Hehe, I certainly have an inner dialogue, but it’s not entirely verbal. If I’m listening to music with changes or riffs I recognize, I’m generally imagining playing them in some way. I might be imagining them on an instrument I know well, I might be thinking about the chords in Nashville changes (which verges on verbal, I suppose). If it’s a set of changes or a form I don’t know well, I’m often doing something similar to you are describing, playing what I’m hearing back in my head (kind of on a reinforcing loop) as I’m hearing it.
But if I am not actively thinking about something and just kind of zone out a bit, the jukebox in my head starts up. It will rave on until I think of something that forces the focus away from it. That can be difficult and distracting sometimes.
Bwahaha, I’ve lost SLEEP because I was imagining how certain arguments on this board would work out. I blame society!
I run into a sort of “Schroedinger’s Cat” sort of situation, where I have to try and recall how I was thinking, because if I try and pay attention in real time, it’s an inner monologue, probably because I believe that’s how I always think.
And I agree that it’s mostly likely a continuum, rather than a binary sort of thing. I’d imagine the distribution and all that statisical stuff is probably what would be really interesting- how many people have what level of inner monologue vs. nonverbal thoughts, and that sort of thing.
I make up stories in my head, and sometimes tell them to myself while trying to fall asleep; but they’re not movies. They’re almost entirely nonvisual, just words. I seem to have an almost nonexistent mind’s eye.
Mine too.
Doesn’t feel like that either. It’s a continuous string of words in my head, whenever I’m awake – even if I’m in what I call the “weeding trance”, though in that state the words may be incoherent or the same few repeating themselves over and over. There’s no sound to them, but the words aren’t like speaking very quietly, either. More like reading to myself; though I think the monologue started before I could read. Maybe not, though; I was an early reader. (One of my earliest memories, though it can’t be pinned to an exact age, is the night when I became unable to turn it off. It must have been intermittent when it started because what freaked me out wasn’t the monologue, it was being unable to stop it.)
Interesting. For me, what I’m reading becomes the internal dialogue, while I’m reading it.
There is that – I have both of those things happen. But what it feels like to me, especially in that second case, is like there’s part of me that uses words, and part of me that doesn’t use words; and while they overlap in what they understand, each of them understands things that the other part doesn’t. A thought I’m having trouble putting into words is what I call the back of my head trying to get something across to the front of my head. When/if the front of my head figures out what the back of the head is trying to get across, then I can put it into words. Sometimes I can’t; but that doesn’t mean I can’t think about it at all; though it does mean that I’m thinking about it differently than I think about things in the front of my head.
It’s all me, though. It’s not two (or more) different people.
There’s no sound, but there’s a sort of – shape to the word? – that has something to do with pronunciation and something to do with spelling.
I read, say, Chaucer. It is hard work with Middle English, and I read it in my head as it should be pronounced - my mother is an English/History teacher… I know Middle English pronunciation, albeit with a somewhat Southern African accent. My mum has a standard “Received Pronunciation” accent but Chaucerian English is quite different. She’s pretty good at the original accent.
The internal dialogue is not about what/when/who/why, it is about actually following the plot. (Not sure if that makes sense, but it means I am not letting my mind race ahead of my reading )
I like either pap to sooth me (and not think at all - I admit to reading “Reader’s Digest”) or horribly complex works where all my brain power goes into decifering the meaning.
Both options “switch off” internal dialogue.
(I also prefer Asterix & Obelix cartoons in the orginal French… I may not get all the jokes and puns, but I get sufficient, and it engages my mind in a way free-wheeling internal dialogue does not.)
I’m not sure of the rules around this reply, so… anyway.
I’ve got a large experience with psychoactive substances, including huge doses of LSD.
Occasionally these go wrong.
A bad trip is not fun, but it is manageable, if you can control the “inner monolgue” - separate your crazy tripping experience from your sensible mind. Then you can somewhat detachedly watch one part of you freaking out, but the part in control is calm.
A very hard concept to explain to non-users, even most users have not got this right.
I never willing took psychoactive drugs, but someone once slipped me a joint laced with angel dust (phencyclidine—PCP—a schedule II anesthetic with severe side effects, including delirium, hallucinations, paranoia, and violent behavior), thinking that would be funny. It wasn’t. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. And I had two frightening flashbacks weeks later. Be careful of the “gifts” you receive.
This is not the thread for it, but PCP (like Elon’s ketamine) is a disassociative anaesthetic. I’ve not tried it, but would do in a controlled environment.
I don’t really enjoy disassociatives, but I do have an amusing tale about would-be muggers trying to steal my wallet while I waved a stolen papier mache fish at them. They clearly thought… fuck this, let’s try mug a drunk guy. Drunk people are easy. Sadly for them it was not booze but Amantia Muscaria, the toadstool Viking Beserkers used to… well, go beserk. It is a vastly different chemical, but still a dissociative hallucinogenic.
Anyway. Back to those who are listening in, in their analog - sorry - monologues.
I really suggest that you don’t! I was in pharmacy school—before med school (many moons ago)—when I was slipped the PCP. Let me tell you, after realizing what I was given, knowing the pharmacology inside and out didn’t make a damn bit of difference once it hit.
The initial trip was a psychological ambush. I thought I’d gone completely insane. My life was playing on a giant film screen, and I had zero control over the reel. Then the movie turned violent (I rushed to hide all the kitchen knives in my parent’s home before my then girlfriend arrived, to avoid the film becoming real—me stabbing myself). It was terrifying and surreal—and not in a good way.
First flashback? On a trolley in West Philly. I couldn’t manage to get my hands into my pockets to pay the fare—my mind was not cooperating at all. I panicked. A whole scene unfolded. The driver wasn’t feeling sympathetic and tossed me off like I was yesterday’s trash.
Second flashback? At a party. I was talking to a guy—and somehow, I became convinced he was me. Not like “we have a lot in common”—I mean he was me. That didn’t go over well. I freaked out and had to be physically removed.
All this to say: don’t mess with PCP, or anything similar. It doesn’t care how smart you are. It’ll take your mind for a ride, and you probably won’t like where it goes.
I suspect our subjective experiences aren’t a good guide to what’s really going on in our brains. There have been experiments that showed that eg signals to were sent to move an arm even before the person consciously made a decision to do so. Likely we have a bunch of subconscious processes that do most of the actual work of thinking and making decisions, with a consciousness grafted on top that seeks to explain what we’re doing after the fact.
Since I read a lot as a child, I learned most of my vocabulary that way. When I went to secondary school at 11, I started hearing those words spoken and realised I had been wildly mispronouncing most of them. I didn’t use these words when speaking, but I always had a pronunciation that I’d been using to myself. Was that not the case for you? Do words not appear in your inner monologue as a sound or a spelling, but as something more abstract?
That’s a curious distinction, but seems to match what others have said.
For me, all the inner talk is me. I might be singing a song, writing a post, or thinking about some weird fact like the Earth rotates faster than the Moon orbits it.
If I’m taking to myself or even arguing, it’s me saying both sides. It’s just me expressing my mixed opinion. Like whining to myself and then trying to motivate myself to do what I’m supposed to anyway.
I don’t have any other voices in my head, and I wouldn’t characterize my expressing mixed opinions as different voices.
So you imagine what it is you want, not in words but in experiences? Then select the words as you speak out loud? Interesting.
Whereas with me, I may be thinking of the experiences the same way, but my mind will be narrating or talking through the process simultaneously.
To me, that’s just what being awake (or dreaming) and having experiences is. There are visual and audio and other sensory bits, but the brain talk is nonstop.
If I’m doing some simple repetitive task, I may be multitasking two verbal streams - one the steps as I go along, and the other whatever weird esoteria I’m pondering at the moment.
Yes, I have that experience despite the running monologue. The brain knows I should know the word, it knows the word I can think of is wrong, but the right word is not coming.
To someone without an inner monologue, it’s just like you are taking to someone and can’t think of the word so you use vocal fillers to explain why you’re stuck in the middle of the sentence, except it’s internal to yourself.
Me, too. I’ve re-fought countless battles in the Pacific War, but it’s all verbal. I have thoughts but I don’t see movies.
My internal monologue is more often in English but sometimes in Japanese, especially when I’m thinking about a conversation in Japanese or interactions with Japanese speakers. I tend to think in Japanese for planning what I will do
When I was doing sales to Japanese customers I had more internal monologues in Japanese.
When I cook Western food, I think in English but when I cook Japanese food, I tend to think in Japanese, especially if I’m following a recipe.
However, I never have internal monologues in Italian, even if cooking pasta. I suppose learning the language would help.
Yup. But I think there’s also transfer of information from the conscious portion to those subconscious portions, as well as the other way around.
Not sure how to explain it. I’m not hearing a sound, and I’m not seeing a spelling; but there’s components of both involved. And I do usually, though not always, have a sense of how I would pronounce the word if I were to say it out loud, though again I’m not hearing it with any sound involved.
Agreeing with this. It’s all me; even when it’s different parts of me expressing things in different ways, it’s still all me. If I scratch my leg with my hand – that’s me doing the scratching and me feeling the scratch, although my hand and my leg are feeling it differently. If there’s a cut on my hand and I look at it with my eyes – my vision is understanding some things about it that my hand doesn’t know (e.g. I can see something stuck in there), and my hand is understanding some things about it that my vision doesn’t know (ouch!), but it’s all me and those different forms of information come together so that I know I need to clean the wound out.
The only language I know well enough to think in is English, so that’s what I think in.
Except once – many years ago I went to Europe with my mother. I was seriously time-lagged and very tired when we got to France; and I was suddenly surrounded by people speaking French. I had taken several years of French in high school, and not learned anywhere near enough to be fluent in it (the teachers themselves spoke different versions of the language and at least one didn’t speak it at all); but something about that sudden immersion combined with my exhaustion caused me to start trying to think in French. Except I didn’t know enough French to do that well; and I couldn’t think in English because I was trying to think in French; and so I could hardly think at all.
I’m glad that I thought this was funny, because I think otherwise I’d have thought it was terrifying; to suddenly, in my late 20’s, be unable to think a coherent thought – remember that I don’t think visually, my conscious mind thinks in words.
I went to bed and got some sleep, and in the morning I could think in English again.
When I studied Japanese in high school, I would be so immersed in the language that I’d think in it sometimes and I’d even leave my classroom accidentally speaking it to someone instead of English. If I’d ever actually gone to Japan and spent time there, I’m sure that would have accelerated.
As it is, I haven’t spoken it in large amounts in decades so that obviously doesn’t happen anymore but I think I know what you mean to an extent.
I remember in Spanish class during college, the professor made a comment that to speak a foreign language well, you basically have to learn how to think in that language, not translate-as-you-go. So your experience is probably right along those lines.
It told me I have Aphantasia, but it’s no surprise. I have vivid imagery when I dream, including full color, but if I try to think of something while awake, I don’t visually see it. If I want to see something imaginary, I have to draw it or dream it.
I can describe it, and know all of the attributes, but I don’t see it with my visual cortex, which is what I think people without Aphantasia are claiming to do. I can describe a scene, real or imagined, but I don’t see it visually.
I can transfer the attributes I think about to paper or computer screen.
If I “turn off” my conscious brain a bit, I can transfers the artistic attributes to physical or electronic media, too.
It’s hard to describe how I can “turn off” my consciousness. Alcohol doesn’t do it, but I imagine for many writers and artists it’s why alcoholism is so prevalent. It’s like there’s general me, engineer me (hyper conscious) and turned-off, where I’m kind of observing but not really running things (and I can jump in and stop this at will).
Reiterating: If I want to see something imaginary, I have to draw it or dream it.
On a related note, I’ve read an account of working with schizophrenic people in the pre-drug days before there were ways of preventing progress, and schizophrenics were just given asylum in large residential institutions. The book included an account of a psychotic french-canadian patient, who the french-canadian psychiatrist found was not psychotic in French.
Unfortunately, as the patient exercised that part of their mind, thinking in French and speaking French with the doctor, that part of their mind quickly collapsed (over a period of weeks).
Schizophrenic hallucinations are mostly in words (all of the few schizophrenics I’ve know have had only auditory hallucination), but are visual for some people.
I really appreciate this description, because it helps illuminate the concept of different thought areas.
It feels too me like the vocal part of my brain is the conscious part. It’s the part always on, and it’s what I experience as a constant expression of what is on my mind. It’s how I think through problems, or compose posts, or good conversations, or read, or watch TV. It is, to me, the very experience of conscious thought.
Yes, I can see images and imagine things and visualize 3D geometric shapes. But my inner voice is talking or humming or busy on some thought line while I do so.
I do have times I can’t recall the right word, or express my feelings, or put a concept into words. That feels to me like my unconscious mind - my emotion center or an information database or or even a separate processor that runs in the background that I access through my conscious observation center that is the talking in my head.
That’s why, I think, those of us that have the inner monologue have trouble conceiving of a silent brain. That seems the equivalent of not having a conscious awareness at all. If the brain is silent, what are you thinking? What are you aware of? How do you understand anything at all?
This is an excellent observation. I will have to have a discussion with my nephew some time about all this. He has a bit of a learning disability, but he’s also a neurologist working in mental health and getting ready to go to grad school. I bet this topic will be off interest to him.
Oh I hear the original sound, instrument, voice, whatever in my head. It’s that the experiencing part of me is making an internal copy in my voice on top of the original.
I can imagine playing instruments, I just hear my vocal version, too.
Thanks for all your contributions, but this one stands out. I think that might be an extremely scary experience if the talking part of my head, the part of me that is my awareness, isn’t making sense to me. For me, it might be Spanish. I know a tiny bit and can decipher a bit more with effort. It would be, I guess, like the experience of not being able to find the word I mean, only worse because I don’t even have enough words to express that.
Yeah, as I think I said in that post I’m glad that I found the experience funny because otherwise I think I’d have found it terrifying. And if it had still been going on the next morning after I’d had a night’s sleep I expect I would have found it terrifying then; but I was so tired that I just fell into bed and conked out, and I could think just fine in English by the time I woke up again.
It occurs to me now that maybe that wasn’t only because I wasn’t exhausted the next morning, but that it might have been that my sleeping mind managed to take care of the problem while my conscious mind was out of gear.
My inner monologue is much like yours, but it is silent sometimes. Like when I’m driving, for example. I may be listening to a song and driving, but I’m not thinking “Gotta turn left up here… gotta step on the accelerator. OH! BRAKE!” or anything like that. It’s just sort of… being in the moment sometimes. Other times I’m driving and may have a whole extended, complex thought or fantasy playing out in my head. Those are always verbal.
Sometimes the inner voice is internal commentary, not running narration of what I’m visualizing. Like if I’m visualizing something I’m trying to build, I’ll be imagining how the pieces might fit together, and the inner voice is saying “No, that won’t do.” or “Hey! Maybe if I cut that board like that, I can fit it right there.” Or “I wonder if I should use plywood or slats for that part?”
But where I can’t think my way around is “higher” intellectual concepts. How does someone conceive of the Labor Theory of Value without using language to think about it? How do you conceive of a republic vs. a democracy vs. a dictatorship without thinking in language? How do you imagine a light-year or gravitational acceleration without thinking in language?