Conference Program

The experiences of deaf adults transcend the purely sensory domain and cannot be fully captured through audiological measures alone. From a phenomenological-clinical standpoint, deafness constitutes a transformation in one’s very “being-in-the-world,” reshaping the perception of social space, the modalities of communication, and the embodied sense of self. In this context, the body emerges as the primary medium of expression and relational engagement. Loneliness, therefore, should not be reduced to a voluntary social withdrawal; rather, it may be understood as the manifestation of a progressive disruption in intersubjective processes (Döge et al., 2025; Heffernan et al., 2022). Such experiences are further intensified by the communicative and relational demands imposed by auditory impairment - heightened interpretative effort, sustained vigilance, increased visual attention to faces and lip movements, and cognitive fatigue. When these adaptive efforts are not adequately supported through rehabilitation (Rostkowska et al., 2021), deaf adults may experience communicative isolation and a pervasive sense of social “invisibility” (Bott & Saunders, 2021; Shukla et al., 2020).

Grounding the body as a foundational dimension of experience and meaning-making, this study explores the subjective experiences of ten deaf adults (with congenital or acquired deafness) who use hearing aids and/or cochlear implants, recruited within a speech-language rehabilitation setting. The research adopts a qualitative design, combining questionnaires on lived experience with a narrative role-playing task. Participants were invited to produce three brief texts, each addressed to a different interlocutor: a family member, an unfamiliar peer living with the same clinical condition, and their therapist. In each text, they described daily challenges, bodily sensations associated with listening, and the principal communicative difficulties encountered in everyday life. The study seeks to examine how, and to what extent, the narration of subjective experience is shaped by the addressee and by the quality of the relational and emotional bond.

Specifically, the study aims to observe how deaf adults ascribe meaning to their experiences and whether they modulate the communication of their lived experience as the relational distance from the interlocutor increases. Analysing potential communicative variations - namely, which aspects of experience are emphasized, downplayed, or left unspoken - may reveal which experiential dimensions are more easily shared and which tend to remain implicit, particularly within formal care contexts. These findings have direct implications for the clinical understanding of the individual experience and, consequently, for the planning of rehabilitative interventions.

From a phenomenological-clinical perspective, it becomes essential for hearing rehabilitation professionals to listen empathically to deaf individuals, attuning to even the less explicit facets of their clinical experience. This approach integrates objective assessment tools with systematic attention to subjective characteristics, thereby informing more effective rehabilitative strategies and support adaptive processes that respect how deaf individuals ontologically reorganize their experience.