Jowanna, who suffers from prosopagnosia, or face blindness, can’t count the number of times she’s walked past someone she knows without saying hello. | EvelynLewin1
Jowanna can’t count the number of times she’s walked past someone she knows without saying hello. She doesn’t do this because she’s rude. Rather, she suffers from face blindness, also known as prosopagnosia.
Experts say understanding you can’t identify people because of prosopagnosia, rather than because you’re “not trying hard enough”, is reassuring.Jowanna’s reaction to hearing she has prosopagnosia is common, says Associate Professor Romina Palermo from the University of Western Australia’s School of Psychological Science. She’s spent years studying the “developmental” or lifelong version of the condition, which is estimated to affect as many as one in 50 people.
While Jowanna can recognise her own face, she recalls an instance where she mistook someone else’s face for her own. She was with her son and partner and had hopped out of the car to pick up fish and chips. When she got back, Jowanna tried to open the car door but couldn’t. She thought she could see her own reflection in the window, and simply assumed her family was in the car, too.
But considering there’s no cure, Palermo says there may be no need for a formal diagnosis if you’ve always struggled with faces. Jowanna agrees, saying she felt no desire to gain an official diagnosis of face blindness to confirm what she already knew.“Most people are really cool about it. They understand it’s real … and every so often someone else says, ‘Oh, I think I have that, too!’ ”
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