Bill Bartlett wrote:

> Snip



> I hope I haven't upset anyone with these insane ramblings, but it is a
>
> question that has troubled me for some time.  I have always wondered
> why
> most of those with more natural abilities than me, and much better
> education to boot, have so much trouble grasping simple concepts.
>
> Snip

Away from the subject, this reminded me of a young lady acquaintance in
my college days.  Several of us had a monthly "study club" where we
would have one or more members make a presentation to the rest of us on
some subject of their own choosing.  Afterwards we would have
refreshments, etc., and it helped us all broaden our personal horizons
and we learned more that way.  The young lady referenced was a Phi Beta
Kappa and, when we discussed psychological concepts or philosophical
ideas, would frequently remark, "I just can't see that."  We kept
thinking that this gal was pretty dense and how did she get all of those
scholastic honors?

Later, while doing a paper on memory, I tested her.  The interviews that
I gave were short but were an attempt to determine the subject's
memories in each physical sense, i.e., aural, visual, conceptual and
mathematical, olfactory, tactile, etc.  My intent was to demonstrate
that a separate memory existed for each physical sense together with an
"associative" memory which was concerned with the relationships between
the separate memories, etc., which had been done previously by others.
When I tested this young lady we were both taking a course in psychology
with a text book entitled, "Personality - a Biosocial Approach," by
Gardner Murphy.  I had noticed that when I asked certain questions to
test memory,  such as "How many columns are there on Dallas Hall (a
building on the Campus of SMU), the young lady would look to the left
and slightly upward and focus on an area about twelve inches from her
eyes.  Then she would respond, such as, "There are six columns."
Suddenly, I realized that she was "looking at a visualization of the
image in her memory" and she was making a perfect score.   She wore
glasses and was a little near sighted.  I reached for my copy of the
psychology text book previously mentioned (it was a large tome) and
turned to a chapter that I knew she had studied and asked her what was
said on  page ...(an arbitrary page in that chapter).  Danged if she
didn't do it again, look up, focus and read a portion of the text just
as I was reading it in the book!  She had a photographic memory,
complete recall of visual things, and when she thought of them, she
really saw the image, like an hallucination!  Well, that explained why
she was making such good grades and also why she was making the
statement, "I can't see that!"   She apparently meant that she really
couldn't see it...  I later noticed a higher percentage of folks in my
experience with high visual recall also were "near sighted" and wondered
if it was due to that sympathetic "focusing" on the imagery that I had
noticed.  I never found out but just mentally filed the information.  My
friends and I were amazed to find someone with such great visual recall
ability and we all wished that we had been so gifted.  As is usual with
most folks, she thought everyone could do that and did!

Many years later I was sorry to hear that the young lady had died in an
institution with schizophrenia and it occurred to me that she might have
been seeing lots of other things, too, and I felt particularly
sympathetic to her in my memory.

As I said, off subject, but stimulated by the education subject, etc....

Cordially,

Bob


--
Bob Grimes

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Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore....."