A life in letters: Prosopagnosia

This is the technical term for an issue I have. I find remembering faces difficult – both in real life and on a TV or cinema screen. When you’re watching a drama on television, the assumption seems to be that once a character has been introduced you will recognise them the next time they appear.  To me, recognising someone after a single sighting is impossible, though I will try to identify them by what they are wearing, or by the nature of their conversation. If this fails as it often does, I mutter to my wife ‘Have we seen her before?’ which, engrossed in the unfolding storyline, she must find disturbing.

Similarly, when I meet someone for the first time at church or at a meeting at work, I will remember the encounter, but there isn’t the remotest chance of me recognising them the next time we meet unless we are in the same location as the initial meeting and they are wearing the same colour of clothing.

When I move to work in a different office, differentiating the colleagues sharing the building is difficult. In my current workplace, there are two women whom I confused for several months, never sure which of the two I was conversing with, and regularly addressing one by the other’s name.

I suppose it’s reassuring to discover that there’s a name for it – face blindness, or Prosopagnosia, the technical term coined by Joachim Bodamer (1910-1985) in a famous paper on the subject in 1947, the first detailed analysis of the condition.  The word combines the Greek for ‘face’ (prosopon) with the medical term for impaired recognition (agnosia.) Face blindness can be the result of brain injury after normal face-recognition abilities have developed (acquired prosopagnosia) or what’s termed ‘developmental prosopagnosia’ arising from genetic factors, or foetal or early-life brain injury.

A 2006 British and American survey of 1600 people suggested that 2% of the population may be prosopagnosiacs, and this figure was confirmed by a German study. Professor Ken Nakayama of Harvard University says ‘It's conceivable that millions of people may have symptoms consistent with prosopagnosia, without even realizing it.’

I suspect my face-blindness may be genetic in origin. I am fortunate in that it is comparatively mild. Unlike people with its severer forms, I am able to recognise my own face in the mirror, and the faces of those I meet regularly. Once I have seen a face in context five or ten times, I tend to remember it.

But I would be the wrong candidate for a job involving recognition of people glimpsed once only, and I would be a complete failure if asked by the police to provide a description of someone I’d seen.

At the level I experience it, this condition is mildly irritating, but doesn’t cause significant problems. I usually take the honest approach, saying to people ‘I have a really bad memory for faces. The chances are I won’t recognise you the next time we meet. Please prompt me!’