest that Renee see a doctor or offer some explanation for what was happening.

Instead, my mom said, “Well, of course she sees images. It’s called thinking.”

I remember just staring at my mom, confused.

My mother genuinely didn’t understand what was strange about seeing pictures in your mind. To her, that was simply how thinking worked. I wish my mom were alive so we could talk now about my total lack of images—and how different our inner worlds were.

At the time, I didn’t know that most people can see images in their minds. I remember thinking, Who on earth can see what they think? I was confused that my mom didn’t find the idea strange at all.

Not long after that, I moved across the country and never saw or spoke with Renee again. But I’ve thought about her many times since, especially after learning—decades later—that most people really do visualize.

It wasn’t until about thirty years later, when I learned the word aphantasia, that the conversation finally made sense. My mother could visualize easily. I could not. Renee could not, and then started. Without knowing it, my mom and I had been talking about a fundamental difference in how minds work—one neither of us had a language or understanding of. 

I would love to go back in time and have that conversation with her now. That isn’t possible. But I take comfort in knowing that my mother had an active visual inner world—and that maybe I remember moments like this so clearly because, in the absence of pictures in my mind, I have stories and conversations instead.