SOME SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF HANDICAPPING

Abstract

HELPING A PERSON with a handicap to maximize his assets and minimize the negative consequences of the handicap has long been the goal of rehabilitation. If we examine the practice of rehabilitation, however, we find that the early emphasis on physical restoration and the maximization of physical function is still dominant. More recently increasing emphasis has been given to minimizing economic dependency through vocational training and placement and, in the case of children, special educational training. Least systematic attention has been paid to the effect of handicapping on a person's social development and the learning of human relations skills. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the research and developing concepts bearing upon some of the social psychological consequences of handicapping. Two major questions exist. The first of these is whether handicapping has a blunting or sensitizing effect on a person. The second—in a sense the converse of the first—is whether the handicapped person develops certain specialized skills in managing his social relationships with the nonhandicapped. By blunting effects of a handicap I mean the impoverishment of the individual's resources for dealing with other people and observing them; by sensitizing I mean the opposite. It has been argued—perhaps particularly on the basis of literary works—that a handicap tends to make a person especially sensitive. Some people believe, for example, that Byron's club foot on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's invalidism may have been partly responsible for their sensitivity as poets. Others have suggested that those who are forced to stand on the sidelines and watch life go by become sensitive as observers because so many of their satisfactions have to be derived vicariously rather than through direct involvement and participation.