For those of you who collect words, I came across a new one (well, new to me) the other day: anosognosia. It is a neurological term, defined as a condition in which a person who suffers from a disability seems unaware of or denies the existence of his or her disability.
David Dunning, a Cornell professor of social psychology, gives this example: “An anosognosic patient who is paralyzed simply does not know that he is paralyzed. If you put a pencil in front of them and ask them to pick up the pencil in front of their left hand they won’t do it. And you ask them why, and they’ll say, “Well, I’m tired,” or “I don’t need a pencil.” They literally aren’t alerted to their own paralysis. There is some monitoring system on the right side of the brain that has been damaged, as well as the damage that’s related to the paralysis on the left side.”