Psychosocial Implications of Foreign Accent Syndrome: Two Case Examples

Abstract

Research on foreign accent syndrome (FAS), a rare form of speech disorder that typically follows some form of neurological insult, has concentrated almost exclusively on its neurogenic origins and motoric features, to the virtual neglect of its psychosocial implications for the patients who experience it. In this article we draw on the concepts and methods of personal construct theory to analyze two cases of FAS, demonstrating the significant and sometimes sweeping reconstruction of these persons’ sense of identity in the social world.

Notes

1. Names assigned to the two clients are fictitious and details of their self-characterizations have been disguised to respect their confidentiality.

2. Because the two clients had different numbers of family members and could decide when they had described the set of figures fully, the actual numbers of elements and constructs varied slightly, as noted in the Results section.