Thread: Why the face?

Why is it so difficult to imagine a persons face in your mind.
Other obects, no problem. But an individuals face is almost immpossible unless you picture them in the process of doing somthing.
Do you guys find it hard to dream of a specific person?

I don't know, I think maybe it just has a lot of detail to it. Objects are pretty simple, everyone face is basicly the same but change some details and you got a billion different looks.

In my dreams I normally forget everyones face. Even very vivid and lucid dreams, I forget peoples faces. Though last few days I remebered a few people thats pretty much the only time it has happened. Even with people I know I forget most of the time.

You mean in dreams, right?

I actually saw on an educational program about vision throughout the animal kingdom, and like a lot of living creatures have certain abilities or unique visual abilities, so do we. What I think is interesting is how it said our strongest ability visually, is the ability to memorize faces, and to interpret body and facial language. Yet, in our dreams, people are often faceless.

Sitting right here, if I thought about it I doubt I could even picture my mothers face. If I saw her though, wouldn't take a second to know its her. Same with everyone else, I know what they look like, just can't picture it.

Originally posted by Alric
Sitting right here, if I thought about it I doubt I could even picture my mothers face. If I saw her though, wouldn't take a second to know its her. Same with everyone else, I know what they look like, just can't picture it.

That is exactly what I mean. But if you picture them past tense or in the act of doing somthing you can usually see their face.

NeoKast, sorry I was not more specific. But what I was comparing it to was focusing on someone before you go to sleep.

Alric - You had a very good point. We all have general features but change one aspect and it is like an integer. There are countless facial expressions. Kinda cool if you think about it!

Yeah, a lot of times i can't even remember my own face... I kind of have my own vision of my self and sometimes when i look in a mirror i get surprised because my face doesn't look the way i pictured it would.

hmmm, i don't have this problem? might just be a lapse of memory? my recall is getting pretty high, that could be another reason.

I know what you mean about the faces. The funny part is, even though our minds can remember the smallest of things and stick them into our dreams, so often mine can't get the faces right in a dream state either! I'll know the person in my dream is someone in particular, but so often the face is so off. Even in non-lucid dreams I tend to have some sense that the face is not the right one, and find it odd. In lucid dreams I'm really attentive to it - how strange that our brains would give completely wrong faces to people we know in our dreams! What's up with that?

i dont really have a problem with faces in dreams either, actually my dreams usually consist of me seeing some one or many people from my school and us doing somthing

i think its a perfectionist thing...

I have a very good memory for faces in real life. I recognize a person if I've seen him once.

But I have trouble recalling faces and picturing them in my mind.

And if I see somebody in my dream, I absolutely cant remember their face

My memory is pretty good on faces in the real world also. Usually majority of the times in dreams, I cannot remember how most of my dream characters look after waking no matter how significant thier role was in my dream.

I can say that I've had dreams with very clear faces, which I can recall when awake. Other times, I've had dreams where it was more of a sense of a particular presence and not much focus was on the face.

I'd put my money on the idea that you probably forget the faces in your dreams very rapidly after waking. You remember who they were, but not how they looked, unless you're fabricating it at the time of recalling the memory of the dream.

I personally can stop now, while awake, think of a person, and at least visualize their face in a very general or even detailed way.

The people you recall in your dreams Do you think that your subconcious is making it up? Or it is a face that your subconciuos randomley remembers?

Thats a good question Howetzer. I think that it's a combination of both. I think those individuals that we know in the waking world that appear in our dreams are from our memory. Those dream characters we never seen before I think are mixed combinations of the thousands and thousands of individuals that we have seen throughout life. I think the subconscious stores information of people that we just glanced at from years ago. And only in our dreams that this information is made available to us once again. I think sometimes it is fully those people and then sometimes the mind kinda jumbles it up to create an entirely new person based off of two or more individuals.

I agree! ShadowNightWing

I agree. I had a person in my dream recently that I have only seen a picture of. She was introduced to me and everything. She even had a conversation in front of me and spoke to me.

It's a combination of both, depending on the dream.

Thanks you guys, I also think its the same thing in dream scenes. I think some scenes may have a significant meaning behind it but I believe most are pretty much processed locations all mixed up to form an entirely new setting.