IMPORTANCE OF THE FACE

The term 'person' comes from the Latin persona which means, literally, a 'mask'. The 20th century psychologist Wilhelm Reich coined the term 'character armour'. The face that we put forward to the world is the thing we hide behind.

Yet the face is also the revelation of the self. I'm thinking not only of Wittgenstein's observation that the face is a 'picture of the human soul', but also the importance placed on the face by Levinas: when we look at a person's face we are gazing beyond empirical reality to something transcendent, to that which cannot be 'thematized' or made a subject for knowledge.

The dialectical point here is that which hides and masks — our virtuosity in controlling our facial expressions — would not serve precisely this purpose were it not for the fact that the face, pre-eminently is that which reveals.

It is also true that the most sophisticated intelligence, evolved over millions of years, is brought to bear on reading the face, deciphering who a person is or what they are about from the tiniest nuances of expression.

All this explains why we have such fear of facial disfigurement. It was once accepted as a matter of course that the infant born with a large facial port wine stain faces life as an outcast.

The Falklands war hero Simon Weston who suffered horrific facial burns for which he received extensive cosmetic surgery, now regularly appears on TV despite the fact that his face is still badly disfigured. We can learn to see through, or past, the surface.

Think also of how human beings accept the signs of age in the face. You wouldn't want to be a 70 year old with the face of a 20 year old. We expect to read a person's life experience in his or her face.

© Geoffrey Klempner 2008