The Lost Faces

When he looked into the shaving mirror each morning, the face he saw was that of a total stranger. Sometimes, to get visual proof that he was looking at himself. J.S. stuck out his tongue: the face in the mirror did the same. But J.S. simply could not recognize himself or his wife. This caused trouble, when, for instance, they took different aisles in the supermarket and agreed to meet at the checkout. Since then. J.S. rarely speaks (especially to a lady) until he is spoken to. He would have the same trouble with his children, but they are young enough to be noisy, and he can usually tell them by their voices.

J.S.. 32, is no character from a Kafka novel, no fugitive from Red brainwashing. He is an artisan in the San Francisco Bay region and, until 2 1/2 years ago, he was perfectly normal. Then he was seriously injured in an auto accident. The broken bones mended well enough, but soon he made the frightening discovery that he could not recognize people by their faces.

University of California neurologists considered the possibility that J.S. was suffering from hysteria, but soon had to rule that out. Then they found that J.S. had "tunnel vision," i.e., he saw only a narrow field, as though he were looking through a tube. This still did not explain the case. Doctors found a small snapshot showing him as a World War II pilot: the face was clearly recognizable and small enough to be well within his tunneled view. But J.S. could not identify himself. Said one doctor: "He seemed to have no visual image of himself to compare with the photograph."

The doctors finally diagnosed the case as visual agnosia, an extremely rare disorder whose victims cannot recall images to compare with what they currently see. But J.S. suffered from a highly specialized kind--a complete blank for faces, or "pro-sopagnosia." Said Dr. Donald Macrae: "We have nothing exactly like it in world literature."

Fortunately, J.S. can still recognize letters, words and figures, so that he can read and calculate (though a bit more slowly than before his accident). He can distinguish some objects but not others. For instance, he cannot tell a dog from a fox, but he can find his way through the city and draw a floor plan of his house from memory. At work he can identify only three colleagues: one very tall and thin, one with two moles, one with a facial tic. The rest tell him their names, point to the tools they want him to pass. In one parlor game, J.S. excels. When the husbands sit under the table and try to identify their wives by their feet, he simply tickles each pair of feet until he recognizes his wife--by her laugh.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.