204 



DISCOVERY 



a \'ie\v which has already been elaborated elsewhere,' 

 but to substantiate it further by evidence from other 

 quarters. It is that imagery, so far from being the 

 mere scafiolding of the thought-structure, eventually 

 to be knocked away and destroyed, leaves a permanent 

 impress, in myriads of ways, upon the thinking of its 

 possessor. Perhaps the very elect may succeed in 

 shaking off its limitations, though this is far from 

 certain. What is certain is that many persons live 

 for ever boxed up in their own image-world, seldom or 

 never suspecting that their best friend lives in another. 

 Just as painting, sculpture, writing, music, dancing 

 and acting are inevitably limited by their media, it 

 would be surprising if a man whose imagery was for 

 the most part visual should look at life in the same 

 way as one whose chief memory-material was auditory. 

 That these two friends use the same words does not 

 invalidate this statement, for nobody can expect them 

 continually to express themselves in pictures and 

 symphonies, or even in sketches and trills. But for both 

 of them words are often but sorry makeshifts. They 

 would probably agree that, whether or not speech was 

 given us to conceal our thoughts, it usually distorts 

 theirs. 



But at this point a predominantly verbal thinker 

 is sure to speak up for his class. For him at least, he will 

 insist, words are seldom reach-me-down, standardised 

 garments for meanings which gawkily project from 

 them on all sides, but words clothe his meanings as 

 silk yields to every fold of the body. For him, words 

 often make meanings, as the annual ukase from Paris 

 appears to mould feminine anatomy, or as fashions 

 in shoes actually do. Much more is the man who 

 thinks verbally likely to say in praise of the power 

 of words and, unless he be exceptional, he is sure to 

 assume that others are like himself. It may well be 

 that he thinks in rather than with words : that often, 

 when he thinks, words and very little else besides are 

 in his mind ; that he has a large and easily accessible 

 stock of " ready -mades " in his mental wardrobe, or is, 

 perhaps, less finicky in his choice of garment. 



It must not be forgotten that persons also exist 

 with predominant imagery from other sense-spheres ; 

 imagery of bodUy movements other than those mediat- 

 ing speech, of touch, of taste and smell, and of organic 

 sensation. Their mental worlds have just as much 

 claim upon our respect as those of the visual and 

 auditory thinkers, ^ though certainly they do not get 

 it. But the rest of this paper must be given up to the 

 description of some peculiarities of the predominantly 

 visual thinker ; the joys afforded him by his vehicles 



' Remembering and Forgetting, London, 1922, pp. 205-31. 



' Cf. Helen Keller's account of her blind-deaf life in 

 The World I Live In. 



and his routes of thought, and the straits to which he 

 is often reduced by them both. 



The following lines are based upon many conversa- 

 tions with different persons in laboratories, in hospitals, 

 and in ordinary life. They are intended to do no more 

 than to record provisionally some abilities and disa- 

 bilities of certain persons, and to inquire into the 

 relation between these peculiarities and the different 

 kinds of imagery which play a predominant part in 

 their thinking. The investigation has not been deep or 

 wide enough to warrant the attribution of these abilities 

 and disabilities, occurring in a " strong " visualiser or 

 verbaliser, exclusively to his particular tvpe of thought- 

 imagery. There seems, however, to be evidence, both 

 internal, from the subject's introspection, and external, 

 from the observation by others of his behaviour, that 

 such peculiarities are very potent factors in the thought- 

 apparatus. 



It will be obvious to a reader who is familiar with 

 recent developments of psycho-analysis that another 

 method of classifying individuals, which maybe cuts 

 across the distinction of image-type, demands notice. 

 It is founded upon the directions in which the thinking, 

 feeling, and acting of the subject are usually turned ; 

 whether towards the outer world or towards his own 

 personality ; it is the distinction, by which some 

 psychologists divide human beings into two classes — 

 the introvert and the extrovert.' But how far early 

 differences in predominance of imagery may be the 

 cause or the effect of the different ways in which these 

 two types think, nobody knows at present. 



With these provisos, then, I venture here to put 

 on record the following tentative beliefs about certain 

 persons in whom visual and verbal imagery respectively 

 are predominant. They will be termed visualisers and 

 verbalisers. In giving them these names, it is not 

 implied that the visualiser cannot think in words nor 

 that the verbaliser cannot think in pictures, and it is 

 recognised that these descriptions may not prove to 

 be true of all \-isualisers and verbalisers. But I mean 

 that in both of them the vast majority of their thoughts 

 use one rather than the other of these modes of develop- 

 ment. A verbaliser may either mentally "see," 

 "hear." or "speak" his words. But the type de- 

 scribed in the following paragraphs usually employs, 

 or is employed by, what is termed vocal-motor imagery, 

 often blended with imagery of the sounds of the words. 



The Visualiser and the Verbaliser 



When remembering, the visualiser attributes special 

 importance to the appearances of persons and things ; 

 possibly even more than when they were actually 

 present in experience. This sensitivity to the look 



^ Cf. C. G. Jung, Psychological Types. 



