PICTURE this: a young man walks into his kitchen. He sits down on the table and picks up an apple from the fruit bowl. He looks on the apple, then bites into it, and chews slowly with a smile. What color is the apple?
Most people can immediately see the image, even with those few words, and might describe the color, shape, and size of the apple — and possibly what the person is wearing, and the color of the office partitions. For others of us, myself included, we get a weak image, or no visual imagery in any respect.
I actually have aphantasia, a blind “mind’s eye”. When told to assume my family, I can’t picture them. I can visualise relations by pondering of a specific photo, but even then the image is weak. People with complete aphantasia form about one per cent of the population: it’s one end of a spectrum, with vivid imagery called hyperphantasia at the opposite. It is related to weaker memory for the main points of events, difficulty recognising people, and weak or absent imagination for the opposite senses.
People with hyperphantasia can imagine visually in color and three dimensions, and sometimes can manipulate the model; or, once they picture something, they experience moving images, like a movie. More individuals with aphantasia are scientists, more individuals with hyperphantasia are artists.
THE first time I realised I had no mind’s eye was as a young person, when a friend hated a movie we went to see together since the characters “didn’t look right”. They didn’t seem like the detailed pictures the friend had of their head. I used to be surprised to seek out that anyone had such complex mental images, and this prompted me to start to study how the brain works, and was one in every of many aspects which led me later to turn out to be a psychiatrist.
I often discuss people’s internal mental experiences with them, and find the variation fascinating. One friend, when reading, hears the characters’ voices clearly out loud, and might see them; in addition they have an audible inner monologue. Another sees a ticker-tape of words when someone is talking. Yet one other has face-blindness and can’t recognise even his closest family by sight. A scientist friend has synaesthesia, and sees specific colors when he reads, hears, or thinks a couple of number; one other has dyslexia, and finds that words move around and get jumbled up as they read.
These naturally occurring differences in brain function each give particular strengths and weaknesses. My friend with dyslexia has a complete recall of maps. I’m sad that I actually have all the time had a really poor autobiographical memory, and might’t remember events in any detail: I just know that they happened.
There again, my aphantasia helped me to not burn out during my psychiatric profession. Since I didn’t get mental pictures when a patient described their difficult experiences, this helped me to not bring my work home to the identical degree as those with a really lively mind’s eye. It doesn’t mean I’m not caring and empathetic, nevertheless it gave me a greater degree of emotional distancing, and so protected my mental health.
GIVEN my challenges with visual and auditory imagery, I never really engaged with Ignatian approaches to spirituality. St Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) was a Spanish nobleman who was injured by a cannonball, and, throughout the enforced stillness of his many months of recovery, had a profound and life-changing experience of God. Following this conversion, he supported other people in using their imagination to come across the living God, founded the Jesuit order, and wrote the Spiritual Exercises.
I used to be introduced to Ignatian spirituality through a type of guided meditation, where Luke 8 was read, and folks then sat in silent contemplation. Afterwards, the group shared their experiences. Everyone else had seen the ocean stirred up by the wind, heard the waves crashing, tasted the salt within the air, felt the boat rocking, and talked with Jesus. I had nothing, and felt a failure; so I avoided this approach as not accessible for somebody with my brain type.
FAST forward 30 years to summer 2022. I used to be preparing to go on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, when areas of northern Spain across the Camino caught fire. I made a decision to reschedule, and looked around for a retreat. In the entire of the UK, the one availability in August was an eight-day Ignatian retreat. “I can’t do the imagination stuff, but at the very least I can have some silent meditation and every day spiritual direction,” I believed, and booked.
It was an exquisite time, and showed me that I could engage with Ignatian approaches. After the net “Growth In Prayer and Reflective Living” (GPRL) course from the Glasgow Ignatian Study Centre, I surprised myself by feeling drawn to the total Spiritual Exercises. I recently finished this 30-day retreat, and located that I could engage deeply with the exercises — not through imagination of the person senses, but, moderately, a deep “knowing”.
I used to be there at Jesus’s birth, on the foot of the cross, at his resurrection; by some means, I knew what people were saying and doing, but in case you asked me what I could see, the reply would all the time be “nothing”. So, for me, the Ignatian approach to using the imagination in prayer can and does bring spiritual blessings and challenges, despite my absent mind’s eye.
MANY of us have brains which are neurodiverse, different from average in a method or one other; you possibly can never assume that the way you see the world is strictly similar to how others see it.
Aphantasia is one type of neurodiversity, even though it doesn’t normally have as much impact on someone’s life as autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or dyslexia: each of those conditions varies in its intensity and impact. Autistic traits are present in many very smart mathematicians and scientists; their single-minded focus may be very helpful for detailed laboratory work, but their inability to read other people’s emotions may make close relationships difficult.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, people living with autism with a learning disability have complex needs, and this condition could be profoundly difficult for the person, their family, and community.
People don’t just hold different opinions from yours, they could have entirely different mental processes and ways of seeing the world. Many of us have physical, mental, emotional, social, and/or communication needs that turn out to be disabling when society cannot accommodate them; and now we have unique things to contribute to the community. Empathy, care, consideration, and adaptations could make life easier and make church life accessible for everybody.
The Revd Dr Alison J. Gray is a Canon of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe and lives in Worcestershire.
SOME easy adaptations could make many individuals’s lives easier, and avoid shaming them for his or her difference:
- In church services, in case you say “Let’s all stand and sing. . .” you immediately put those with restricted mobility in a second-class position. If, as an alternative, you say something like “Please stand as you might be able as we sing. . .” those for whom getting up or standing is difficult don’t feel that they should struggle to their feet.
- When it’s craft time in the youngsters’s group, do you provide left-handed scissors? Ten per cent of individuals are naturally left-handed.
- In a small group setting, do you say “Let’s read the passage aloud, each in turn,” without considering those that cannot (yet) read in English, or whose dyslexia makes spontaneous reading a nightmare?
- Does your church have any accessible services suitable for those with poor memories, or who cannot tolerate flashing graphics, or loud noises, or who have to fidget or move around? Can deaf people and those that use sign language be a full a part of your community?
- If you might be teaching on prayer, acknowledge that it is probably going that this particular approach to prayer won’t be helpful to everybody. “Pray as you possibly can, not as you possibly can’t” was often heard within the GPRL course.
