‘… But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, …’

So said the Time Traveller in the first chapter of HG Wells’s science fiction classic The Time Machine: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/35/pg35-images.html#:~:text=But%20you%20are%20wrong,for%20any%20length%20of%20Time

I was reminded of this when I heard Brian Levine talking about SDAM in this Aphantasia Network AMA session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvam_uoBSLc

‘In my work we always talk about the feeling of mental time travel, or re-experiencing. So I’d want to know, do you feel like you’re actually travelling back in time, like you were there?’

I wonder if the idea of ‘mental time travel’ came directly from Wells

I’m even more curious to know if that’s what it really feels like for most people: is this another one of those things I thought was a flowery metaphor but turns out to be much more real? 🤷🏻‍♀️

#SDAM #SeverelyDeficientAutobiographicalMemory #aphantasia

I was just having a discussion with @lauravivanco about aphantasia and SDAM: https://mastodon.scot/@lauravivanco/110729611947017752

I am aphantasic and have a very different kind of autobiographical memory from that of other people I’ve spoken to

But then this occurred to me:

Why should I accept Brian Levine’s 2015 (yes, 2015!) coining of the term ‘*severely deficient* autobiographical memory’ for this aspect of my neurotype?

Being Autistic, I’m pathologised by the medical model as having a ‘autism spectrum *disorder*’

And being an ADHDer, I apparently have an ‘attention *deficit* hyperactivity *disorder* (yeah, get two Ds in there, why not!)

Yet many Autistic and ADHD activists who subscribe to the social model of disability and the neurodiversity paradigm are making inroads into persuading at least some academics and clinicians to treat us as disabled, not disordered, not deficient – just a different kind of human, not humans that have gone wrong

My aphantasia/SDAM (I have a strong hunch they go together) may have strengths and weaknesses in comparison with the imaginative capacity attributed to the mythical ‘normal’ person

But because it’s out of the ordinary, it has to be called *severely deficient* by the gleeful (probably) neurotypical researcher, doesn’t it!

In 2015!

Still!

#aphantasia #SDAM #SeverelyDeficientAutobiographicalMemory #neurodiversity #SocialModelOfDisability #ActuallyAutistic #ActuallyADHD #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs

@transponderings@eldritch.cafe @lauravivanco See also:

Jul 2022 (recording from Extreme Imagination 2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiFaw5RrKNQ

Sep 2022: https://aphantasia.com/article/stories/maybe-you-have-sdam/

Nov 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvam_uoBSLc

#aphantasia #SDAM #SeverelyDeficientAutobiographicalMemory #ExtremeImagination