If you don’t think you (as a normal thinker) think in pictures, have you ever been stunned and had to stop a conversation and been forced to say “I can ‘picture him, but I can’t think of his name? Then your mind’s eye displays a thought only you see that turns off the optic vision? If so you just witnessed a picture thought you don’t know you have that runs below the surface of the mind all the time. I see hundreds of those below-the-surface thoughts all the time and they make me Einstein at times and a fool at others. Streamline them and figure out how to use them and they make me “normal.” If science could hook monitors to our brains (everyone’s) I predict it would be nothing more than a big photo album that talks.

I know and feel the point of view of people who don’t picture think, indeed most people in society don’t think in pictures like we do. However this is very important, once we learned our picture thoughts, the ones that build on Temple’s still and motion Pictures the result is pictureless, streamlined thought – or, normal thoughts. In essence If my theory is correct, once we learn what to do with our “daydream thoughts” during the lack of eye contact thoughts process we come up with normal thoughts. I predict that once all these picture thoughts that I think are sub-level daydream level thoughts are learned and disseminated in Psychology ,they will be the building blocks of the mind.

My Autism Hero Alan Turing (1912-1954) who was father of the computer is noted in his biography (The Enigma 1983 Andrew Hodges) as being very “odd” in school (1920′s) and descriptions of his not paying attention and laughing at the oddest things tells me his internal picture thoughts like mine, were working very well. He was laughing at his daydream thoughts and occassionally our picture thoughts and reality clash and make us laugh. It puzzled his teachers, but like most of us from this era when Autism was not an issue they just learned that was Alan and that was his way. Despite NOT paying attention as his teachers would have preferred with eye contact, he did manage to get good marks on tests. Results were results.

Again once we learn these picture thoughts pictureless thoughts the resulting normal thought it was amazingly easily to go pictureless. Still today, I use pictureless normal thoughts for social and normal things like when I’m at work or driving and use the Picture Thought for the inventions, the ideas and the deep thoughts. I wonder if the deep Picture-based thoughts are just not “Einstein”? When I work on my Turing Motor Invention I can have 1500 ‘engineering drawings going at once as I detail the motor.

For a more modern Picture Thinker, You might look up the work of Autistic Author Bill Stillman.

I realize all this Picture thought business is not realized by everyone so it has no real bearing on life (it would seem) but it is also a sub-level thought process that has never been in a text book before, so that is why no one has “discovered” it unless we have been there and done that. I hope that some day once its figured out It has a real link to the normal mind.

I just ran across an interesting blog on this topic, that has even more interesting comments on it.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/02/temple-grandin.html