Gustav Fechner’s Observations on his Own and Others’ Visual Mental Imagery

Gustav Fechner (1801-1887) was a German physicist, philosopher and experimental psychologist, and co-developer of the Weber-Fechner Law. In 1860, Fechner published a two-volume work, Elemente der Psychophysik, To date, only Volume I has appeared in English translation. This article publishes a translation of a significant part of Volume II concerning Fechner’s investigations of mental imagery. The translation covers Chapter XLIV, pages 468 – 525: “Observations including Remarks on the Relation between afterimages and memory images in particular. Memory afterimages, phenomena of the sense memory, hallucinations, illusions, dreams.” The translation will serve as a resource for scholars interested in the phenomenology of mental imagery, individual differences, consciousness, psychology and philosophy. The translation was prepared with the assistance of an online translation program at: https://www.deepl. com/translator