Tom,
I enjoyed your recent posting.....
Tom Steg wrote:
I have found that psychotherapy has very little to offer when it comes to social problems of physical
disability or physical difference so to speak. At least in Germany there is virtually no literature refering to
psychotherapy and physical disability. The only literature specific to this matter is of descriptive nature
mostly describing the problems of social interaction when you have a disability.
Does anyone know about proven methods that can assist people with
physical disabilities/differences
improve their social interaction skills and subsequently their emotional
and psychosocial well-being?
Tom, in Britain, the BAC British Association for Counselling has the following definition of counselling -
...' The purpose of counselling is to provide the client with an opportunity to explore, discover and clarify ways of living resourcefully and towards better well being'.....
I sense that like the phenomenon of 'love','disability' cannot easily be understood in terms of measurement, outcome or whatever rigourous statistical instrument the 'scientist practitioners' conjure up to measure behaviours. Disability, to me, is a uniq
ue experience for each individual and as such has to be understood contextually and not in general terms. The problem with psychological theories is that they are retrospectively constituted from generalised information and therefore not in context.
In the name of objectivity, the individual experience is sacrificed for the general knowledge which presents itself as theory.
If society pretends that disability does not exist then there is little need to generalise a theory nor is there a need to develop a counselling or psychotherapeutic process to accomodate such a need (that doesn't exist).
There are therapists who consider disability more empathically and positively (the potentiality model) as opposed to positivistically (the deficit model), but I don't know of any one theory in particular which devotes itself to disability. Perhaps the so
oner the theorists realise that it is not just the client who needs to change but also the attitudes of society, then we might get a theory which understands individuality....not just the status quo versioion of what individuality is forced to be.....in
the case of disability, oppressed, excluded and marginalised.
regards,
Joseph.
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