Individuals: De-psychologising Disability

1
Studies
Exploring the possibility of intersections of
Psychology & Disability
2 • It annoys me when able-bodied people hold forth about how we
should be as independent as possible. Of course we should but I’d like
to hear some talk about the able-bodied being a bit more independent
too – how many of them cut their own hair for goodness sake? (Elsa,
in Campling, 1981)
• Whether it is the ‘species typical body’ (in science), the ‘normative
citizen’ (in political theory), the ‘reasonable man’ (in law), all these
signifiers point to a fabrication that reaches into the very soul that
sweeps us into life. (Campbell, 2009)
• The ‘self-made man’ is a fitting metaphor for the right, & ‘good things
happen to good people’ a fitting motto. (Bratlinger, 2001)

What do these statements say about the kind of

individual valued by contemporary society?
3 • Oliver (1990, 1996): Individualisation is at the very centre
of disablement.
• Michalko (2002): the problem of disability is firmly tied to the
constitution of idealised individuals & their monstrous
alternatives.
• A crucial element of individualisation is the process of
psychologisation. This is not the same as psychology. There
are, of course, psychological practices with dodgy histories in
their treatment of disabled people (though the same can be
said of any human & social sciences of disabling societies).
• Psychologisation is a process that is testimony to certain
aporias – contradictory assumptions approaches, prejudices &
abuses – that emerged from the mapping of the individual by
social & human sciences, institutions & nation states (Hardt &
Negri, 2000).
 4 Deconstructing ‘psychology’s individual
 deconstruct ‘psychology’s individual’, to contest the
‘error-laden notion of the individual as whole, complete,
perfect & self-sustaining’

Self-contained
Average individuals Cognitivism Solitary souls
individualism

Developmentalism Normalisation Psychologisation

 Average individuals
 Davis (1995) provides an account of the interlinking of
5 ‘norming’, statistical analysis, eugenics & evolutionary social
Darwinist theories of Karl Pearson & Francis Galton in late
nineteenth- & early twentieth-century thought. In these
practices we can find the roots of normalcy.
 The ‘normal individual’ (& its counterpart the ‘feebleminded,
parasitic & morally questionable’) is part of the history of
modernist progress, industrialisation & the ideological
consolidation of the power of the bourgeois. ‘An able body’, he
argues, ‘is the body of a citizen’. By contrast, ‘deformed,
deafened, amputated, obese, female, perverse, crippled, maimed
& blinded bodies do not make up the body politic’ (Davis, 1995).
 Psychological understandings of human development came to
view the norm-as-average-as-natural.

What shall we do now you are disabled?

We shall cure you.
How shall you live when our cure fails & you are now permanently disabled?
You shall adjust.
 Self-contained individualism
6
 The core conception of psychology’s subject, the unitary rational subject, is the
sovereign self of modern individualism Psychology has long held implicit
assumptions (that are then made explicit) about the individual, & conversely, what
is required to be an individual.
 The accepted individual, to whom many of us are expected to mirror, is adult, male,
middle-class, heterosexual, rule-abiding, sane, non-disabled & European. The
converse – the Other – is the unacceptable: child, female, working-class,
homosexual, criminal, insane, disabled, & resolutely non-European.
 Sampson (1977) describes our cultural ethos as the era of the self-contained
individual. This idealised form of personhood refers to a private, egocentric, self-
sufficient, independent, agentic, cultural paragon who has little need for others, is
antithetical to the notion of interdependence & mutuality, is inherently masculine &
suitably (com)pliant to educational, workplace & industrial management.
 This ideal becomes psychology’s big ‘discovery’ & the preferred ontological destiny
for all persons.
 we fly in the face of society’s emphasis on being in control of one’s self
(Shutleworth, 2000)
7
Cognitivism
fit for purpose for psychology’s quest for status as a functionalist science
 The individual-as-cognitively-(dis)abled was rapidly embraced by psychology to
categorise short- & long-term memory, assess problem solving, & measure levels
of mental processing & conscious decision-making.
 Cognitivism gave a scientific language to the civilised notion of the homunculus
– ‘little man’ in Latin – that is assumed to reside in each & every individual,
giving them ‘intelligence’, ‘awareness’ & ‘abilities’ (Thomas & Loxley, 2001).
 Applied to human beings, cognitivism & positivism, enlivens cognition but rarely
touches feelings & often renders anonymous the very people it studies (Turner,
2008).
 When one holds that the primary ingredients of the mind are cognitive, this
opens some doors but shuts others (Gergen, 2001).
 Cognitivism can be viewed as a hyper-reasoned, conscious & reasonable
conceptualisation of the individual against which all individuals are universally
marked & judged. It is a symptom of the modernist Cartesian distinction of the
inner world of the mind & the external world of the social.
Potts & Fido (1991)
Solitary souls
in their account
8 of  Cognitivism’s self-contained subject required a place in which it could be manipulated,
the experiences of controlled & measured. The experimental laboratory provided such a space (Gergen, 2001).
institutionalised
adults with the label  The individual became an ever more atomistic, solitary & isolated soul, a subject of
scientific study that contrasted hugely with the unruly individual outside the laboratory in
of learning
the ‘real world’ (Harré, 1984; Parker & Shotter, 1990).
difficulties:
Side by side with  Le Bon’s (1896) conceptualisation of the ‘horror of the crowd’ infected social
this painful psychologists’ understandings of the individual’s relationship with others: the mindless
awareness we have entity of the group inflicted anarchy on the normally mild-mannered, self-contained world
also become of the individual. Relationality was considered to be a risk to the atomistic being rather
sensitive to their than a condition of being human.
humour, resilience  Sibley (2003): ‘Psychotic individualism: the drawing of strong subject boundaries around
& determination. particular individual human entities devoid of any recourse to social or cultural
Far from accepting formations’. Strange things happen when the complexity of the individual is lost.
their lot in life, they  Ryan & Thomas (1987) state, ‘the desire of mentally handicapped people themselves for a
recognise its more normal life as part of society … [is] a desire that is insufficiently heard but nonetheless
injustices & have there to be listened to’.
eagerly grasped the
opportunity to give  Such conclusions might seem so obvious: of course people (with intellectual disabilities)
their views. know what they want from life! However, the omnipresence of atomistic views might
explain why social researchers have found it hard to listen to the accounts of ‘deficient
individuals’, because these individuals have been rendered asocial solitary beings.
 Developmentalism
9
 The child is measured to ensure ‘normal’ development. When ‘abnormal’ or ‘pathological’
development is observed, they are classified & corrected.
 Walkerdine (1993): Developmental psychology as one of the ‘grand meta-narratives of
science’; a story where the central character is the individual child but the story is grand,
totalising & the story of children’s development is made testable. The ‘developing child’ is not
a description of a ‘real’ entity, but a powerful discursive prescription written on to by a host of
expectations such as ‘meeting targets’, ‘age-appropriate behaviour’ & marks of deficiency
including ‘educational subnormality’, ‘special educational needs’ & ‘below average
intelligence’ (Goodley & Runswick-Cole, 2010).
 Burman (2008): children are understood through the application of developmentalist theories
which promise universal progress of emotionality (self-containment), intelligence
(cognitivism), independence (mastery) & rationality (reason) that meets an end point of
normality (average man) or higher (high functioning man).
 Woollet & Marshall (1997): While psychologies promoted their stage theories of universal
development, in actuality these ideas were based on limited samples of people (normally
white, middle-class & American subjects) for which independence, achievement & academic
attainment were seen as the central tasks of development for all children & adolescence.
10
Normalisation
 Key to the makings of the developing individual is the process of normalisation.
 A normalised individual is a confessional individual who is all too ready & willing to share their
innermost thoughts & worries, not just with professional counsellors & therapists, but also in a public
context that demands it. An individual wants to be normal (Parker et al., 1995).
 Today’s individual is tied to the humanist myth of fullness & bliss, of abstract individualism,
‘an ultimate self untied at last from dependency, a man in space’ (Haraway, 1991). This myth
promotes psychological interventions to cure mental illness, improve education, reduce crime,
stamp out prejudice & create fulfilling lives (Gergen, 2001).
 Disabled people have been subjected to a number of questionable interventions in the name of
these aims.
 When psychologists draw unproblematically on long-established indexes (personality traits, attitude
types, social cognitions) of people’s inner worlds (emotions & cognitions), they deem some individuals
more rational & worthy of social position & wealth than others (Gergen, 2001).
 A popular signifier of psychology is therapy. For disabled people, therapy equates with oppression.
Reeve’s (2004) critique of counselling in the lives of disabled people notes a tendency for loss models to
dominate the therapeutic context – both therapy room & training literature – with the associated aim
of ‘adjustment’ quickly following behind. She observes that when disabled people do seek counseling,
this is automatically assumed to be because they are seeking to deal with the loss of wholeness that
accompanies being impaired. They want to be normalised.
 Psychologisation
11
 Components of the individual describe above capture the practices of
psychologisation (Goodley & Lawthom, 2005)
 Psychologisation reduces social problems to the level of the individual (Wright
Mills, 1970) & therefore has the potential to be:
 individualistic – the scientific study of mind & behaviour;
 bourgeois – ideas of the majority (& ruling) are exercised over the minority
 apolitical – changing individuals rather than society (Masson, 1989);
 professional-led – experts over the lay;
 pseudo-scientific – an emphasis on science & a poor version of it at that;
 normalising – concerned with individuals adjusting to their impairment;
 oppressive – disabled people are mere subjects of psychology’s individualising practices.
 Psychologisation & its product – preferred individual – maintain the disabling
status quo. This has huge implications for the ‘disabled individual’.
 Disability & the dominant alterity
12  A key site of the oppression of disabled people pertains to those moments when they are
judged to fail to match up to the ideal individual; when they are categorised as embodying
the failing individual.
 Mintz (2002): social discourses about disability are not about disability at all. Rather they
relate to the need to guarantee the privileged status of the non-disabled individual, ‘a need
that, in turn, emerges from fears about the fragility & unpredictability of embodied
identities’.
 Marks (1999): disabled people constitute a huge problem for non-disabled society precisely
because they disrupt the normative individual.
 The person that dribbles disrupts a culture that emphasises bodily control & associated cultural
norms around manners, convention & bodily comportment.
 An individual whose speech is difficult to understand is assumed to have a problem because they
challenge a colonising stance of certainty about how people should speak.
 People who do not walk are understood as tragic because they do not embody the idealised
mobility of the autonomous walker (Oliver, 1993).
 People with learning difficulties, who fail to meet developmentalist stages, are discarded from
mainstream educational systems because of their lack of fit with educational prerogatives.
 Individuals who depend on – or require connections with – others to live are not
individuals at all. They are burdens. The disabled individual queers & crips the normative
pitch of the autonomous citizen.
 Alterity
 The non-disabled alterity – the Other to disabled people – may be experienced as a
13
threatening place. In recent years, there have been sustained analyses of otherness
& the standards against which individuals are expected to judge themselves. So,
what is alterity for disabled people?
 Suffice to say, just as ‘alterity for the black man is the white man’ (Fanon, 1993);
alterity for the disabled person is the non-disabled.
 Disabled people constitute a heterogeneous group within which there will be
multifarious dealings with the world.
 Disabled men will have fundamentally different engagements with patriarchy from
disabled women.
 Disabled high flyers demonstrate successfully meeting the standards of the Other (Shah,
2005).
 Moreover, these standards give rise to human diversity & different kinds of
individuals. Alterity can be actively fashioned for the benefit of the individual. Yet all
of these forms of the non-disabled Other generate versions of the individual against
which we all judge ourselves.
 Alterity
14 Alterity illuminates powerful regimes of truth.
Ableist society (Campbell, 2009)
Fanon (1993) Disability studies scholars need to shift their gaze from what she ironically
reflects on the terms the ‘monstrous other’ (disabled people) to the ‘extraordinary other’ (the
White Other: I abled). She argues that we should concentrate on the production, operation &
begin to suffer from maintenance of ableist-normativity (2008a: 1). In order to make a self (‘the
not being a white
disabled individual’) we require the Other (‘abled individuals’).
man to the degree
that the white man Ableist processes create a corporeal standard, which presumes able-
imposes bodiedness, inaugurates the norm & purifies the ableist ideal:
discrimination on
me, makes me a  Internalised ableism means that to emulate the norm, the disabled individual is
colonised native, required to embrace, indeed to assume, an ‘identity’ other than one’s own. I am
robs me of all my not implying that people have only one true or real essence. Indeed, identity
worth, all formation is in a constant state of fluidity, multiplicity & (re)formation [but] …
individuality, tells the desire to emulate the Other (the norm) establishes & maintains a wide gap
me that I am a between those who are loathed & that which is desired. (Campbell, 2009)
parasite on the
world.
  The alterity knows disabled people in deficient ways.

15  Disabled people are their impairment. They are broken individuals. They lack development.
They cannot do. They do not have the abilities to lead an independent life.
 The dominant Other threatens to create epistemic invalidation: to make disabled people not
know themselves (Wendell, 1996; Marks, 1999).
 When disabled fail to fit the alterity of the ideal individual, they are assigned the position of
monstrous other. When the alterity gets hold of disabled people, it is all too ready to try to
bring them back into the norm (re/habilitate, educate) or banish them (cure, segregate) from its
ghostly centre. Alterity is staffed by individuals whose jobs are to correct monstrous others.
 Both Gallagher (1976) & MacMillan (1977) remind us that many professionals owe their jobs,
many school districts their educational funding & many psychologists their capacity to work, to
the labelling of children & the birth of special & inclusive forms of education. But too often is
these contexts, the dominant Other negates the monstrous other.
 Kennedy (1996) tells of a paediatrician who, on examining a child with ‘hypnotonic spastic
quadriplegia’ (sic), found vaginal injuries, anal scars & a sexually transmitted disease. He
reported: ‘These symptoms could be due to an obscure syndrome.’
 Goodwin (1982) recalls the case of a paediatrician belatedly & reluctantly reporting three boys
who were having sexual intercourse with their sister, who had the label of learning difficulties.
His ‘excuse’ was ‘isn’t it better to save three normal boys than one retarded girl? [sic]’.
  Professional wisdom becomes bound up in the ideals of alterity. The case of a
16 counsellor’s comments to a mother whose disabled son had been sexually abused
was: ‘At least it didn’t happen to one of your non-disabled children.’
 Dominant alterity struggles with any deviation from the norm-as-average, so new
labels emerge each & every week to cope.
 Alterity supports the demarcation of lives to be saved & lives to be sacrificed. As
soon as the ‘the disabled’ act, their embodiment becomes conceptualised through a
symbolic order that cherishes ‘autonomy’ & dispels difference (Michalko, 2002).
 A welcoming hand is offered to enter the non-disabled realm, through the
restoration of the ‘individual’, via therapy, rehabilitation & counselling. The
alterity separates disruptive individuals from productive individuals (Baker, 2002).
It could be argued that the abuse, rejection & marginalisation of disabled people
are symptoms of the ableist Other.
 Precisely because this framework demands logocentric self-contained individuals,
& these valued members are conceptualised in direct opposition to disabled people,
then disabled people become the ciphers of the failures of ableist society: ‘disabled
people lack the oneness, sameness & logocentric autonomy, not I!’