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Thread: hyperaphantasia and type

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    Default hyperaphantasia and type

    Hyperphantasia is the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery. It is the opposite condition to aphantasia, where mental visual imagery is not present.
    Which types would be more prone to have hyperphantasia in your opinion?

    Do you have it?


    Inspired by this thread.

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    I have these kind of a mental imagery. I can imagine movie-like scenarios in my head, things that I haven't seen before. When I am listening a music, when I think or talk or hear something, there are some sceneries in my head, that kind of symbolize it.

    I have asked different types this question so far. Maybe this is not type related.
    Last edited by myresearch; 06-19-2021 at 12:15 AM.

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    The theory I've heard is that Si & Ni, being dynamic & introverted tell stories as if its a movie reel... like a video is being played.

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    Yes and no.
    I can have a full fledged movie as real as my everyday life or nothing at all up to an inability to form any image at all.
    I don't think it's type related, maybe what is imagined can hint towards a type.

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    Triggers/memory abstracted shapes while imagination is more detailed.
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    Typically that's assigned to Ni but I could see it occuring for the Ti extraverts too.

    Personally I wouldn't say I have vivid (in the sense that I can strongly visually "see" with full scenes, colors, etc.) mental imagery but I use it a lot for imagining situations and sort of codifying thoughts, I don't know how to explain it. Like I'll have a thought and a random made up image will appear that somehow represents the idea and if I focus on the image I can hold and examine the idea more clearly.

    In the space between wakefulness and sleep (think around the time when you can feel like you're falling) you have access to mental imagery that is much more unbounded than what you have during daily life. Imagining the most far-fetched and novel and yet extremely detailed and meaningful-feeling stuff happens with scenes and fluid transitions between scenes occuring in literal microseconds. The problem is you can never hold on to any one image for too long. I've experienced this a couple of times and it's a treat each time because you're amazed at what you can produce with just the barest half-quarter-sixteenth thought of willing something to appear.

    This all makes me think it's linked to the unconscious, and both N doms that are a little more thoughtful and a crazed schizophrenic SLE having an Ni trip may experience these things on a more regular basis.
    Last edited by ouronis; 06-16-2021 at 04:17 AM.

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    I can imagine static images of things, especially machines and mechanisms and how they should be manipulated for the desired outcome. Color isn't an important part, it's more like a x-ray vision or wireframe CAD drawing, cutting through all layers and exposing the inner workings, rotating and zooming in and out. Think like an exploded view cutaway drawing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploded-view_drawing

    Even though I've been exposed to drawings like this a lot through hobbies and work, I used to do it already as a kid, always imagining how it looks inside any object, like buildings, machines, even down to cellular and atomic level.

    I usually do this kind of imagining if I'm preparing to work on something but due to circumstances I'm not yet working on it (traveling there or something similar). When I'm actually faced with an object to work on, I tend to ignore the visualizing and dive straight into it and start taking things apart or putting them together. The drawback of this that due to being too eager to actually do stuff, I forget an intermediate step and have to re-do things due to something being left out or, ending up on the wrong side or just damaging something due to resorting to force instead of looking for a fastener I've forgotten to undo.

    Imagining some kind of movie reels or sequences of events tends not to happen and all this imagination is concrete, based on actual things I've seen before.

    To answer the original question, I think hyperphantasia might be somewhat related to strength of Si and aphantasia related to strength of Ni.

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    I also imagine objects as rotatable transparent or exploded assemblies in space. I can rotate these objects or make their mechanisms move as mental simulations. I tell people that I have x-ray vision, but it’s really more than that.

    I always aced those tests as a kid where they present an object in one view and then show you different views of all-but-one different objects.

    I also have an excellent memory for faces.

    However, I tend to back into things, much more than other people do. I don’t know why.

    Northstar, I can also be in a hurry when I’m physically doing something. When I was a machinist, I was very deliberate and careful, but now, when I’m in a lab, I really prefer to have someone who works there regularly with me, to prevent me from jumping in and doing something stupid because my rush to get something done is outrunning my prudence.

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    I look into this further. For me, mentally imagining any kind of visual thing is super simple, it can be concrete thing or something I have never seen before. For example, I can rotate the armchair (as it is, with color and every detail of it) in my living room, replace to anywhere, see it from all sides. I can also imagine myself at office, I can enter the building then elevator then my desk. I can also imagine myself or someone or non-existent person in a non existent place, somewhere that I mentally created. Just to note that, I don't visually imagine things all the time.

    People who have hyperphantasia can use their five senses easily in a realistic and vivid manner. I can't imagine touch, taste, smell as easily as I can visualize things. However, if those senses are elevated due to external stimuli, then I can. For example, when I had the best steak in my life, the taste of it randomly pop out for a few days after I ate it. I also rarely get info through taste, smell and touch in my dreams.
    Last edited by myresearch; 06-18-2021 at 10:28 PM.

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    I do get flashes of imagery here and there but I wouldn't say mine are particularly vivid. So I'm gonna say I'm pretty weak in this area

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    I'd assume intuitive and introverted types (with aphantasia more associated with sensing and extroverted types).

    But I also think it's possible that it's a "condition" distinct from personality. Supposedly a few percent of people have aphantasia (not hyperaphantasia - I don't know the figures for that), but I suspect that is a significant underestimate if people can get by perfectly well in such a state and may not be prone to getting a grasp of what they are missing. If it's only a few percent, it's difficult to see it as type-related other than as an extreme of some types.

    I doubt I have "hyperaphantasia" (I don't have a vastly fantastical imagination), but I do have a "mind palace" (like in the TV series Sherlock) that is a core of who I am. I never considered this as anything other than a natural state for every conscious person to be until I was in a conversation on this forum with a self-typed SLE who I gather is not that way (or possibly it was after I found out that the author and presenter Steven Berlin Johnson (someone I type as a possible LSE) has difficult with "visual encoding" - maybe he has hyperaphantasia) (I still find this difficult to comprehend - that intelligent people could get by without a significant inner world).

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    Depends. I can easily access this mode I think when I'm creating a story or trying to write something, since I love making and describing scenes. But when I'm not doing this my thoughts are pretty 'gray' and bleak and blah not even any pictures at all just this weird chaotic Shadow Priest ego-babble speak sort of thing. In a vacuum, it feels very Ni + Fe.

    My main mode of being is intense sadness, overly seriousness, grimdarkness and 'Emo ness' and then it sorta naturally builds up and releases all the tension in this kaleidoscope of bright homosexual colors and 1970s Thundercats eyebeam lasers and pure happiness and love. I realize now how much I don't get along with people who are the opposite of this, those who are much more consistent with their happiness and joy- but the end result is they are searching for something grim and lifeless ((but might have a lot of Fi meaning to them, or something)). I am going in the opposite direction, and starting from the opposite place.

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