More Than "Poor At Faces"
Most 'normal people' effortlessly identify family, remember friends, and recognize acquaintances. But there are some people with such poor recognition skills that they are embarrassed to admit they can't distinguish their next door neighbor's face. While occasionally being unable to identify some acquaintances and colleagues is quite normal, regularly concluding you've never seen them before is NOT.
Because this lack of 'filing faces in memory' has robbed me of effortless social links to others I often rely on static images that are independent of the changes and flow of normal relationships. I see you as through the lens of a camera that fails to maintain focus on your face, yet I can see everything else clearly. My visual 'portraits' balance precariously , indistinct , as within an amnesic maze. My camera takes your picture at a certain point in time, but then finds no place to store your image . This mental snapshot of you is usually blank or under/over-exposed. My brain fails to make any connection to prior 'pictures' of you and thus your 'snapshot' is tossed out as useless.
Does the problem lie in the lens (visual system) ? The film/storage site of the image ,(the physical brain) ? Or the camera itself (the mental mapping circuit that enables image recognition and storage) ? Wherever the problem lies, I experience its effects; stress, anxiety and dread of casual social contact.
Why You're Not Invited To My Parties
You may not know I have PPG as I seemingly function somewhat normally on the outside. But inside I am always uncertain, unsure, and uneasy. The way I avert dealing with this malady is to exhibit a social paralysis, customarily avoiding people and social relationships . My home is my private retreat from the continual stress of this mental bewilderment . My home is my stress free 'safe zone' where I enjoy playing chess on the internet. Internet friendships suit me very well as they don't require face recognition.
However , if you ran into me , you might consider me a 'friendly' person, but I am not a 'social' person .I guess you can label me a loner . Moreover, I rarely go anywhere without family. I might run into 'someone I should know'. Likewise people rarely come to my house. I don't do coffee klatches, shopping with friends, parties, social gatherings, meetings (except for chess activities). I don't particularly care to hurt anybody's feelings when I confess that they are not on my 'memory list' at the moment .
When I feel the need to get away, to socialize, I'll go out to any place or entertainment where there is a nameless, faceless crowd . There, I'm not expected to 'know' who 'they' all are. Conversely , my most extremely stressful situation would be 'socializing' in a group of 5-10 'acquaintances or co-workers' that I would be expected to know . After identification I can sort out people in a small group of 3. 'Going out' I can interact imprecisely in a 'crowd' of 100, but that 'small intimate crowd' is my nemesis. I do everything I can to avoid it. I've got 100 excuses on how to get out of attending meetings. It's a numbers thing; I can handle 200, or 3, but not 10.
I Knew You Last Month, But That Doesn't Count
Recognizing faces is effortless for most. You probably arrived pre-wired with this ability and never had to give it a thought. From infancy on, people start preferring and differentiating one face from another. You may easily identify the minute dimensional variations in a hundred thousand faces and you, like most people, undoubtedly recognize close friends and family given any circumstance, any time frame, even after long absences.
Since this ability seems innate it is postulated that PPG is a very rare malady, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. I am not sure how 'rare' it is if people are able to conceal this lack . However, it is 'rare enough' ( e.g. not commonly listed in psychology texts, not 'recognized' officially as a disability, not enough people studied, you don't hear of it, etc. )
It's not that I don't recognize anybody at all , I do. But I can't depend on it . I 'somewhat know' lots of people. I'm guessing I now retain (and can call upon) recognizable mental images of 150-300 non-family people , but only if they don't drastically change hairstyle, locale, weight, clothing styles or other 'handles'. (A 'handle' is a non-facial feature/s of that person that makes an impression on me in some other way.) But even for those I 'know' recognition is fluid, there are times I don't recognize them when I should.
Seeing someone for the hundredth time makes their identification easier for me, but constant exposure is still not foolproof. For instance I can recognize many celebrities on television because they are quite distinctly memorable in some fashion (maybe not by face) yet I always mix up newscasters no matter how many times I've seen Brokaw, Jennings, Rather, I don't know who is who.
If I analyze HOW I know someone , it is probably not 'by face'. I recognize them because I have a better 'handle' on them. I use 'handles' to store an identification file in another area of the brain, much as a blind person uses sound clues or scent . I may think I know Harry a few doors away, but in all likelihood I just know him because he is the tallest guy who lives on my block, or because his eyebrows are bushy. The rest of Harry's face isn't in my memory. I see 'very tall' and 'bushy eyebrows', and my brain jumps to a conclusion. If I see another person (with Harry) who is also tall and has bushy eyebrows, darn if I can tell who is who. I just don't distinguish as effortlessly or as well as those who have normal facial recognition skills . My skill in this area seems to rise and fall , capriciously following some emotional, hormonal, biochemical tide, where I never can seem to rely if I 'know' or I 'don't know' a face. This predicament gives rise to never-ending embarrassments and blunders. It causes continual stress for me while giving my immediate family plenty of tolerant laughs over my misidentifications.
I recall the faces of intimately close friends (but not always) most relatives (unless they grow or change) strangers (if meeting them again within a half hour, and they haven't changed clothes or hairstyles). I often fail at remembering neighbors, casual friends, acquaintances, customers and business contacts, auto mechanics, co-workers (unless they wear name tags ) ex-lovers (short-term relationships), and (a mixed blessing) those folks I don't like, or people I should be avoiding anyway. I even have difficulty forming an image of my own likeness in my mind. I'm often surprised by my own reflection in the mirror. I imagine myself as younger, thinner, just different than I am. Somewhere long past I formed a static archetype self-image in my mind, that got filed away and kept, while the daily changes that come with age were not updated in memory. Maybe I wouldn't 'know' me if I met me. But that's o.k., I'm more attractive the way I remember me :-)
I Keep Meeting The Same People For The First Time
Assuming you're 'normal' ..my guess is that if you meet someone, for the first time, and converse with him for half an hour (let's say 'Bob' a checker in a store ) , on going back there a week later, you'd be able to pick Bob out by sight . I can't. Even by the very next day I probably couldn't. If I saw someone in their section all alone, the same sex, body build, uniform, I would assume it was Bob (and most likely be wrong ) If there were others checkers there also I'd be quite confused. (Thank goodness checkers tend to wear name tags.) In the same vein, I bet if your family doctor knocked at your door because his/her car ran out of gas out on your street you'd be momentarily taken aback but you'd recognize him/her almost at once. I wouldn't.
Since I doubt the trustworthiness of whatever memory or recognition comes to me I am on edge in casual relationships. PPG is a blindness of part of the mind , behaving much like the physical deficit of sightedness .
But, while blind people are not faulted for failure to recognize someone, I, and others like me, are expected to. There is little knowledge of, or allowance made for this deficit, nor special consideration, no hint in the public arena that this even exists.
Don't Just Stand There, Walk Away, So I Know Who You Are
I get by, I have to, because like any person with a handicap I've acquired compensatory methods to mentally map and sort people apart . They're certainly not foolproof but I do the best I can . I'm not sure how much localized attention I currently pay to any face. Long ago I learned concentrated attention doesn't 'work' for me, it only makes me more anxious and apt to forget . Memory tricks don't help either.
Recognition doesn't always depend on remembering the face. For instance, I often recognize someone walking away from me , more so than if I look at their features .I am looking at gait, posture, mannerisms etc. In reality, faces are quite complex, differing in minute dimensional measurements, width, height, etc. .Faces mutate with motion, angle, change of light . They are transformed by emotions and/or altered by differing circumstances (intoxication, fatigue etc.). An individual face is not a static image unless it's a photo. It is an amazing accomplishment that humans can recognize faces so effortlessly, given the complexity of the task.
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