In recent years, there have been an increasing number of empirical investigations of the psychosocial correlates of congenital facial clefts. The inconsistencies between these studies, and their lack of a theoretical focus has made interpretation of findings difficult. The present paper presents a social developmental conceptualization of facial deformity. This conceptualization is applied to an integrative analysis and reinterpretation of existing psychosocial findings related to cleft lip and cleft palate defects and to the development of a model for future research.