You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
LEARNING DISABILITIES ARE GENERALLY considered issues for children as they go through school. Yet their effect continues into adulthood in a person's cognitive style, use of defenses, interpersonal relations, character, self-image, and career development. With a few exceptions (Bellak, 1979) ; (Gardner, 1980), the study of the impact of learning disabilities on personality has been extended beyond childhood and adolescence only in the last ten years. Recent analyses of learning problems among young adults in college (Cohen, 1983), patients with personality disorders (Dorr, 1990), and adult dyslexics (Migden, 1990) all confirm the lasting effects on personality of learning disability into adulthood. This article examines these effects on adult character, defensive style, and relationship patterns.
The term "learning disability" may be a misnomer for adults who are no longer formally learning in school settings. What are called learning disabilities in childhood often become for adults difficulties in exercising higher cognitive capacities—in intentional problem-solving, in language, or in the purposeful use of symbolic or material tools. These difficulties arise from inefficiencies in the auditory or visual taking in of information (despite intact auditory and visual acuity); in reflecting upon, conceiving of, remembering, and organizing this information cognitively;