[Psychotherapy of patients with hearing impairment]

The need for psychotherapy with hearing impaired persons, and its necessity, are undisputed among professional workers. Yet, hardly any theory-based, field-tested experience exists so far concerning the procedures to be employed. The present contribution delineates both potential and limitations of psychotherapy with this population. Four schools of psychotherapeutic thinking are investigated as to their specific potential for contributing to psychotherapeutic work with hearing impaired clients. The aspect of "communication channel" is picked out from systems theory; from psychoanalysis, the concepts of therapeutic contract and transference appear significant; Humanistic Psychology, with its contributions concerning extraverbal expression and verbalization of feelings, has opened major routes of access to the hearing impaired individual; the broadest range of concepts and intervention strategies is presented by behavioural therapy. Behavioural approaches--cognitive conditioning, self-control techniques, thought-stopping, cognitive re-structuring--may be of greatest use in working with deaf clients. Given the cognitive and communicative characteristics of the target population, therapeutic work needs to be performed in an eclectic and synoptical manner. Its prime objective lies in uncovering the "deaf identity", in developing and protecting it.