DRMacIver's Notebook
Book Review: Aphantasia: Experiences, Perceptions, and Insights, by Alan Kendle
Book Review: Aphantasia: Experiences, Perceptions, and Insights, by Alan Kendle
I didn’t find this book very interesting. You might find it more interesting if you don’t have aphantasia and are one of the people who find its existence mind-blowing, but most of this book was very obvious to me as someone who has had aphantasia and talked to a bunch of other people with it.
The big problem with it for me was that it made no real attempt at
science or synthesis. It was just a bunch of people talking about their
personal experience. I can see why that seems interesting in principle,
but the problem in practice is that it’s a bunch of people trying to
generalise about a vastly heterogenous experience from their personal
n=1 sample. As a result I didn’t find it very
informative.
This book will probably get passed on to some acquaintance who is more curious or less informed about other people’s experiences of aphantasia than I am.