Aphantasia Is Not an Advantage in Complex PTSD

For over a decade, the dominant academic and public discourse has framed aphantasia —the inability to create  mental imagery —as a protective advantage in the context of trauma. The prevailing consensus suggests that if the mind cannot replay the "movie" of an abusive event, the impact of that event is reduced. My thesis, "Aphantasia Is Not an Advantage in Long-Term Abuse: On the Trauma of Fleshbacks and the Myth of Coping and Defense Mechanisms," dismantles this myth. It argues that this view is a phenomenological fallacy that mistakes the absence of the symbol of abuse (the image) for the absence of the substance of abuse (the agony). This is vital for understanding childhood trauma .  Full Thesis Available at Zenodo:  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17692334 Drawing on a longitudinal auto-phenomenological analysis initiated in 2000, this work introduces the concept of Panmodal Aphantasia and demonstrates that in the context of long-term abuse and Chronic Stress ...