Inability to remember faces?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is something that I’ve just noticed about myself, and I’m hoping others can shed some light on it.

I absolutely cannot remember faces. Not at all, none, period. Right now, sitting here, I am utterly unable to summon a mental picture of my mother, or my father, or my boss (whom I just saw today), or my girlfriend, myself, or the President, or anyone. I just can’t remember faces at all, period.

I can recognize people fine, but I can’t picture them when I’m not looking at them, to such an extent that I can look really carefully at someone, turn my face away, and instantly forget what they look like. I can remember the major features, like “this person is bald,” or “this person has an underbite,” but there’s no actual picture in my mind; the memories are essentially verbal.

I just realized this recently when I was sitting with my GF, the jillelope, and I kept staring at her. She asked why I was looking at her all the time, and I said in all sincerity, “Because I forget how beautiful you are.” (Insert lots of awwwwws here.) Conversation ensued, in which I learned, to my astonishment, that most people CAN remember what faces look like.

Is there a name for this? Do any of my fellow Dopers suffer from it? Is this relevant to my total inability to draw anything more lifelike than a stick-figure?

2

Not to sound dismissive but I think you might just be trying to hard or trying for the wrong thing. I think I’ve read about people not being able to remember faces after having a stroke or some other head-injury but in that case they really cannot recognise people. You’d have noticed that a lot sooner.

I think you might be either concentrating too hard trying to pin someone’s looks or having unrealistic expectations on how life-like humans can actually do this. When I first read your post I tried to conjure a mental picture of my father and I couldn’t do it either, but I don’t think you or me are special cases.

My homespun (based on stuff I read whilst studying philsophy of mind ages ago and then muddling it up) theory is that we don’t have photograph-like libraries in our head full of the people we know. When you’re thinking of your GF’s face normally, without this post in mind, you’re not looking at a mental photograph of her face, but rather, you mimicking the process of actually looking at her in your head, remembering what it was like when you looked at her in real life. So basically it’s “looking” we simulate but if you try to simulate “seeing” you find you can’t do it.

I hope that made any sense at all. I know what I mean, but it’s very hard to put into words.

3

I agree. I think this falls in the same category as childbirth. I mean, fercrissakes, you just experienced the most horrendous pain of your life, yet, ten minutes after it’s over, you can’t remember the pain.

I don’t remember certain details about faces either. I’m afraid my husband will shave his beard some day and I won’t recognize him. I know he’s got blue eyes and a distinctive nose, but without the beard…who knows?

4

I suffer badly from this…

I can recognize close friends and family members as long as they are in the correct context. For example, if my wife were to don a lab coat and pop out of one of the chemistry laboratories at work, I wouldn’t recognize her. If somebody changes hairstyle or outfit, I’m in trouble.

It’s so bad that I often cannot recognize the bad guy/good guy in a movie if they have changed clothes. Forget being able to say “Oh, you mean Tom Cruise?” My wife simply cannot understand this.

Of course, from time to time she comes across some old black and white photo of a bunch of girls from her younger days and asks me which one is her. I proceed to guess incorrectly and then she gets all offended looking.

Every time we travel to Rio to visit her family, I have to remind her to whisper every single person’s name in my ear as I approach them. Granted, they all remember the tall gringo who married their cousin/niece/whathaveyou, and it would be challenging for anyone to remember several dozen faces in such a setting, but I don’t even have the remotest chance of getting their names right.

Somehow I get along, occasionally making a fool of myself :).

5

I think it helps if you try to imagine them doing something, whether it’s laughing or shouting or whatever. The stronger the feelings connected to the action, probably the better memory.

It’s definitely harder to imagine a still image that’s out of context. I CAN picture George Washington and Ben Franklins still image quite easily though.

6

I have exactly the same problem. Right now I can’t actually picture even my own mother’s face. I could describe it as accurately as could anyone else, but I can’t visualize it. The only way I can see it is by imagining a verbal image and mentally constructing a picture according to it. Unfortunately, I can’t make a mental picture any more accurately than I could draw it and I can’t draw very well at all.

(By the way, there’s a story by L.M. Montgomery (who wrote Anne of Green Gable) in which someone takes a picture of a little boy he happens to meet. When he goes back to see if the family wants the photo, it turns out that the little boy has just died and the father is going crazy because he can’t remember faces at all and has no photo. So there’s a literary precedent.)

There’s a condition called prosopagnosia or face blindness. With this condition, you cannot recognize faces at all, even though your eyesight is fine. You form no long-term mental impression of the face, and the next time you see the person you have no idea who it is–even your own husband or children. I don’t have that–when I actually see a person, I recognize him. But I think it might be related, since I don’t carry away an image of the face.

7

Prosopagnosia

It involves an area of the temporal lobe. I just noticed that somebody else posted the name of it. It is also scary as hell if you are not used to it.
There are many variations on this. Some people can recall the faces of people they knew BEFORE they had a brain injury, or can tell that a face is familiar but have no idea why. Others see faces as nonsensical jumbles. Some will know who a person is when they SEE them but can’t visualize a persons face no matter WHO they are (mother father, spouse. Many suffers use other cues to figure out whoa person is…like primary traits (using other pieces of visual recognition that the holistic piece for faces)

You can be born with it, or you can suffer a brain trauma and then get it

There are many variants (three primary ones so far) and various degrees of severity.

The worst severity of my own troubles has been passing slowly (and still decreasing) as my brain heals.

I have a number a issues related to temporal lobe injury and in me this is the result of brain due to illness.

I had partial “Prosopagnosia” and partial “topographical disorientation” (slowly getting better). the "topographical disorientation " is almost completely gone now (I no longer get utterly lost, never get lost whilst driving home anymore, but I am not the master of driving to new locations in strange towns, without a map, as I once was).

You see, I got this as a part of the known progress of a disease that often causes problems with facial recognition in those who have it the worst.

For several years, I could not visualize any person’s face in my head (even my wife & kid, mother, father, etc). I knew who people were if I saw them…so I was lucky there. People I had only known for a wee or a month, those I might not recall their names (I had general memory problems too & still do).

A fellow in a town I used to live in in the USA, who has this long before I did, went from being a 4.0 High School Quarterback, to being a cripple in agony, restricted to his bed, who had no memory to speak of and could not recognize his mother.

YET

Most MDs refused to believe it existed. It took over 3 decades for them to believe it was real (after thousands of studies they still refused to believe in it) and people STILL get sent to mental institutions over it,.

No days many docs in RESEARCH realize that it is a piece of a bigger illness…one that (again) most docs refuse to believe in (in the face of massive research that says the opposite).

There is JUST NOW after (again) several decades some partial acceptance of the idea that it might be real. That the PRIMARY CAUSATIVE DISORDER is a real thing (with tens of thousands of research papers saying it is). But then the concept of thw disease is scary.

Most docs still insist we are just nuts…pretending…(people with Munchousens, or somatization disorders)…and after only 50 years of hard science showing we are definitely “real” & 20 years of every world or national shrink organization saying it IS a PHYSICAL disorder not a mental one (so please stop sending them to us).

In Germany it has an ICD9 code.
IN the USA is does not.
The W.H.O. were going to give it an international number, but they argued about it and it never happened.
There is no official IDC9 or equivalent in any part of the UK (or any location that was once a part of the British Empire).
It is accepted in NovaScotia as real but not in the rest of Canada (go figure).

Then again in most western nations, MD style medicine is no longer about science…just short appointments, as many patients in a day as you can, high charges, and being a millionaire. There are no millionaire doctors in Australia or in Japan (witha few exceptions who only work as PRIVATE doctors)/

In medicine, it is like there is this huge line across a room. Real science is on one side of the room with the microbiologists, toxicologists, diagnosticians (doing Differential Diagnosis -like HOUSE . I saw a guy like that - amazing)…and along with them you find the researchers, the Molecular Medicine people, the Neuro-Psyche people, and endocrinologists (etc).

Then on the side with the pharmaceutical companies and people who blog about info-tainment medicine, and the discredited guy who runs “Quack Watch” and his friends who are trying to disprove gravity as a “scam”…that is where you have most of the GPs (confused as to how they got onto that side of the room after that many years of school).

Ever seen a microscope in a doctors office?
NOPE!

Why are there no microscopes in MDs offices anymore?

When I was a kid there were. They used to be in all of them! Ever had a doctor actually TEST to see if you HAD an infection before giving you antibiotics?

Ever have them test FIRST to see what kind of infection you have so they give you the right kind of antibiotics?

Nope?

Ever have them test at LEAST to see if your infection is gram negative/positive?

  • NOPE

Well, I’m also 50 so I did see it done a few times when I was very small…under 5 years old.

I saw a microscope get used in a doctors office once after that 0 and HE was a NATUROPATH looking at my blood cells right there on the screen of his PC) …but in many nations that have a real licensing process for Naturopaths & for Chiropractors, THEY study more hard science than the MD doctors do, take a lot of coursework in advanced biochemistry and nutrition (MDs take about 3 hours in orientation in nutrition - not 3 credit hours - actual hours). And NO, contrarty to the things that the AMA got SUCCESSFULLY SUED for saying for a long time, Chiropractors do NOT get their degrees mail order (not even a licensed massage therapist can do that). Naturopaths don;t either and they need to know all about pharmaceutical medications that might interact with herbs and such. As such they know far more about them that your GP does (who knows almost nothing about pharmacology in this era and has about 10 or 20 favorite medications…the ones that got advertised the most form the company that sent them to Hawaii )

The scary things I’ve learned.

For most doctors, medicine is now a “science free zone”, but mostly on tradition and prejudice and the docs never read any medical research papers at all. In the USA it is all about the money with 5 minute appointments that cost $150 a pop. They do everything built on assumption.

The medication my wife was on in the USA that cost use $650 a month, costs is $5.90 here in Australia. A CT costs about $40 in Japan.

MDs have mostly lost had any REAL interest in HARD SCIENCE (as it is beaten out of them in medical school) and most of them having stopped learning as of their graduation) - well if they don’t understand it (having refused to read any new medical information)

Every new doctor I see, requires that I take in reams of medical abstracts to educate them. ME the PATIENT education my doctor, and figuring out from medical journals and research papers how to have HIM treat ME.