Towards a contextual psychology of disablism

"In recent years, disability studies has been driven by a social model of disability, focusing on the social and economic oppression of disabled people. Although an important counterbalance to a pathologising medical model, the social model risks presenting an impoverishing and disembodied view of disability, one that ignores the psychological nature of oppression and its effects.This innovative work argues that a psychological framework of disability is an essential part of developing a more cohesive disability movement and develops bi-directional conceptual links between culture and disabled subjectivity through the mechanisms of lifelong socialization. It is designed to explore individual psychological experience, whilst retaining a rigorous critique of social forces of oppression; and to avoid the pathologisation of disadvantaged individuals, whilst exploring the psychological processes and impressions of discriminatory society. Drawing on sociology, social anthropology, psychology and psychoanalysis as well as clinical material from his own practice, Brian Watermeyer shapes a view of disabled subjectivity which is embodied, internal, and political. Presenting a range of concep