Living with difficulties of facial processing

The present paper considers the processing of facial information from a personal and narrative aspect, attempting to address the effects that deficits in such processing have on people’s perceptions of themselves and of others. The approach adopted has been a narrative and mainly subjective one, entering the experience of several subjects with facial problems to tease out the interactions between their facial problems and their relations with others. The subjects are those with blindness, either congenital or acquired, autism, Moebius syndrome (the congenital absence of facial expression), Bell’s palsy and facial disfigurement. From these biographical experiences the effect of facial problems on people’s perception of self and their social existence is explored. Facial information processing is being examined to brilliant effect scientifically: the effects of problems in the system on individuals’ self esteem may be informed, in part, by a clinical, descriptive approach.