‘Whose Handicap?’ Psychotherapy with People with Learning Disabilities

Whatever our disabilities might be, it is in our relationships that we become handicapped. A handicap is the consequence of a persistent failure to recognize who we are. We become handicapped when we are seen as something we are not, or when we are not seen at all. It is this process of not being seen, not being recognized as a different subject, which is illuminated by intersubjectivity theory:

Intersubjectivity theory postulates that the other must be recognized as another subject in order for the self to fully experience his or her subjectivity in the other's presence. This means, first, that we have a need for recognition and, second, a capacity to recognize others in return - mutual recognition. (Benjamin 1990, p. 186)

For babies born with a learning disability and their caregivers, this process of primary recognition and secondary mutual recognition can be profoundly disrupted. The meaning and impact of an infant with a learning disability are frequently an overwhelming experience for the parents. Given a lack of support from the world around them, the parents can dissociatively regulate their loss and terror, and the child with a learning disability becomes an absence (Stern et al. 1998a, p. 154):

With the news of a baby's problem, you can no longer clearly imagine this baby as a preschooler, an adolescent, an adult, as a parent, or as someone who could take care of you when you grow old. You've lost not only your ideal baby but, more important, the freedom to anticipate the future of your baby and your family.

As one mother said, I always imagined that one day I would be walking with my two children, holding each one by the hand. Now there is a gaping void in front of me. I don't know if I will have to spend my life taking care of an infant who could never walk. I don't know what will become of me.

This experience of a baby with a learning disability as a ‘gaping void’ is common. Consider the words of another parent (Korff-Sausse 1999, p. 177):