Rehabilitation, the disciplining of the body, and disability identity: Reflections from psychotherapy with disabled people

Abstract

Background: Recently, attention has been paid to how rehabilitation not only provides medical treatment and instrumental skills but also impacts psychological well-being and identity. We all have psychological structures that discipline the self, enforcing norms internalised during early life and exacting judgments when we fail to ‘make the grade’. In cases of congenital disabilities, rehabilitation interventions may span many years, involving strict programmes of therapy, exercise and self-discipline. These regimes may align with internalised rules in harmful ways, as striving for functional improvements takes on a moral dimension, affecting psychological health and empowered disability identities.

Objectives: This study explores rehabilitation by examining the experiences of adults with congenital disabilities, who have undergone childhood medical and rehabilitative interventions.

Method: This study was based on the experience of a psychoanalytic psychotherapist working with adults with disability, and presents composite case material to illustrate how interactions with medical authority figures, such as rehabilitation professionals, can have a formative influence on self-identity and entitlement to inclusion.

Results: The findings vividly reflected how ‘medical socialisation’ created meanings of disability that were enacted and repeated well into adulthood.

Conclusion: The discipline of rehabilitation still has much to do in examining its value-laden assumptions and practices, and how these may shape the internal and relational worlds of people with disability.

Contribution: This article contributes to the debate in critical rehabilitation studies, focussing on the issue of constructions of disability which may be communicated to people with disability, with implications for self-advocacy and the growth of the disability movement.