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Neither Victim nor Superhero: Reflections on Disability and Mental Health Counseling

New Narratives of Disability

ISBN: 978-1-83909-144-5, eISBN: 978-1-83909-143-8

Publication date: 25 November 2019

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter highlights the complexity of the lived experience of disability through a personal narrative about navigating multiple, often conflicting, identities.

Methods/Approach/Findings

After briefly summarizing the understandings of scholars who maintain that narratives are the primary way in which people establish the identities of self and others, I focus on my story. Although an individual with a disability, scenes from my life demonstrate how I am neither the victim nor the superhero character so common in socially circulating stories about people who are disabled.

Implications/Value

This chapter challenges understandings of disability as either a medical condition or a site of social oppression. It demonstrates how narrative analysis can be an important tool for disability scholars and activists, and points to ways in which stories about the complexity of the disability experience disability can be used as tools for resistance and social change.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Dominique Rivera and Melinda Marconi for their assistance in writing this chapter. I also wish to thank the editors of this volume for giving me the opportunity to write this story.

Citation

Chapman, R.A. (2019), "Neither Victim nor Superhero: Reflections on Disability and Mental Health Counseling", New Narratives of Disability (Research in Social Science and Disability, Vol. 11), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 203-213. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-354720190000011025

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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