Dialogues sur le handicap

Disability Dialogues: Advocacy, Science, and Prestige in Postwar Clinical Professions

 Andrew J. Hogan

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Johns Hopkins University Press; 1st edition (November 29, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1421445336
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1421445335

Disability activism has fundamentally changed American society for the better―and along with it, the views and practices of many clinical professionals. After 1945, disability self-advocates and family advocates pushed for the inclusion of more positive, inclusive, and sociopolitical perspectives on disability in clinical research, training, and practice. In Disability Dialogues, Andrew J. Hogan highlights the contributions of disabled people―along with their family members and other allies―in changing clinical understandings and approaches to disability.

Hogan examines the evolving medical, social, and political engagement of three postwar professions―clinical psychology, pediatrics, and genetic counseling―with disability and disability-related advocacy. Professionals in these fields historically resisted adopting a more inclusive and accepting perspective on people with disabilities primarily due to concerns about professional role, identity, and prestige. In response to the work of disability activists, however, these attitudes gradually began to change.

Disability Dialogues provides an important contribution to historical, sociological, and bioethical accounts of disability and clinical professionalization. Moving beyond advocacy alone, Hogan makes the case for why present-day clinical professional fields need to better recruit and support disabled practitioners. Disabled clinicians are uniquely positioned to combine biomedical expertise with their lived experiences of disability and encourage greater tolerance for disabilities among their colleagues, students, and institutions.