‘The psychopathology of the normals’ Why non-disabled people are so messed

up around disability 

Dan Goodley Inaugural lecture14th March 2013

Thank you

Questions

1.Who are these ‘normals’ or ‘the non-disableds’?

2.What are their ambitions but also their anxieties (and also, what do they look like)?

3.How do they behave around disability and why?

4.How can we treat them?

(1) Who are these ‘normals’ or ‘non-disableds’?

For our purposes, then, ‘the non-disabled’ and ‘the normals’ are chosen over other synonyms such as:

•the able-bodied (Wendell, 1989)•the figure of normalcy (Davis, 1995)•the normate (Garland Thomson, 2005)•the marker of ableist normativity (Campbell, 2009).

The concept of normative order may be fetishized (C. Wright Mills, 1970: 36).

‘The ‘self-made man’ is a fitting metaphor for the right, and ‘good things happen to good people’ a fitting motto’ (Bratlinger, 2001: 4).

The disabled person’s ‘strangeness’ can manifest and symbolize all differences between human beings … for the able-bodied, normal world we are representatives of many of the things they most fear – tragedy, loss, dark and the unknown. Involuntarily , we walk – or more often sit – in the valley of the shadow of death … a deformed and paralysed body attacks everyone’s sense of well-being and invicibility,

(Hunt, 1966:151 - 156)

‘An able body’, Davis argues, ‘is the body of a citizen’. By contrast, ‘deformed, deafened, amputated, obese, female, perverse, crippled, maimed and blinded bodies do not make up the body politic’ (Davis, 1995: 71-72). The statistical average becomes equated with ‘average man’ – ‘L’homme moyen’ of the statistician Quetelet who was working in the 19th Century – typifying the expected and cherished norms of the ruling classes of a given time.

‘normotic illness’ Bollas (1987)

(2) What are the normals’ ambitions but also their anxieties? (and what do they look like?)

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1313

His same and his many others

MMU SYMPOSIUM 1

The same individual is … … and constituted through …

Cognitively, socially and emotionally able and competent

Disabling society (Oliver, 1990; 1996) or ableist society (Campbell, 2008a, 2008b, 2009) 

Biologically and psychologically stable, genetically sound and ontologically responsible

Societies governed by bio and thanatopolitics (Rose, 2001); technology (Lash, 2001), new eugenics and Human Genome Project (Davis, 2002).  

Normal: Sane, autonomous, self-sufficient, reasonable, law abiding and economically viable

Mentalism and sanism (Chamberlin, 1990; Lewis, 2008); normalcy (Davis, 1995), normate culture (Garland-Thomson, 1996; Michalko, 2002), normative mobility (Shuttleworth, 2002), normalising society (Tremain, 2005a); neurotic society (Marks, 1999a; Olkin and Pledger, 2003); meritocracy (Fukushima, 2009); entrepreneurial society (Masschelein and Simons, 2005)

White, heterosexual, male, adult, living in towns, global citizen of WENA

Heteronormativity (Sherry, 2004); occidentalism (Venn, 2001), colonialism (Fanon, 1993); self-contained individualism (Sampson, 1977, 1985, 1988, 1993); patriarchy, malestream and phallocentric society (Hare Mustin and Marecek, 1992); compulsory heterosexuality, masculinity and ablebodiedness (e.g. Rich, 1987; Connell, 2002; McRuer, 2006)

04/18/23

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1920s North American Eugenics Pamphlet

Normals hunt in pairs

Normals hunt in packs

The normal is unfaithful

The normal is unfaithful

The normal is unfaithful

The normal had a mullet

The normal worries about not being normal enough

The normal deals with his own normate failings by finding failure in others

Some normals make a career out of finding failure in others

Some normals make a career out of finding failure in others

Some normals make a career out of finding failure in others

Some normals make a career out of finding failure in others

Many normals have a problem with ways of life unlike their own

Many normal establishments police their borders carefully

Many normal establishments police their borders carefully

Many normal establishments police their borders carefully

Nndr 2011

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Googling ‘normal man’ can offer some nice surprises

(3) How do they behave around disability and why?

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• ESRC project, ‘Does every child matter, post Blair? The interconnections of disabled childhoods’ with Dr Katherine Runswick Cole

• http://www.rihsc.mmu.ac.uk/postblairproject/

• What is it like to grow up as a disabled child in Post-Blair England?

35

Goodley and Lawthom (2005).(eds). Disability and psychology London: Plagrave.  

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McLaughlin, J., Goodley, D., Clavering, E.,

Tregaskis, C. and Fisher, P.

(2008). Families with disabled children: values of enabling care and

social justice. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Goodley (2011). Disability Studies: An interdisciplinary

introduction. London: Sage.

An emailIn October and November 2011 (DISABILITY-RESEARCH@JISCMAIL.AC.UK)   ComradesI am writing a slightly tongue in cheek (as you can tell by the working title) but also, I hope, serious, article exploring non-disabled people’s reaction to disability. I would like to collect stories from list members about non-disabled people’s verbal or other responses to disability that you have witnessed. In writing the article I will be making clear that not all non-disabled people engage in such responses, that many non-disabled people are allies, friends, supporters and parents of disabled people and that we are all marked by differences associated with class, gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, etc. Moreover, of course, what counts as non/disabled is open to debate. However, I do want the article to expose, hopefully explain and also challenge some of the common reactions of non-disabled society to disability.

Data Analysis

Social psychoanalytic disability studies

Contradictions …

Apotemnophobia (fear of persons with amputations)

Scotomaphobia (fear of blindness in visual field)

Psellismophobia (fear of stuttering) (http://phobialist.com/).

The uncanny

Nndr 2011

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disavowal

(1)Intimate invitations

sex

(2) Charitable donations

(3) Ontological invalidation: putting the 'dis' in disability

(4) Disability kitsch and common parlance

(3) Disability kitsch and common parlance

(4) How can we treat them?

Spread the word about disability activism

Therapy for the normals.

Michele DonaldTherapist

Michele Donald

Celebrating our potential to be abnormal

http://www.touretteshero.com/

Celebrating our potential to be abnormal

‘I’m making biscuits out of crack cocaine and marzipan’

Welcome to the gallery. Every picture is inspired by a tic, and each one’s been created by a member of the site.