Came here for Austin Powers quotes, and frankly I'm disappointed.
Not everyone has an internal monologue
761–770 of 904 posts
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#762This topic (comments here, the OP, and comments in threads elsewhere) exposes some conflicting definitions of what an "internal monologue" is or means. - Some people describe hearing their internal monologue, which I take to mean something like: they have an internal monologue, and it manifests as a voice that only they hear. These people are analogous to those who see things they picture in their mind's eye . - Some…
Anecdata to add to this: In the third grade I took the phrase "voices in your head mean you're crazy" so I actively suppressed my internal monologue (previously expressed in language) and now my thinking is mostly abstract and/or visual. There are two exceptions: imagining a hypothetical conversation or reviewing a previous conversation in my head. Those are the only cases of language in my head. When I read I experi…
I tend to use hypothetical conversations in my head to analyse my thoughts, but otherwise feel my thinking is more abstract than verbal. So I'm not sure I agree with the dichotomy this article is presenting.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#763Earlier quoted context omitted.
"interviewing myself in a variety of roles to navigate my thoughts on things" I used to from time to time imagine my half of a conversation in which I was showing around someone notable who had traveled through time to get to the present day. Maybe someone from 1,000 years ago or maybe from 50. That is, for entertainment, not to cope with anything. I never felt like my imagination was quite good enough to turn it int…
> I used to from time to time imagine my half of a conversation in which I was showing around someone notable who had traveled through time to get to the present day. Maybe someone from 1,000 years ago or maybe from 50. That is, for entertainment, not to cope with anything. I never felt like my imagination was quite good enough to turn it into fiction. I do this exact same thing. I also have conversations with random…
I do the same thing. I'm not sure if that counts as evidence towards it being normal.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#764Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think with words, in multiple languages, but they're silent. I can't actually hear anything. Importantly though, the verbalizing is a later stage of thinking. First there is the thought, seemingly instant, non-verbalized, and fuzzy. If needed, I can already act based on that thought without verbalizing. However if I verbalize it in my head, then that allows for further analysis that may lead me to override the init…
I understand thinking in concepts but not words, and I understand having an internal monolog, but it seems like you're describing a third option, unless I'm just misunderstanding. Obviously everyone's internal monolog is literally silent, as they're not speaking out loud, but it's most naturally described as 'hearing' the words in your head. (As opposed to literally hearing with your ears.) It sounds like you're sayi…
> Obviously everyone's internal monolog is literally silent, as they're not speaking out loud, but it's most naturally described as 'hearing' the words in your head.
I'm not sure it is that clear cut and universally same. So in my case, when I do the verbalization I do imagine the actual sounds, as opposed to written text or something like that. However those sounds are silent in the sense that they are clearly conjured up via some other pathways than what would be used to hear external voices of other people.
When thinking about images from my memories, they are extremely vivid and colorful. I can remember visiting a local supermarket and in this memory I have an immense amount of detail. I can remember individual small shapes and colors that were playing on some random advertisement TV screen hanging from the ceiling, I can remember walking past the shoe isle and I can still see the individual shoes and their texture and variation of colors in a single shoe. When I think of friends, I can see their faces with rather extreme precision. I can see individual facial hairs, birthmarks, wrinkles. This type of visual memory isn't limited in time either. I still have extremely vivid memories of at least a hundred events from when I was around 7.
When thinking of these visual memories I have, they appear in my mind's eye. It feels as if I'm at several places at once. I'm in the present, seeing whatever is in front of me. At the same time I'm also in the past, in my memory, and I can see these memories with great precision. To me, thinking and seeing these memories seems to use the same area of the brain. It feels very similar to see something in the present vs. seeing something in my past.
When I've talked to friends, I've found that the kind of precision I have in my memories isn't that common. However others still can visualize things pretty well. However there are also people who can't visualize anything. You tell them to think of their mom's face and they only see blur, perhaps making out the color of hair at best. There have been some studies into this mind's eye capability. [1]
Coming back to me saying I can't actually hear the verbalization in my head. When I say this, I'm thinking that it wouldn't surprise me at all if there are people out there for whom the verbalization seems like an actual sound. Very vivid and clear. While for me it's rather muted and feels nothing like hearing.
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Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#765Earlier quoted context omitted.
A tangent on this: superheroes are creatures/concepts as old as stories though, from the oldest myths of Ulysse and Atlantis to Superman and the Force and indeed Neo. It's a whole category, perhaps the all-time biggest (think who fits the profile of "historic superhero", you'll be surprised who goes in that basket, even if we believe their life/deeds were real and not 'super'). I mean, stories, right. I personally ri…
The difference is, Superman has a long internal struggle between his desire to do right and his desire to give up in the face of so many people suffering, he may be America’s Boy Scout but he works hard and he keeps a low profile and he is modern day Sisyphus - skipping out on his everyday life to go to unpleasant places alone and deal with unpleasant people, save lives, and come back to .. a journalist notepad and a…
This is an incorrect understanding of the nature of the movie, imho. Neo is a philosophical super-hero, not a physical, and so it's unfair to compare him to physical super-heroes.
The character is established in the scene where he wakes up, having done something on his computer. He has books on philosophy (Simulacra and Simulation). He's obviously been searching for a long time, and his _mind_ is something most minds of his age aren't: ready to see the real world. Morpheus even says that they typically don't extract people his age because their minds can't handle the reality.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#766I have a serious question to people here describing themselves (as I understand it) as thinking in words and whole sentences: How can you think about concepts which cannot be put into words or for which no words exist? Do you have to come up with elaborate verbal descriptions of abstract concepts in your head before you can think about them? If so, don't you think that any verbal description is essentially incomplete…
I think the way that this actually works is that we don't actually think in words and whole sentences, but that words and whole sentences flow from most of our thoughts. We've just become so used to this whole process that it feels like the words and sentences are driving the thoughts. I'm certainly a "think in whole words and sentences" person, but if I think of it, I also have had moments realization/emotion that I…
I think so too.
I'm Flemish and my mother tongue is Dutch. Therefore I mostly think in Dutch, but sometimes I think in English. Then it regularly happens I can't think of the right word to describe something (actually that happens in Dutch too, but less frequently), while still knowing very well what I mean.
I think that can only mean that my 'real' thinking happens without words or language, and is then 'translated' into Dutch or English.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#767Earlier quoted context omitted.
The trick is to read without sounding out the words in your head. Then since you're not thinking in speech when reading, you have room to listen.
I’d heard that this is, to some extent, impossible, because everybody subvocalizes when they read. Wikipedia supports this, but I guess the goal is to minimize subvocalization rather than to eliminate it completely? “Micro-muscle tests suggest that full and permanent elimination of subvocalizing is impossible.” I know this is true for me. If I press the tongue to the roof of my mouth while reading, I can’t stop the m…
I tried this when reading Ready Player One (I counted to eight in my head to stop vocalizing). I did read it much faster (in fact, faster than my partner who is a native English speaker/reader). I cannot vouch for how much I remember of the book though. I think it's less, because I remember watching the movie thinking "oh, right, that's what happened" about a major plot part. That's never happened with other books that I first read, then watched the movie/series adaptation of.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#768Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah mushrooms will do this. It's not a bad thing to be able to quiet your mind. It's nice to have an internal monologue but once you've had that silence it's good to learn how to bring it back when you need it. Mushrooms helped show me what it was like quiet so I could do it myself without them.
exactly! I'm so tired of this ongoing voice in my head which is more like a constant noise that takes control of my emotions and disrupts my productivity.
Have you ever seen the film _Revolver_?
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#769Unfathomable to me. My mind is constantly racing, playing out different conversations, interviewing myself in a variety of roles to navigate my thoughts on things (one day I'm the president of the US talking about foreign policy, another day I'm a big tech CEO navigating the diversity questions). I constantly have something in my ears to tune myself out, podcasts or music. After being diagnosed w/ ADHD I realize I'm…
I used to be like that, and it was helpful in many ways as I seemed to always be ready for wherever a conversation might go. But I wasn't living in the moment. Now I actively stop myself from simulating the various branches of potential conversations. It feels good to live in the moment (shaking my head a little when I feel it starting helps). The downside is that I don't have as many prepared responses and am more e…
In the last couple of years I started thinking about this and since then I'm trying to live in the moment because now I'm aware of how much time I spend in my head. It is very hard for me to train this though.
Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue
#770God I wish. Sometimes I just want to shutoff the voice in my head. Alcohol did wonders for me in this area, unfortunately I can't drink anymore so I have to try suppress it differently, but I have it admit, nothing worked better than alcohol :(