Disability Psychotherapy

Much has been written about cognitive development in those who are cognitively impaired. Much is written about attachment for people who don't have disabilities. Yet people with disabilities have suffered discrimination and neglect of their emotional needs, perhaps because the pain of difference cannot be tolerated, perhaps because of lack of will or lack of knowledge. This book aims to help to fill the knowledge gap and to encourage others to overcome their resistance to facing the pain, and will be an important contribution to our understanding of the world of disability and emotional deprivation. In this book - a result of over twenty years experience with people who have disabilities and additional distress as a result of traumatic life experiences - an attempt is made to bring together what we know about early emotional development and the consequences of failure to provide an emotionally nurturing experience, and the results are then applied to people with disabilities.

Patricia Frankish

Preface , Winnicott , Bowlby , Margaret Mahler , Measuring the emotional development of intellectually disabled adults , Other influences , Designing interventions , The house-tree-person test , Using the object relations technique with people with intellectual disabilities , Comprehensive assessment of the individual , Evaluation of the impact of the systemic model of trauma-informed care , Evaluation of the impact of individual psychotherapy , Comparison with other therapeutic models , Future use of the model