Word and pictures?

What do you think of when you hear a word spoken? Is it different if you hear the word in isolation, or hear it as part of a description? Can you think about it without altering what you think of? 

So if I said "cat", would you think of this?

 

Or this?   cat

This is not in any way a scientific piece, but it is prompted in part by something I realised a little while ago; asking friends and family, I have found two distinct responses to the first question posed above. The first group of people see the word itself, usually printed in black on white paper; some people saw the same font every time, for others the font changed depending on the word itself, or other factors. The second group see an image: either still like a snapshot, or moving like a video, or sometimes an immensely quick visual collage of images, both still and moving.

I discovered these two responses as a result of a problem which developed during my post-natal depression. One of the things that plagued me then (and which still lingers and flares up when I’m tired and vulnerable), was my mind’s ability to conjure up very real and graphic images or “videos” when I heard or read something unpleasant or violent. So hearing about Baby P, for example, gave me mental images of a tiny child screaming in pain, bruises all over his body. This in turn triggered a physical distress response so that I felt some of the same physical sensations of distress that I would feel if I really witnessed someone harming a child (a sick feeling in my stomach, adrenalin surging through me, fear, anxiety, fury, etc). It was the same with anything distressing on the news, or in a novel, or even just a chance comment. It has largely faded now, and I have learnt some strategies to control the images, but it's still there: my mind still responds very visually and viscerally to language. It also affects my interpretation and response to everyday sights - seeing a field of yellow rape flowering, there is a part of my brain that begins a distress response to the idea of the act of rape.

One book in particular, “Mister Pip”, gave me waking nightmares for several years about the denouement (which, without spoiling the whole book, involves a scene of gang rape, two people being hacked to pieces with machetes and fed to the village pigs, and the torturing of a mentally disabled child to death; and by the way, the Times newspaper reviewer who said this book was about the “redeeming power” of Dickens clearly hadn’t read it to the end, and should be struck off immediately.)  

  

I began to be much, much more careful about what I read, sticking by and large to the classics, things I'd read before so I knew they were “safe”, and children’s books. I stopped watching the news, or listening to it on the radio, and bought newspapers only for the magazine and culture sections. I cut out most TV dramas, and any films with a 15 or 18 certificate; and I still don’t open a book if it has words like “gritty”, “hard-hitting”, “tragic”, or “violent” on the cover blurb.

But still things get through, and my husband is occasionally the guilty party for casually mentioning something he’s seen, in language that then causes this distress response in me. When I challenged him, he was surprised by my response: he, I discovered, is one of that first group of people who just see the word(s) on paper, black on white, without any emotional connotation at all. Until that conversation, I hadn't realised this was even possible. Sometimes when he’s listening to something he’ll actually be analysing the syntax, rather than becoming involved in the meaning (and I get very cross when he does this to something I’m saying – he should be listening to what I mean, not being pedantic about the way I’m saying it!), whereas my response is almost always more visceral. I constantly puzzle over the way so many people seem to find violence a suitable, even relaxing, subject for entertainment, when to me, it always feels personal, real, brutal and horrible in every way.

What about you? What do you think of or see in your mind when you hear a word? If you are a visual person, do you also have difficulty watching or reading about violence, or do you think this is a separate issue? Do let me know, using the comments below. Thanks!

And before I finish, I’d like to do a shout out for Mental Health Awareness Week – happening this week, 21-27 May 2012. You can find out more about it here.