ABSTRACT
Sam was a 35-year-old male who had normal hearing until the age of 20 when he, in his words, “became afflicted with a rapidly progressive hearing loss” leading to profound deafness by the age of 22. He requested psychotherapy because of symptoms of depression and anxiety. Having only worked with prelingually deaf and hard-of-hearing persons prior to Sam, I was surprised how taxing communication was, although his receptive oral skills were excellent due to his adventitious hearing loss. Repetitions were often necessary. I found myself not only talking slowly and carefully, but also using more simple language, as well as nodding my head more and conducting a more passive form of therapy than was my usual style. As Schlesinger (1985) reported about her own initial experience with deafened persons, “I soon noticed myself feeling somewhat impotent. I daydreamed about my next client who was prelingually deaf and who signed ASL beautifully.” With her, communication would be no problem, and I might learn some new ASL idioms and nuances of Deaf culture. I also recalled the client before Sam with whom one-to-one communication was also no problem, as he only had a 50 db hearing loss.
