I have moderate prosopagnosia- or face blindness. It means that the part of my brain that in most people is specifically dedicated to recognizing and categorizing faces doesn't really do it's job well.
Instead it's off checking out the snack machine, hanging around the water cooler making bad jokes, going out for inconvenient smoke breaks.

I've developed ways to get around it most of the time. However, one of the ways I've had to deal with it is to come right out and make fun of myself before either I or "whoever this person is that I probably know from a specific other context" get too deep in the assumption that I know them and can continue the conversation pretending that.

I often need specific context to recognize someone- if I only know someone from my psych class, I won't recognize them in a coffee shop. If I know someone from work, I won't recognize them in a grocery store. My best friend drove to the center of town a while ago and she got out of her car and started walking toward me. I have difficulty recognizing cars sometimes [completely different issue] and she was wearing a coat I don't often see her in. I didn't know it was her until she was almost right up to me.

Because my personal neurology is considered to be... eh, slightly different, I guess?... I don't even recognize my own face really.

I logically know it is my face, but i don't experience the kind of recognition that I understand most people have of their own face. I know it is mine because I know I am standing in front of the mirror. I understand that is my face in the image because I just took that picture.

But on a very basic level I have very little attachment to and ownership of that visage. Sometimes I wonder to what degree this may have had an effect on my development in terms of personality and concept of self.

Does anyone else experience prosopagnosia [face blindness] to the point of not recognizing yourself? Do you think this may have had some kind of effect [not necessarily positive or negative] on your self-concept, your personality, or how you regard or treat others or the world around you?

I take a huge number of selfies, but I don't consider myself particularly vain. I think it's because every photo of my face isn't the same old thing for me. I'm STILL trying to get to know it and it is new and different every time. I've figured out relatively recently that not everyone has the same fascination with their own face. I've known for a while about the face-blindness but it took me a long time to catch on that other people actually have more recognition and attachment to their own face than I have to mine.

You would think this obvious, but no. Haha.

I feel like maybe it has affected me to some extent. Not really negatively though.

Thoughts?

[IchbinkeinTeufel]

Wow, that's scary. Do you sometimes feel like everyone is always a stranger to you?

Sometimes I wonder to what degree this may have had an effect on my development in terms of personality and concept of self.

Yeah, that would make sense. We all seem to need a sense of identity, and if you never truly recognise an identity on your face, who then are you? That must have had an effect on you, growing up. :\

Originally Posted by Zwangsstörung

Wow, that's scary. Do you sometimes feel like everyone is always a stranger to you?

Not exactly.
Given the very unlikely situation that I would be put into a very large room with 200 other people, not knowing where I was or if anyone I knew was in it, with like nothing but tables or something?

Yes, everyone would seem like a stranger.

There is a subtle sense of familiarity, but I am pretty much never sure if the person is out of context and my best friend [until I really figure it out] or someone I think I may possibly know, ha. Even if in context, that part of my brain [anyone's brain who experiences prosopagnosia] doesn't recognize faces, my brain actually reacts to faces slightly differently. This area of the brain specifically responds and is activated by faces- because my brain doesn't recognize a face as different from another face nearly as easily because that part dun broke, I don't have that instant sense of familiarity. Or comfort. Or excitement. Or disappointment. Or fear. Or anything one might associate with a particular face.

So it's like looking at the world and seeing everyone like all the girls from the Robert Palmer videos [

]. In those videos, they have numerous women models dancing in the background and such- all dancing the same steps, wearing the same dresses, same makeup, same hair color and style. They had put out a very specific casting call for the videos as well so all the women would look very similar.

My world is kind of like that much of the time.
This may also help to give an idea:

It's supposed to be the same face with different hair and clothing.
That's only partially representative.

Because even if you have the same face but people have different hairstyles, part of the ease in remembering that is the contrast made by the facial features and the hair color, style, facial hair or not, I think? Also, your brain pays special attention to those features and files them under 'face". Not under "thing like any other thing". I really don't know- is it obvious to most people these are the same face? It wasn't to me, and maybe it's not to most people but the people who put that together think it is. Just trying to gauge things.

With prosopagnosia, there isn't really a place to file the entire picture you see. So you can't really remember them much after you stop looking at them. For me, sometimes I can recognize people in a gestalt way because- but by that time they are close enough to have figured it out anyway it doesn't really matter.

...and I JUST realized RightNow why, with the seven sets of twins in our highschool class, I only had a little difficulty with telling one set apart. Ah... ok. jeeze, Josie.

Only I can use clues. Voice helps immensely, but not until someone is very near me. If I know someone well enough, I usually recognize their gait- people tend to have a pretty consistent gait. It may shift into two or three, but it is fairly consistent most of the time. Also if they have a favorite accessory, bag, unique way of holding their hands when they walk.

Hair can help sometimes, sometimes not.
Gait is usually the most reliable.

Yeah, that would make sense. We all seem to need a sense of identity, and if you never truly recognise an identity on your face, who then are you? That must have had an effect on you, growing up. :\

It may be why I've put a lot of work into it?
I'm also thinking some other things, too, but I'm hoping for some feedback on this before I mention all of them. If other people do experience this I'd like to know if they think it had any effect on how it may have formed anything about them. Also about how they experience it and get around it too would be great to read.

I'm... going to stop writing now haha.
Hopefully more people want to discuss this and I won't feel so silly.

I am so glad you posted about prosopagnosia, Josie. I definitely have a mild form of it...maybe a bit more than mild. I've been accused of being rude or being on drugs because I don't recognize someone out of the context in which I know them (and sometimes not even IN the context of which I know them). It's especially true of people I don;t know very well. If the person changes hairstyle it's very, very difficult for me to identify them. I also use voice as a cue, and just general "feel" of the person's energy. I know I've hurt a lot of people's feelings and alienated people. The disorder is extremely embarrassing to me.

I don't seem to have a problem with recognizing myself.

[-jimi-]

I have prosopagnosia but I do recognize my own face.

[Wren_]

I never knew it had a name or that other people experienced it before; I thought it was connected to other things but some of this sounds really familiar

I remember trying to explain it to a therapist once and was told something like that everyone has trouble with this ... which seemed unlikely, but after that I didn't try to explain more

Glad you wrote about this Josie and that you are finding ways of working within it to find clues

[SnakeCharmer]

I've had this problem my whole life and was delighted to read that neurologist and author Oliver Sacks has a severe case of it himself.

I recognize hairstyles, beards, voices, mannerisms, physiques, clothes, smell, the way people walk, facial expressions, body language and personal style. Faces all blur together. I have the most trouble recognizing blondes with even features. They all look the same to me. Actors and models who are considered extremely good looking all look plain to me because their faces have no definition in my eyes.

If I'm purposely looking into a mirror, I recognize myself, but not if I'm walking toward a mirror in a store, unless I recognize my clothing. I can recognize people I barely know if they're walking away from me. If I meet close friends face to face, I may not know them until they speak. This leads me to believe that faces confuse my brain a lot, otherwise, I'd be able to easily recognize people walking toward me, as well as away. But I can't.

In high school, people frequently called me rude, stuck up and conceited because I'd walk right by them without so much as a nod. My actions hurt their feelings and their words hurt mine. As a result, I started smiling and nodding and saying hello to anyone who looked at me with a neutral or friendly expression. If someone has a hostile look on their face or in their body language, I will give them space.

In the long run, my inability to recognize faces has probably enriched my life. I've acted friendlier toward others than I may have otherwise and other people have responded in kind. Because people tend to look the same to me, I didn't end up accepting or rejecting people because of their looks. Looks don't last forever; character does. Face blindness helped me look into people, rather than stopping at the surface. I have some friends who are generally considered to be not so attractive, physically. But they look just fine to me. They are really great people and good friends. In that way, face blindness made my life easier.

Getting right down to the nitty-gritty ... body language and smell probably hold a place of heightened importance to me. It's probably done a lot to keep me safe as I go around smiling at people I may or may not know.

In the pictures in the previous post ... I can't recognize those as the same faces. At all. It's hard for me to believe that anyone can see them as the same people. I just accept that face blindness is like color blindness. What I can't see others can and seeing that I've never been able to see it, I'm not missing anything.

Those pictures...unless I'm even worse off that I had thought I was, they are not all the same man and same woman. There are differences in the chins, and shadows that make the faces different from each other. It's not just the hairstyles and clothing.

[SnakeCharmer]

Sister Rags, I could not agree more!

But ... I clicked on the pictures to enlarge them and put my fingers over part of the faces so I was comparing just the eyes or just the noses or just the lips. When I did it that way, the individual parts look the same. Otherwise, that looked like a line-up of completely different people to me. I'm still not completely convinced. I would make a terrible witness.

I've read that police are trained to look at the the shapes of ears and eyes and hands, things that are hard to change. There are people out there who can recognize people aged 30 years or with nose jobs or big weight gains and losses. I don't know how they do it. Except when I just look at the individual parts, I can see the sameness. Don't know why I can't put the whole faces together. The eyes, noses and lips were the only things I could recognize and only while blocking the rest of the face.

I'm pretty sure the shapes of the jowls and neck wattles were purposely altered -- they really are different in the pictures -- because that's something that happens in real life as people age or gain/lose weight. To most people, they remain recognizable.

Does looking at individual parts while blocking the rest of the face work for anyone else?

[Trippin2.0]

Wow, my mom has had a problem with faces her whole life, we've always been under the impression it was eyesight related, but I've seen her downright not recognize someone she met briefly, multiple times but recognize someone's gait from afar...

She's always placed her main focus on gait and voice, and can identify people very easily like that, I've always admired this super power, seriously, she first told me about it when I was 11. Now I wonder if she too may have been dealing with this all this time. She's nearly 65 and I know she's never been tested for anything...

I think its amazing how the brain can adapt to make up for its shortcomings, but I can imagine that its surely not without its own pitfalls.

Thank you for sharing Josie, its really been an educational read.

[phaset]

Wow Josie!

I never considered myself having prosopagnosia at all, but I had to try *REALLY* hard to tell that each picture was the same person. I don't spend much time looking at or focusing my eyes on people's faces so I wonder if it's something I just haven't exercised my brain enough to do well? I've never noticed having trouble telling people apart but maybe I am using other methods. Remembering their names? That is problem.

Every time I look in the mirror I do have a bit of "who the hell is that" feeling though.

[Loww]

I do have this, I also cannot recognize myself, but I just recognize hair, gait, voice, body build. It's gotten worse over the last couple of years.

[lorax177]

I also have proposognosia and I have difficulty recognizing my own face and people who I've known for a very long time. Like for example my sister used to have super long hair and then one day she got it cut to her shoulders and I literally didn't recognize her until she spoke. I feel really bad because I'm also super bad at remembering names so often times if someone mentions or points someone out to me I'll have no idea who that person is. It's really frustrating. I also can't tell people apart in movies and such unless they have a particularly unique hairstyle, clothing style, gait, etc. Which is one of the main reasons I watch cartoons more than live-action stuff.

Are friends and work associates aware of this situation? Would it be helpful to concentrate on that association links to recognizing people?

[-jimi-]

http://forums.psychcentral.com/other...opagnosia.html