severe face blindness

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In the weekend I had to meet many people.
So there were people I know for a couple years, but I do not remember their faces and then they greet me and I do not know who the person is and mute and my partner tells me, that it is that and that person and I see that person 5 minutes later and do not recognize that person again and my partner tells me again, that it was the same person from 5 minutes ago.
This is causing stress for me.
My eyes are working well, it is not due to problems with being short- or nearsighted.

Is there any way to improve face blindness?

I don't know.

I don't think I have severe face-blindness. I have it to some degree, but I think I can learn faces over time, at least within context. But even in context, if you change someone's hairstyle they can look like completely different people. I was watching a television series last night in which one of the female cast members had bangs normally covering her forehead. In one shot her bangs were brushed aside and I had no idea who she was until the rest of the scene (who was with her, where she was) gave me enough clues.

I have strategies for recognition - looking for wardrobe, hair, recognizing voice, posture. If I recognize someone's voice, I am sometimes able to visualize where I heard that voice and connect the voice to the person.

I relate to what you write.
This weekend the people were out of context in a way, though the context was defined then again.
Normally voice also helps me a lot, but sometimes it doesn't anymore.
I have a strategy recognizing people by numberplates of the car, when they come to visit.
This also applies for family, it happens each time, that I go outside at the moment we have an appointment and I watch the cars passing by and look for the numberplates, so I can be sure.
Once I get used to their faces again, I do not need numberplates anymore, but I always feel this "little surprised moment" if I do not see them for a couple minutes during a visit, that I recognize their faces again, and if I do not see them for a longer time, I need back the numberplates to be sure I will not be mistaken.

Oh, I got a lot of my practice with connecting people outside of context by looking for actors in movies and TV shows. I wonder if it annoys people when I say "Hey, that's Alison Hannigan from Buffy (she's a regular cast member on How I Met Your Mother)" or "That's Jonathan Frakes from Star Trek (saw him on The Waltons)." Both of those when I was watching television with my mother.

I picked up the habit from some people I gamed with in the early-mid 1990s. More often than not, though, I'll get stuck on someone's voice but not be able to identify them. This happened with J.K. Simmons in some TV show - I thought he was Sam Elliott at first, but when I looked I saw I was wrong.

The connection? Both men appeared in comic book movies, were kind of blustery, and had a mustache. J.K Simmons played J. Jonah Jameson in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and Sam Elliott played General Ross in Ang Lee's Hulk.

When I checked wiki to see who was who, I found I had actually visited J. K. Simmons' page a few days earlier.

Anyway, I think trying to identify celebrities has helped me develop strategies, but I am not sure as to how effective it's been.

<grin> every once in a while there's a topic that resonates soooooo much, I just have to laugh at myself. I never thought of that term "face blindness". Thanks, Eloa. I know I have a hard time recognizing people in photos, mostly if they are someone I don't know personally, but sometimes even then. I also have the "can't put a face to the name" thing. But I do have an ability to identify people from their walk style, and from odour - which people find so creepy that I learned not to do it (overtly). We've got close to 100 people at work, and I could usually identify a sweater or coat/scarf etc by sniffing it. Ummm, okay so sometimes I do that randomly, but part of my job is tidying and cleaning up, so I tell myself it does help to be able to identify who goes with a particular garment.

The face blindness is not too difficult for me, but enough of a problem that I've noticed it and have some ways of compensating. Usually by things like posture, body shape, voice. So much so that something like a hallowe'en party is not too difficult at all to guess who's who.

I was face blind for may years until I worked in a poker room. I spent several years having to remember hundreds of people by face. It was this practice that allowed me to develop the ability to recognize people after only seeing them once. It takes a while, but if you can find a place where your livelihood depends on recognizing people, odds are you'll learn how to do it.

Thank you all for replying.
Maybe I should start learning to recognize celebrities (though I am not interested in them at all).
I do not watch a lot of TV and have difficulties following the actions and the motivations for the actions.
I watched for example "Neighbours" a couple times, but to me they all looked kind of the "same", by which I mean the blond ones like the other blond ones and dark-haired ones like the other dark-haired ones, and I lost interest very quickly.
But it is good to know, that there is a way to improve it.
I guess it is also a matter of poor eye-contact.

I am not interested in celebrities as celebrities, but I was very interested in the movies I saw them in (usually related to special interests). Like, I don't care at all about who anyone is going to marry or who anyone has slept with or what kind of rehab programs are going on or who's been arrested. I find Hollywood gossip absolutely boring. I like seeing actors I can recognize from shows I like, but that doesn't mean I'll like the other show (I mentioned How I Met Your Mother, which I am absolutely not interested in and most of it makes no sense to me).

If you're not interested in the subject matter, it's probably not worth it to focus on identifying actors. I loved Buffy: The Vampire Slayer but I don't automatically love everything Sarah Michelle Gellar does. It's kind of cool when actors do new shows that I also like. Dollhouse was good for this as it featured actors who had been on Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica, and had a premise that held my interest.

I am probably overexplaining myself.

As a child and teenager my SI was aeroplanes and if there was any movie involving aeroplanes on TV (like the "Airport"-Triology) I watched it for sure.

it bugs me that the techniques I use are not always socially well received. In the past, I tried to edit out those behaviours and techniques. Now I use any trick I can, just try putting a bit of caution into when I do it, and "cloaking" when I do something (OMG I was going to write, "aberrant"). At my advanced age, I put more emphasis in efficacy, and less on "passing". T'wasn't always so.

Are you better with names than you are with faces? If you could remember and connect names perhaps that would help as you would recognize names instead of faces.

Personally I cannot remember names at all. I am rather faceblind but it is not as bad as names. I contextualize every person I know, so if I meet them in a new context it is like I am meeting a brand new person. If I am in a crowd and meeting lots of new people all at once, I mostly give up. I start telling people "Sorry I did not recognize you, but with all the people here my brain cannot keep up with all of the introductions. Would you mind reminding me who you are again?"

This becomes embarrassing when I cannot find my dad in the same room (or even right next to me) if I do not know what shirt he is wearing that day. Or I cannot tell if the person walking into the aikido dojo is a new person, or if I have practiced with them for many months until they put on their gi. I am better at school, but I only recognize a classmate while in the classroom. If the person is in two classes with me, I do not realize that they are the same person, and I probibly will not recognize them in the hall.

As I am worse with names I just introduce myself to people multiple times, and they do not mind if I tell them that I am re-introducing myself because I do not remember their name. (apparently it is more socially acceptable to have trouble with names than faces - forgetting that you ever met the person). This removes some of the social condemnation, but I have yet to find a great method for remembering faces or names (and I have tried several methods to try and remember).

I am terrible with both names and faces.

I took the face blindness test that was linked on the on-line test thread, but they were celebrity faces and I got 100 percent. I have a real problem with people I've just met, or people I haven't seen for a while. Sometimes voices will help, or the context of the situation or the subject matter that someone addresses me about. For example, I ran into the supervising attorney at a local self help center in Superior Court. I have seen this woman literally dozens of time (although the last time was over a year ago) and when she came up and said hi, I didn't know who she was until I heard her voice and paired that with where I was, and then I knew her.

It's kind of embarrassing. I went to a big 50th Anniversary Celebration of the social services agency I work for and people were coming up and saying hello and didn't know them. Some of them looked familiar, but I couldn't place them. They were totally out of context and they were using American Sign Language so I didn't have their voices to help me.