Full Description
This publication brings together eleven articles on the clinical treatment of disability from French researchers in the fields of psychology, anthropology, psychiatry, and philosophy. The authors all have practical experience in the field and most are clinicians sharing a common psychoanalytical epistemology.The diverse nature of their contributions opens a window onto the mental life of people affected by various deficiencies, be they cognitive, motor, sensory or even multiple, and of those close to them, at all ages.The work provides English-speaking readers with an insight into the way French authors raise the relevant issues, elaborate theories relating to clinical disability management and implement innovative practices.Each of the authors develops an original approach, affording recognition to the subjectivity and intersubjectivity of the disabled person and those dear to them, intimating that the disability (as with all human experience) is all about the relation existing between the person concerned and their life story, and also their relations with others - with the society and culture in which the condition emerges and evolves throughout life.
Contents
Introduction -- Virility, masculine identity, and disability -- The traumatic effects of encountering disability: the bond and psychic transmission put to the test -- Cultural interpretation of disability -- Prediction, disability, and genetics -- The psychoanalytical approach to disability -- The normality of the abnormal: disability, norms, and normality -- The enigma of disability: talking about it with children, listening to them, letting them talk to each other -- Bodies lost and bodies gained: the major periods in the history of disability -- Prenatal diagnosis and handicap -- Your child is a vegetable! Ethical requirements for all clinical practices in dealing with severe disability -- Adolescence: psychic process or a mere stage in biology?
