Mental imagery strength and type

[Peter Deadpan]

I was writing my dreams down for awhile first thing in the morning, and I found that that helped with my memory/imagery strength. I was able to recall in fairly vivid detail the finer, well, details. I stopped only because I value my sleep and it was too draining to get up extra early just to write dreams down. I'd have to be in bed by 10 every night to do so and not feel like a bag of crap. Anyway, I recommend that as an exercise for anyone looking to strengthen their mind's eye.

 

[Gone]

This is a subject which has fascinated me for awhile now. I have a fairly weak mind's eye. If you tell me to picture a wooden swing hanging from a tree, I can do it, but it's not like looking at a photograph. It's sort of narrow and vague. I either see a rough example of one, or I can zoom in on some finer details (like the wood grain), but not really both at the same time. If you tell me to picture a mountain covered in pine trees, I can do that a bit easier because it's something that I've actually seen, so I might recall a photo I took on vacation. If you ask me to create a fantasy landscape, I suppose I can sort of do it, piece by piece, but it's not something I excel at by any means and I suspect I would mostly draw existing examples I've seen elsewhere for inspiration. Regardless of what I picture, it's never crystal clear or vibrantly colorful; it's usually somewhat vague and lacking nuance. The only time I see vivid imagery is when I am lying in bed at night. Occasionally my mind will spontaneously supply me with beautiful patterns (like mandalas) or works of art it has created. I have no control over this and enjoy it deeply when it occurs, but I would never be able to recall what I saw at a later time. Additionally, I struggle with remembering people's faces, even those very close to me. I can do it, but it's not crisp and usually utilizes images I have seen before, like a photo or a memory/impression, like sitting on the couch next to said person.

How do you experience mental imagery? Do you experience it at all? Some people lack the ability to do so, which I find tragic. Also, if you could state your MBTI type, I'd appreciate it.

Here is the article:
Some people can't see any pictures in their imagination, and here's why

ENTP, and I relate to what you wrote a lot.

I have no problems imagining singular objects, like the apple from the article you linked, but whole scenes are an entirely different thing. I can do it, but it's more like a rough sketch, like, this is the situation, people are located here, here, and here, and theres a tree in the background, but this sketch is lacking details, it's mostly just silhouettes. If you want me to tell you the hair colour of one of the people I'm imagining I have to zoom in, and then I'm able to imagine the hair of the people in incredible detail, while their face is barely more than a blob. If I shift focus to their eyes, I lose sight of their hair, and so on. It's almost impossible for me to combine these modes.

I talked about this a lot with a Ni dom friend, and she is kind of the opposite. Can't focus on details like I can, but full scenes? Whole compositions? No problem at all.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

ENTP, and I relate to what you wrote a lot.

I have no problems imagining singular objects, like the apple from the article you linked, but whole scenes are an entirely different thing. I can do it, but it's more like a rough sketch, like, this is the situation, people are located here, here, and here, and theres a tree in the background, but this sketch is lacking details, it's mostly just silhouettes. If you want me to tell you the hair colour of one of the people I'm imagining I have to zoom in, and then I'm able to imagine the hair of the people in incredible detail, while their face is barely more than a blob. If I shift focus to their eyes, I lose sight of their hair, and so on. It's almost impossible for me to combine these modes.

I talked about this a lot with a Ni dom friend, and she is kind of the opposite. Can't focus on details like I can, but full scenes? Whole compositions? No problem at all.

This is super interesting to me.

 

[Agent Washington]

I used to imagine entire music videos. Entire scenes, entire moving shizzle, to music. Entire storylines, some scenes, strung together with words.

(Fun fact: My imagination HAS to be engaged for me to be turned on xD Where's that special someone who can indulge me in rp all day everyday)

In a way, I find art very ... nice... coz it's much better than reality. But if I were to put it down on paper, it's absolutely rubbish, since something gets lost in the process. Same for writing. Though writing is more adequate.

The ability to picture vividly goes down, however, with how much I have on my plate. If I have no time for maladaptive daydreaming, then I have no time to picture. It's kinda like a muscle. You use it or it atrophies.

Still shit at facial recognition (thanks Asperger's), but ... y'know.


Also, no details for me too. IDK why.

 

[Smilephantomhive]

I used to imagine entire music videos. Entire scenes, entire moving shizzle, to music. Entire storylines, some scenes, strung together with words.

Same! Well I still do. Sometimes it's with deep meaningful music, and other times it's to Katy Perry.

 

[hjgbujhghg]

I believe, that I have an extremely strong mental imagination. It's sometimes not as good as it might seem, because I think I'm basically addicted to creating mental imagery in my mind. I love to create stories and scenes in my mind, fantasizing about things that I can't experience irl and often this imagination gives me a lot more satisfaction than the real world. I often struggle to keep my attention at the here and now and I often simply slip into imagining whatever seems pleasant to me and miss the real things in life. It's gotten so huge for me, that my imagination has much stronger emotional influence over me than the actual stuff in my life. I have to literally fight with myself to keep myself from constant fantasizing. It's actually pretty disturbing...

 

[hjgbujhghg]

[MENTION=31348]Peter Deadpan[/MENTION] I'm sorry, I don't want to argue or anything, so please take this lightly, but why do you type yourself as an intuitive type when you have such an issue with mental imaginary and dreams? Intuitive types are extremely connected to the subconscious, that means the unrealized images, dreams and subconscious connections that can't exist without extreme vivid access to dreams and imagination.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

[MENTION=31348]Peter Deadpan[/MENTION] I'm sorry, I don't want to argue or anything, so please take this lightly, but why do you type yourself as an intuitive type when you have such an issue with mental imaginary and dreams? Intuitive types are extremely connected to the subconscious, that means the unrealized images, dreams and subconscious connections that can't exist without extreme vivid access to dreams and imagination.

No, that's scientifically inaccurate. The spectrum is more broad than that. Also, my issues probably stem more from memory issues, which I don't care to get into what I suspect is the cause of that.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

I have vivid mental imagery, but don't consider my memory images that stable. I do feel like my mental imagery is very Ni/Fi because I do see Fi over Ti in it. My dreams can be very vivid, but I am unusually quick to entering a wakeful dream state during meditation where images come to my mind readily that aren't in the outside world.

 

[Galena]

The ability to form images is, I've had confirmed beyond any doubt, the seat of who I am and what makes me feel alive. Being injured in the brain to the effect of losing this ability would be a very bad situation personally.

My mind's eye is detailed and, if the object is important enough to me or someone I have an obligation to, photographic. The weird thing is how fast it is - both the speed it's capable of and that I use it at by preference. There's no slowing it down to pour over the details of an image, and I get bored and it feels needless if I try to do that. Those details are just there, I know what and where they are, and if they're relevant. The image goes by in a flash of less than a second, and I have everything I am interested in from it. The physical world can feel too slow by comparison.

 

[Smilephantomhive]

If intuition is about access to subconscious, then this site is making me more intuitive.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

The ability to form images is, I've had confirmed beyond any doubt, the seat of who I am and what makes me feel alive. Being injured in the brain to the effect of losing this ability would be a very bad situation personally.

My mind's eye is detailed and, if the object is important enough to me or someone I have an obligation to, photographic. The weird thing is how fast it is - both the speed it's capable of and that I use it at by preference. There's no slowing it down to pour over the details of an image, and I get bored and it feels needless if I try to do that. Those details are just there, I know what and where they are, and if they're relevant. The image goes by in a flash of less than a second, and I have everything I am interested in from it. The physical world can feel too slow by comparison.

Do you paint or draw much? If so, is it easy to create something accurately from your mind's eye?

 

[Galena]

Do you paint or draw much? If so, is it easy to create something accurately from your mind's eye?

I used to draw quite a bit, but no at creating something accurately from the mind. I can only do my best. Actually it's better if I don't try to replicate something in my head exactly, use that or an existing image as just a starting point (love public domain sea life and medical images), and let something else come alive from that as I go.

 

[Agent Washington]

I was writing my dreams down for awhile first thing in the morning, and I found that that helped with my memory/imagery strength. I was able to recall in fairly vivid detail the finer, well, details. I stopped only because I value my sleep and it was too draining to get up extra early just to write dreams down. I'd have to be in bed by 10 every night to do so and not feel like a bag of crap. Anyway, I recommend that as an exercise for anyone looking to strengthen their mind's eye.

*stuffs my unconscious into a box and shuffles it under the bed* >_>

Memory is weird as shit. I know the details of the inventory I have in the kitchen because I keep mental stock, but it's not really images, it's just memory.

I have better memory of PICTURES I've seen than actual scenes I've seen, which is a huge pain in the ass because I can remember that one handsome guy from 10 years ago only via remembering his photo, which is not the same thing as remembering his face. And the less it gets recalled, the blurrier it gets, to the extent that it becomes an essence of an event.

tl;dr memory isn't pictorial, though the link you sent is right, I would strongly suspect drawbacks to vivid pictorial IMAGINATION as being linked to issues like addiction and anxiety. I have an addictvie personality, anxiety, and I have escapist tendencies. True Pisces (tm) None of this is counteracted by my ability to ... do anything else, since it's far better to imagine than paint anyway, or write, both of which take time and I get car sickness if I try to write on a car, but inspiration is fleeting, so it is literally useless.

 

[Morpeko]

How do you experience mental imagery? Do you experience it at all?

I think it comes pretty naturally to me, but only in terms of "realistic" things. I can create new faces in my head easily (i.e. for fictional characters I make up). I can imagine things that I've seen in the things I've seen in the past pretty easily and fill in the details. (Something like a sunflower, or the ocean. Nothing overly specific or detailed.) I can recall people's faces very well, but details such as clothes, eye colors, or hairstyles are lost on me. If I'm reading a fantasy or science fiction novel or something, it's hard for me to imagine creatures of a brand new species or a super strange setting.

 

[Maou]

My visual imagery varies by what I am doing. I also don't think most people's mental imagery is photographic. Mine is strong, but it's more than just sight that I get when I imagine something. I am also concerned I have some kind of face blindness because I actually have a hard time telling people apart and seeing faces accurately without side by side comaprison. I also don't usually dream of people unless they are a major element in the story.

Like if you tell me to imagine a tree, id usually picture it as if I was there in person looking at a tree. I don't picture a photograph of one. I'd imagine the size, texture, shape, temperature, weather, what im standing on etc too. If I close my eyes, I can amplify the effects. I usually daydream too like Fay, so I have worked it like a muscle.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

My ability to properly focus on my internal landscapes has improved greatly since I started this thread. I used to have basically no conscious history of my thoughts, as in they just sort of happened and moved from one to the next so naturally that I didn't even pay attention or log what was going on. I had to teach myself to be more mindful in order to reconnect with myself.

I think there were a few contributing factors to these self-blockages, mainly summarized in trauma and neuroticism, and as I've filtered through some of that, I've realized how rich my inner world can be. I prefer to live in an internal landscape and have scenes that I call upon myself when I want to feel something different (I'm not claiming that this is healthy). My most vivid experiences involve music... I've created entire video stories, like an actual short story of imagery, to songs. I also use music as a catalyst to emotive imagery. I was talking about this yesterday, but sometimes I'll go to this scene of a vast, dark ocean, and I'll picture/feel myself drop into the water, sorta ass first, with my arms and legs floating up gently, completely relaxed, slowly sinking until it becomes too dark to see myself. Sometimes there is also a thin veil of sheer fabric cradling me, with corners and edges floating up along my limbs. It's rather womb-like. It's a combination of emotional indulgence and self-soothing, and it helps to center me if I'm feeling shite, so even though it sorta romanticizes pain, it's also meditative for me. There's a yin-yang quality to it in a way.

I would love to bridge the gap between my mental imagery and the physical world via art, I just lack the initiative and dedication. Maybe that's what I'll be writing about in another three years, perhaps with actual images of my imagery.

 

[Earl Grey]

I do have quite a bit of mental imagery. And it's not just images- I think I was extremely nonverbal growing up that I developed my own way of processing information that persists until now. I barely think in language at all- my thoughts come in the form of sounds/music, or imagery that can be very difficult to put into words. It's very symbolic. Imagine thinking in symbols all the time. Imagine a stop sign- even if there is no words, you see the shape, the colours, and you know it means 'stop'- you know it as a concept even if the word 'stop' itself doesn't come to mind. My mind is full of such things.

I had no idea there were mind blind people. My IQ tests (which is the only test that's ever formally tested my aptitude for this at length- bear with me) demonstrated a superior spatial thinking ability; it's that silly part of the test where you see blocks clumped together with dots and you're supposed to answer which shapes are the same ones, which requires you to 'rotate' them around in your mind [link] [link] [link]. I recall a silly demonstration of it when I was in grade school where I was the only child in my class who rotated a complex object in my head and gave the correct answer to some quiz, which funnily enough defeated the point of the exercise (I couldn't remember exactly what it was, but I remember this one part in my memory because the teachers were very surprised at me, and that it's one of those 'TADAAA' lessons where the kids were expected to answer wrong and the teachers swoop in with the 'TADAAA' answer). Speaking of my childhood, that's also how I did addition / multiplication for maths as a young'un. I would see in my mind- for example, 3x5- I will imagine a cluster of 5 objects, then 'copy-paste' it 3 times, then count them one by one. 15.

I wonder if this is part of why my dreams are so ... so, vivid. I see places simulated in my brain from all angles, types of places I have never seen in real life. My favourite recent one was this: [link] [link]. I have never been to such a place in real life. I felt the swaying of the cable car, I saw the gently rolling fog, the swaying of the trees and leaves as I descended from a mountaintop, passing by rocky peaks and trees. It's not foggy, I see it as-is, like it is a movie I am watching, or that I was actually there. I've always wondered how the hell my brain could construct / render such things, but it's extremely enjoyable, so I'm not complaining.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

I do also think in words. I wish I didn't because it seems cooler to not really have an internal voice and to process things solely abstractly, but I have a very loud and clear internal voice that loves to think in boring statements or even long monologues, and I can see print in my head just fine too.

I remember when I was a young child, a boy that I went to school with died tragically in a fire. It was my first exposure to death, and I actually kept seeing the actual word "death" in bright white print on a black background, flashing at medium pace. I also read and write in my dreams. I think it's more because I spend a rather unhealthy amount of time online, and so I am constantly looking at and processing things via written and internally spoken word. I also associate this tendency with high neuroticism... just that need to constantly think.

I'd love to get out of this state of existence and become more grounded with not only physical reality, but abstract interpretation of it, sans words. I suspect I would be capable if I committed to mindfulness and detachment from devices/the internet.

 

[Saturnal Snowqueen]

If you told me to picture something, my mind becomes like a stereopticon, I can see the image alright but as focused as it is the vignette around it clouds it. I'm a daydreamer, but the imagery isn't half as a vivid as the movement, or the voices associated with it. It's just a bunch of mental clutter Also, as an artist, focusing on an image can only get me so far. It doesn't really help actually, it's just a starting point actually. Whilst drawing, lately I've been going for an almost mathematical approach that I wonder is from Te and Si. I start to break down things by shapes and size, and then I branch off the drawing from there. One of my doctors said my visual learning was suckish, but I don't know if that is linked to me actually envisioning things. However, when I'm reading something, I have a very strong mental image of what the characters look like, and so sometimes when I learn what the character looks like it's disappointing. I have a very good memory, and I can remember everything really but I have to think a bit harder on the visual details, the voices around me come first and foremost. The visuals don't mean as much to me when the conversations around it have much more of an emotional impact on me. I wonder if I just pick up on movement really well, I mean, everything in sound moves. Oh, and touch, sometimes I imagine the warmth of something and I enjoy the feeling of it and then I realize I'm not actually visualizing the thing all that much and it's like what? It's almost like an aura around me.