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Reverse Facial Blindness
I think I know you
Several years ago I read a memoir written by a woman who had prosopagnosia, otherwise known as facial blindness. It was the first time I’d heard of this disorder and I found it fascinating. Because she couldn’t identify people by their faces, the author developed creative adaptations like recognizing body shapes and the way people walked.
I am the opposite — I have keen recognition, both with names and faces. For almost twenty years I ran a yoga studio and one of our policies was to call each student by their name at least once during every class. As a result, I became a master of memorizing both names and faces, a super-recognizer.
As I’ve gotten older, I no longer engage in the daily practice of memorizing faces and names in my everyday job. I often forget names. Thankfully, I almost always remember faces. Last month, I was at an event with about 40 people. I had previously met about ten percent of the people there. Most of them were women were in their 50s and 60s.
I introduced myself or was introduced to almost everyone. And though I had past history with only a handful of the people there, I had the feeling that I knew everyone. It was like reverse facial blindness. Everyone I met I thought, “I know you from somewhere.”
