La contribución de las víctimas al proceso de pacificación

A psychoanalytic interrogation of social responses to disability is centrally concerned with exploring the nature and effects of defence mechanisms, which are utilised in response to the unconscious conflicts often evoked by ideas and images of disability. The need, within the observer, to manage unconscious parts of self which are enlivened by exposure to disability may render distortions in social responses to disabled persons, as external "interventions" are applied in the stilling of internal struggles. In this way, every aspect of the world of societal responses to disabled persons – from legislative frameworks to linguistic conventions, service installations to religious rituals, health care protocols to educational policies – may be understood as, to some extent, a manifest expression of profiles of psychic defence. In this manner, the nature of a community's relating to its disabled population may be understood (or

interpreted) as a reflection of intra-psychic modes of managing the unconscious, anxiety-

ridden subjective "meanings" which disability carries. A range of psychic defence mechanisms – to be examined below – act to maintain psychological and material "distance" between disabled and nondisabled persons, such that the former remain available as projective containers for the unwanted, disavowed parts of self of those members of society self- identifying as "normals" (Marks, 1999a, p. 22).

Within the Kleinian view of early development, intense vulnerability and a chronic sense of threat are key aspects of the infant's world, with severe states of anxiety driving the ego to configure forms of psychic defence in order to find equilibrium (Klein, 1946, p. 292). These experiences of a quite undiluted, psychotic anxiety, and the (typically primitive) defences which coalesce for their management, form an unconscious psychic template which remains the mode of functioning harnessed during periods when anxiety-provoking stimuli cause regression to rudimentary mental states. The nature and reactivity of this psychotic layer of personality is, to a large extent, dependent upon the degree to which the extreme vulnerability and fear characteristic of the predicament of infancy was tolerated and responded to in an

attuned manner by care-givers. Of course, no parenting is perfectly attuned, and experiences of misattunement are essential if separation is to proceed. But it is the extent, the flavour and intensity, of experiences of infantile abandonment – of unmet primitive dependency needs – which will inform the rigidity of defences employed, and the permeability of psychic splits. Michael Rustin (1991, p. 62) writes how racial prejudices are often suffused with emotion, such that the meanings construed regarding social reality are profoundly mediated by the psychotic defences attendant upon the base conflicts surrounding self and other which race reflects. For Rustin (1991), the simplicities of thoughts wrought within psychotic states of mind fit all too well with the stark "truths" of racial bigotry, thus rendering psychic discharge at the cost of the dehumanisation of others. The intense affect often associated with racial prejudice, of course, has its source elsewhere; a place which could only be revealed to consciousness at the cost of overwhelmingly intense feelings such as shame and terror. Our task, likewise, is to trace the unconscious roots of, in the words of Marks (1999a, p. 22), the excessive levels of kindly, fearful or sadistic emotional energy evoked by disability.

Splitting

This is a primitive defence mechanism whereby an individual avoids the anxiety-provoking ambiguity of a complex world by, instead, endowing individuals or things with "all good" or "all bad", unidimensional qualities (Marks, 1999a, p. 22). This need to divide the world into binary dualities reflects the infant's inability to tolerate his or her aggressive instincts, which must thus be projected into the world – the mother. What is rendered is a maternal figure that is split into good and evil; an idealised "good breast", and a denigrated, hateful "bad breast" (Klein, 1946, p. 293; 1960; Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983). The escape from the fearful, creeping contamination of dangerously ambivalent feelings via the strategy of splitting carries a particular salience for disability. Disablement, by its nature, is evocative of fantasies of inability, brokenness, dependency and loss of control; importantly, the degree of these fantasied states tends to remain uncertain and ambiguous to the observer. For example, when meeting a sight impaired individual, the observer's incipient fantasies regarding life without the environmental command afforded by sight, tend to be exacerbated by an inherent ambiguity regarding the "extent" of impairment. In the face of welling anxieties evoked by our imagining of a life without sight, there emerges a fraught need to gain some form of control via a sense of "knowing" the extent – the "reality" – of the danger. This situation is very closely analogous to that of the anxious infant, who consequently resolves her chaotic world into black and white. For disabled persons, this situation renders the familiar, split

stereotypes of the "useless invalid", and the "superhuman" disabled person, who, in the observer's desperate fantasy, can do "anything". In being forced, through the observer's regression to the use of psychotic defences, into this binary, disabled persons may remain unseen as complex, nuanced individuals, instead carrying wholesale idealisation or denigration. At the edges of consciousness, anxieties evoked by contact with disability may take the form of threatening echoes of dependency, in combination with the fear of becoming impaired, and guilt over experiencing oneself as "able-bodied" (Murphy, 1995, p. 143). Of course, part of the splitting process is that between observer and observed, between nondisabled and disabled, serving to reconstruct an illusory and essentialist notion of disability as a bounded and qualitative characteristic.

Idealisation, as one consequence of splitting, is rendered as a defence against persecutory anxiety, which is based upon unmanageable guilt regarding feelings of hostility (Klein, 1960, p. 274). The picture of the idealised disabled person is a culturally familiar one, typically involving, for example, "heart-warming" accounts of plucky and steadfast resilience in the face of adversity, as well as the attribution of a range of other excessive, unreal, and overly positive characteristics. What this often reflects is an inability within the observer to make mental space available for considering the experience of the individual before him or her, due to the constricting, disquieting threat of imminent, infantile and subjectively malevolent fantasies regarding the intolerable nature of perceived struggle. Klein's (1960, p. 274) reference to echoes of guilt over hostile feelings also seems salient here, framing idealisation of the disabled person as a defensive response to repressed sadism directed at the shameful, disavowed dependency which he or she carries. The history of brutal oppression, forced sterilisation and eugenic extermination suffered by disabled persons provides disturbing evidence of the voracity of this idea. Disabled persons falling on the other side of the split may function as projective containers for a broken, inert and unwanted aspect of the self; helpless and inadequate, and deserving of abandonment. Needless to say, where such a rudimentary, defended repertoire for perceiving disabled persons obtains, empathically accurate relating, and its corollary, an experience of being seen and known, is rendered all but impossible. Foster (2001, p. 81) describes how work with populations perceived as

vulnerable repeatedly draws social service workers back into a mode of relating characterised by splitting, where typically guilt- and hostility-ridden conflicts constrict mental space, and disallow authentic communication. The interesting point here pertains to the truism that it is not the nature of feelings which distorts or corrupts relationships, but rather the extent to which feelings are tolerable to consciousness; this principle is central to many of the propositions of the current work.

To give life to the notion of the idealised disabled person, I have elsewhere employed the following example (see Watermeyer, 2006, p. 37-8): In the film Scent of a Woman (Universal Studios, 1992), Al Pacino plays an embittered and isolated blind man, who, despite his "limitations", undertakes a range of breathtaking feats, which include dancing a dramatic tango after simply enquiring about the dimensions of the dance floor, and driving a sports car at breakneck speed under the instructions of a terrified and unwilling navigator. Here, the blind person is represented at both extremes of a split concept of what disablement implies. The first of these positions portrays Pacino's character as the stereotype of an emotionally damaged and isolated disabled person, whose impairment has stunted and distorted his social self. This image, arguably, embodies a reflection of fantasies – held by the screenplay writer, and echoed by societal stereotypes – of "how I would feel if I did not have sight". These fantasies are then employed as the basis for a unidimensional, broken character. The "coping" afforded here by the splitting defence refers to the observer who, in the face of threatening fears about what a blind person's life may (in fantasy) be like, achieves some sense of mastery and control by "deciding" that the blind person's life is, in fact, the way it is fearfully imagined to be.

Conversely though, Al Pacino's ability to perform the antics that he does in Scent of a Woman may reflect a need within the observer to overcome the fear that, due to his blindness, he is in fact utterly restricted, desolate, and capable of nothing. Thus, what we see may be a response to a more basic attribution, where the observer has originally disowned and given over feelings of deep inadequacy and incapability evoked in response to the idea of living with blindness, and thereafter has managed these feelings by a form of reversal, which presents the need to portray the blind person as heroic and unusually (implausibly) capable. In some sense, therefore, Pacino's character has been shaped in a manner which allows the observer to feel reassured that his life is not the unmitigated tragedy which we fear, and know, it to be. Distorted constructions such as the foregoing may preclude the perceiving of disabled lives as

carrying the characteristic complexity of "normality"; including strengths and vulnerabilities, hopes and losses, competence and inadequacy. The marked inability of Hollywood to present disabled film characters as normatively complex individuals, muddling through life's challenges with success and failure, hope and disappointment, has been well documented (e.g. Norden, 1994).

Projection

This defence forms perhaps the primary explanation of how unwanted feelings and parts of self may come to be attributed to external objects. For Marks (1999a, p. 23), the concept embodies a "key tool for understanding the psychic mechanisms of prejudice against disabled people". Klein (1960, p. 273) explains how the child feels him or herself to "be bad", and thereafter escapes from the ensuing guilt by coming to regard the "badness" as being a characteristic of others. This, of course, tends to reinforce persecutory anxieties (ibid.), as the boundaries of the psyche rigidify in order to "hold out" the increasing, threatening weight of disavowed psychic matter. Haunting guilt also plays about the psychic shadows, arising from hostile feelings directed at the denigrated other, as well, perhaps, as an awareness of the inauthentic, victimising sleight of hand of the psychic transaction. A scenario called to mind by these thoughts is that of a family system which includes a disabled sibling. Relational dynamics often emerge within such families which serve to reify and concretise splits between the "neediness" or "vulnerability" of the disabled child, and the converse "independence" and "strength" of her nondisabled fellows. Parental anxiety regarding the ability to cope of the disabled child, impacting as it often does upon appropriate separation, may introduce dynamics of splitting which are internalised by each child, rendering the projection of neediness, incapability and emotional frailty into the disabled child, with other siblings inadvertently coming to be seen as comparatively infallible. Guilt, relating to feeling like an undeserving "survivor", may compound such splitting and projection. Within broader society, however, group-based projection, via the mechanisms of insistent mass media representations of disabled persons as broken, damaged unfortunates, continue to reinforce the position of disabled persons as "dustbins for disavowal" (Shakespeare, 1994, p. 287). In this manner, citizens are afforded the opportunity to reaffirm membership of the "normal" class, whilst simultaneously deflecting the internal encroachment of the death instinct (Klein, 1946, p. 298).

Within feminist and post-colonial discourse, the deconstructionist project of investigating how group-identity splits are created and perpetuated, has often embraced a psychoanalytic (in particular, Lacanian) view of the construction of subjectivity (Burman, 1996, p. 138). Within this view, the sentient self coalesces via processes of differentiation from social "others" (ibid.), whose negative characterisation reaffirms the ostensible positive distinctiveness of the subject. As in the case of disabled persons, it is that "Other" who is consequently forced to "carry the burden of difference, the excess, the surplus that will not fit" (ibid.). The model of identity being propounded here is a determinedly post-structuralist one, which leaves no room whatsoever for the "realness" of (projected) aspects of self; indeed, Burman (1996, p. 138) expressly refers to the "fantasy" of a prior time of "unity and completeness", which, in fact, never existed. Whilst not endorsing the notion of an era of psychic or social unity, my position is one which does allow for a residue of materiality within the crossfire of identity fragments. That is, the "reality" – and, the universality – of split off, shame- and anxiety-ridden aspects of self, ever-present by virtue of the drama of infancy. There is, in short, reality to that layer of our shared human condition which we struggle to acknowledge. Frosh's (2006, p. 261) model of the psychic nature of racism fits well with this schema; he writes:

The process of racist ideation is therefore one in which unwanted or feared aspects of the self are experienced as having the power to disturb the personality in so damaging a way that they have to be repudiated and evacuated or projected into the racialised other, chosen for this purpose both because of pre-existing social prejudices and because, as a fantasy category, racial 'otherness' can be employed to mean virtually anything.

(Frosh, 2006, p. 261-2)

Similarly, disabled people in modern society embody a docile and largely voiceless minority, featuring bodily "damage" all too readily utilisable in the business of "rationally" affirming the voracity of ascribed brokenness and inadequacy. The hegemonic value system which constructs health and vigour as moral virtues, further cements the position of disabled persons as deserved exiles of mainstream social life (Wendell, 1997, p. 269).

In a prior section, we saw how the earlier legacy of psychoanalytic theorising on disability was fiercely criticised, primarily for its failure to recognise the significance of social factors in mediating the psychological impact of impairment. However, I believe that the wholesale scuppering of this body of work, as would be advocated by social model writers and others, might embody a grave case of the baby being disposed of with the bathwater. To demonstrate, amongst many authors vilified within disability studies (e.g. Lenny, 1993; Goodley & Lawthom, 2006b) were Thomas & Siller (1999), whose work may here be called upon in support of a critical, socially situated and emancipatory psychoanalytic view. Siller (1970) found that fear of rejection amongst nondisabled persons functioned as a meaningful predictor of unwillingness to associate with disabled persons (Siller, 1970 cited in Thomas & Siller, 1999, p. 183). In other words, what was demonstrated is that the ostracisation of disabled persons bears direct correlation to anxieties regarding acceptability within members of the broader populace. Other researchers cited by Thomas and Siller (Siller et al., 1967; 1995), found that the expectations which nondisabled subjects carried regarding impaired people's emotional response to their disablement, corresponded closely with the profile of internal psychological struggles which each subject manifested. The idea that disablement would, for example, lead to depression or anger, thus embodied a "direct projection of one's own unconscious fears" (ibid., p. 185). Furthermore, these expectations could be related to fears regarding specific forms of impairment. They write:

For example, a woman with intense communication problems expressed greatest fear, if disabled, of being deaf. Paralysis was a particular issue with those showing dependency fears. Cerebral palsy posed a great threat to those for whom control is critical, with physical uncontrol objectifying emotional uncontrol.

(Siller et al., 1967 cited in Thomas & Siller, 1999, p. 185)

Thus it is that the system of meanings within which disability is culturally perceived is

directly related to defensive needs for projection held by the community at large. Examples

of such projections were also identified by Emry and Wiseman (1987); these workers found that disabled persons were "expected" to be socially introverted, psychologically unstable, depressed, hypersensitive, and easily offended (Emry & Wiseman, 1987 cited in Fox & Giles, 1996, p. 266). The essence of the predicament of disabled persons is that which besets all members of oppressed minorities – to have one's abilities, one's character, and oneself, defined from without. Kriegel (1987), in critically analysing representations of "the cripple" in English literature, concludes that, while others cry "I am what I am", disabled people are coerced to submit to the cries of others, saying, instead, "I am what you tell me I am"

(Kriegel, 1987, p. 33 – my emphasis). Only by such submission, according to Kriegel, may disabled people secure a deeply conditional place within the society of "normals" (Kriegel, 1987, p. 33; Barnes & Mercer, 2001, p. 518). Although working from a non-psychoanalytic viewpoint, Hunt (1998, p. 9) describes, in essence, how the nondisabled majority seems invested in maintaining disabled persons as ready, fitting receptacles for projection. He notes how the observer betrays a subtle need for disabled people to show evidence of suffering, in order that the privilege and standing he or she is afforded by nondisabled status be reaffirmed as worthy and valuable (ibid.). If the low-status individual – in this case, a disabled person – shows no sign of misery with his lowliness, this may present an awkward challenge to narcissistic assurances which turn upon a fulcrum of positively distinctive identity. In this manner, all may unconsciously carry a "personal investment" in the convincing perpetuation of the "disability imago".

Taking this analysis one step further: Frosh (1989, p. 237) argues that in the case of racism – like disability – unwanted aspects of the self are projected outward, to then be attacked by the selves that would disavow them. But in association with this projection, the denigrated group is also stereotyped in fantasy as possessing idealised features or privileges. The rejected group is loathed for these "special" qualities, which the "oppressor", with eviscerating scorn, attempts to pulverize (ibid.). What seems closely mirrored here in the disability arena is the familiar, often hateful stereotyping of disabled people as "freeloaders", who have "special privileges" and live lives of passive, gluttonous dependency on the balance of society. Intermingled with these more manifest envies, may be subtle echoes of resentment at the disabled individual's perceived licentious permission for dependency; simultaneously despised, and unconsciously desired. Disabled people, in this "receptive dependent space", may in fantasy be viewed as occupying a mythic, warm and idealised, nurturant and perfectly attuned, intimate environment; the perfect, wished-for maternal dyad. These suggested psychic underpinnings may form an important psychological context for, inter alia, the various forms of abuse and hate crime perpetrated upon the disabled population – aggressive acts which, by their nature, will serve only to enliven and escalate the paranoid ideation which propels them (Zizek, 1994, p. 78). The entire system of images and projections, further, is consistently re-invigorated and confirmed by the demeaning, sympathy-inducing imagery of the disability charity industry (Hevey, 1992, p. 140). Since we are, by definition, disquieted