Therapists with disabilities: theoretical and clinical issues

Disability as a characteristic of the therapist needs to be addressed for several reasons. First, substantial evidence indicates that people without visible disabilities or physical differences regard persons who diverge from ideals of physical perfection and norms of physical acceptability with a variety of emotions which--at the very least--alter ordinary social interaction. Second, the psychoanalytic literature on therapy with disabled patients and the developmental literature about people with disabilities reinforce the generally negative or ambivalent attitudes about the mental well-being and potential for productivity and intimacy of people with disabilities. As a consequence of both general acculturation and professional training in psychology and psychoanalysis, professionals in charge of admissions have frequently denied competent disabled people the graduate education which is prerequisite to psychoanalytic training and professional employment. Mental health practitioners who make up the training committees of analytic institutes have frequently been reluctant to accept a disabled candidate for psychotherapy or psychoanalytic training. Once trained, many disabled clinicians have faced hurdles in obtaining employment, in advancing within their profession, in being selected as faculty members or supervisors, and even in obtaining referrals from nondisabled colleagues. After briefly describing the literature on attitudes of the nondisabled toward people with physical impairments, we will present the reasons for the reluctance to train disabled people as therapists. We will include material on how disabled people work with their disabilities in the analytic process and will bring in analogies to practitioners who are members of racial or cultural minority groups.