A Relational Model of Disability

Abstract

This chapter introduces the ‘object relations construct of disability’, or the ‘relational model’ for short. A model or construct is a representation of the whole or a part of a solid or abstract structure. The three main models of disability identified in disability studies are the medical model, the social model and the analytical model. The experience of disability and the variety of attitudes towards it are complex, and each of the disability models covers only part of this complexity: the medical model focuses on the body and its functions; the social model focuses on the interactions between disabled people as a minority group and the environment inhabited by the non-disabled majority; and the analytical model is concerned with the internal experience of disability. The relational model, which follows on from the analytical model, adds the missing element: the struggle through the developmental process towards interaction with the external world. We shall begin by considering the oldest and, I believe, most influential model.