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imagination

longman
over 13 years ago

Do we really lack imagination?

I see this so often in the literature

Looking at the web pages on "understanding behaviour" - "Anxiety in adults....." it says "To understand emotion you need imagination. One of the areas of difficulty for people with autism is not being able to imagine things"

But further on, under psychological signs, it has "thinking constantly about the worst outcome". How do we do this without an imagination?

It it more about type of imagination? Or too much imagination making subtle imagination harder?

Parents
  • over 13 years ago

    Thanks Jim V-mod. If I can elaborate on what Hope said about putting oneself "in someone else's shoes" and reading fiction, I encounter several situations that make me wonder about imagination concerning "others".

    I can write well factually, including several books. I've tried many times to write fiction (in the vain hope of making my fortune instead of the tiny royalties for fact) but my characterisation always seems painfully flat.

    I struggled with art at school (three attempts at Scottish Higher getting complimentary Os). I could copy/reproduce what was in front of me very well. More creative art, patticularly figure composition, was very hard. My drawings of people, when I didn't have a model to draw from, were always static, clumsy and lifeless. Yet I could do incredibly detailed drawings and water-colours (which I seem not able to do so much these days).

    So I think imagining others as beings is hard. But there must be a lot of imagination going into spiralling anxiety (though I control it better now) working out totally illogical multiple outcomes and escalating disasters. And being driven as a child and teenager to solitude, my imagination was my refuge. So in that sense I'm perplexed about the suggestion that people on the spectrum lack of imagination (OK OK maybe I'm atypical - as usual), and the connection between that and lacking emotions as a cause of anxiety.

Reply
  • over 13 years ago

    Thanks Jim V-mod. If I can elaborate on what Hope said about putting oneself "in someone else's shoes" and reading fiction, I encounter several situations that make me wonder about imagination concerning "others".

    I can write well factually, including several books. I've tried many times to write fiction (in the vain hope of making my fortune instead of the tiny royalties for fact) but my characterisation always seems painfully flat.

    I struggled with art at school (three attempts at Scottish Higher getting complimentary Os). I could copy/reproduce what was in front of me very well. More creative art, patticularly figure composition, was very hard. My drawings of people, when I didn't have a model to draw from, were always static, clumsy and lifeless. Yet I could do incredibly detailed drawings and water-colours (which I seem not able to do so much these days).

    So I think imagining others as beings is hard. But there must be a lot of imagination going into spiralling anxiety (though I control it better now) working out totally illogical multiple outcomes and escalating disasters. And being driven as a child and teenager to solitude, my imagination was my refuge. So in that sense I'm perplexed about the suggestion that people on the spectrum lack of imagination (OK OK maybe I'm atypical - as usual), and the connection between that and lacking emotions as a cause of anxiety.

Children
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