Refocusing on the Whole Person

Abstract

A recent article on metaphors and persons with disabilities provides the focus for this last chapter of Section II. In the article, the author (Sumarah, 1989) discusses three metaphors that help us understand peoples’ conceptions of others and themselves. In the organic metaphor human infants are perceived as animal organisms who, in the process of growing up, become rational and acquire a human personality. According to this first metapor, however, if people do not become more rational in their developmental years, they remain similar to animals or things. In the second, or mechanical metaphor, a person is conceived as a machine, the interrelated parts of which should conceivably be understandable and adjustable. The third, or personal metaphor, provides an image and understanding of persons not as animals or machines, but as evolving, thinking, feeling, and social beings. Applying this sequence of metaphors of people to adults with disabilities, one finds that unfortunately these persons have frequently suffered not so much from intellectual and physical disabilities as from the consequences of inappropriate and damaging metaphors. Thus, our purpose and goal for this chapter is to focus on and appreciate the person rather than the disability, and view the adult with disabilities as a person first.