The aphasic patient: vulnerability and/or exclusion.

The aim of this article is to account for the vulnerability of the patient/subject affected by aphasia, the loss of acquired language in adults. In the case of a sudden onset of aphasia, the patient is often aware of his/her disorder from the very onset of the impairment. Vulnerability also affects patients suffering from progressive aphasia, mainly due to a collapse of the various components of memory. After describing the main types of aphasia in broad outline, the study focuses on the isolation and exclusion that they generate, starting from a brief study of the emotional impact of the impairment on the language-deprived subject. This will be related to the patient's awareness of the disorder and the notion of awareness in structuring and using language, considered as the expression of thought. Finally, given that aphasia leads to the loss of employment, patients enter a phase of social vulnerability. Their speech is perceived as strange or even "foreign" by others in ordinary communicative contexts. What solutions can be proposed to overcome this state of vulnerability and exclusion, which is often felt to be insoluble by the patients themselves?