My Synaesthesia Map
Here is one definition of “synaesthesia” from the Oxford English Dictionary:
1. Psychol. a. A sensation in one part of the body produced by a stimulus applied to another part. b. Agreement of the feelings or emotions of different individuals, as a stage in the development of sympathy. c. Production, from a sense-impression of one kind, of an associated mental image of a sense-impression of another kind: see quot. 1903.
Some personal manifestations of synaesthesia identified so far:
Graphemes –> colors & some texture
Phonemes –> colors & some texture
Concept –> Colors (rarely sound), some personalities
Time Units (calendar months and days of the week) –> Colors, movement & lengths
Ticker Tape –> Seeing words spelled while thinking, speaking or listening
Pain –> colors, color revulsion
Vision –> sounds
Vision –> tactile sensation in eyes, some mirror touch
I have associative synaesthesia but have experienced projection on rare occasions.
Here is a simplified map for my grapheme-to-color experience:
A/A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V/V W X Y Z
Some of my letters change color easily. Red and blue especially interchange. The more pointed, straight, and hard sounding is a letter, the more likely it is to be experienced as red. The more curved, soft, or smooth sounding it is, the more likely it is to be blue. These letters often shift back and forth, but have a “classic” form for me.
The letter shapes and sounds don’t always match in color. Sometimes it takes a minute to “settle” into one color or the other. Shades of color are also more important than can be represented here. “P” tends to be deeply blue-violet rather than of medium-toned like the blue of “B”.
“A” can turn red at the head of a line as in an outline with points “A, B, C…” and so on. “R”, “N” and “T” melt from red into brown towards the end of a word. Sometimes the collective of a sound has a different color than its individual letters.
“O” is more like a void or a hollow than true white. It sometimes gives the appearance of a smooth cannonball having been shot into the side of something, leaving a hole.
Of course, this is quite an oversimplification, but you get the idea.
Days of the Week
Sunday –> a starburst of white light settling into a smooth, texture
Monday –> a short, red day
Tuesday –> a green that flows into aqua blue
Wednesday –> a long, red day
Thursday –> a light blue periwinkle that deepens and flows into Friday
Friday –> a deep periwinkle-to-purple, becoming magenta by evening
Saturday –> a burst of bright yellow
Calendar Months
January (white) February March April May June July August September October November December
Now you’ve had a primer on my little corner of the world!
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