Reactions to Physical Handicap

Abstract

Physical handicap, especially congenital in origin, threatens our sense of security and raises in us distinct feelings of anxiety. We naturally tend to screen out disturbing stimuli. Visible physical handicap however is not so easy to screen out. In its more extreme forms it affronts our feelings of wholeness. To be brought face to face with physical handicap therefore causes us to want to escape the situation altogether or to dissipate in some way the embarrassment engendered. Our escape takes several forms. We may become over-solicitous for the person confronting us. We may shift attention away by focusing on anything irrelevant. We may become ‘moral’ about disabilty, holding implicit attitudes about the value of suffering. All these evasions provoked by our own attempts to handle our own anxiety make us adopt a ‘false consciousness’ or ‘bad faith’. Bad faith is trying to hide from oneself an unpleasant truth or trying to present as true some pleasing untruth. All children are vulnerable to the ‘bad faith’ practices of adults and these communicate themselves effectively to children. Laing¹ writes ‘Other people become a sort of identity kit, whereby one can piece together a picture of oneself’. Questions about who one is are answered for the child by asking others. But these questions are mostly asked implicitly by acting in particular ways and finding out what happens to other people when one does.