ABSTRACT

Although early disability writers such as Paul Hunt (1966) documented the impact of stigma and internalized oppression on the psyche of disabled people, these problems have largely remained a difficulty for the individual to manage whilst the disabled people’s movement addressed the more material forms of disadvantage such as exclusion from employment, education and the built environment. It was the naming of these personal experiences as psycho-emotional disablism which has allowed for a sociological analysis of these aspects of social oppression, rather than leaving them in the hands of psychologists and other professionals ‘who would not hesitate to apply the individualistic/personal tragedy model to these issues’ (Thomas 1999: 74).