10 years ago, I’d have put my ability to visualise at 0 out of 10. Practice and occasional halucinogen use has got me to 2 out of 10. It causes no end of problems in day to day life, so I’m interested to hear if anyone has tips or just experiences to share so it doesn’t feel such a lonely frustrating issue.
edit informative comment from @Gwaer@lemm.ee about image streaming, I did a bit of digging on the broken links, the Dr isn’t giving the info away for free anymore without buying their (expensive) book, but I found some further info on additional techniques here, pages 2/3: https://nlpcourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Image-Streaming-Mode-of-Thinking.pdf
Prophantasia is voluntary, and people not only control it, but as other comments point out, it feels like ‘self’. My brother, a PhD psychologist, has developed an interest in aphantasia. Aphantasics rarely hallucinate. So, from talking with him, we have a pretty good working hypothesis that schizoaffective disorder affects the same brain pathways as prophantasia, i.e. hallucinations that are not under voluntary or conscious control. (As an interesting side note, in highly-individualistic cultures, the voices and images more often feel malevolent and ‘other’ to sufferers, in contrast to people in collectivist cultures, who experience them more often as friendly and familial. It’s not necessarily maladaptive.)
