The Moral Model of Disability Still Prevalent

Well, I end up posting these things while I'm away from the office for some reason. Maybe it's because I have more time or because I'm more focused, I don't know. Right now I'm sitting in the Boise airport getting ready to head home to Moscow after two long days of meetings. At my meeting earlier today there was a parent of a child with a disability sitting by me and I overheard her talking about another family in their community who had a daughter with epilepsy and mild mental retardation caused by the epilepsy. Now, before I get to the point, I would like to point out that as a general rule, I don't usually eavesdrop but I couldn't help but be chagrined when this woman said that this other family was convinced that their daughter was possessed by a devil and that if they could just exorcise the devil their daughter would be normal again. They were going to have a preacher who specialized in exorcisms come over and try to "cure" their daughter. How freaky is that?

It always seems that when I feel the world is getting better, I hear a story like this and it depresses me again. What's wrong with these people? Of course the same could be said for society in general and academia especially. Why do we persist in holding onto arcane and damaging models of disability?

Let me illustrate what I mean:

Traditionally academia has approached the study of disability by conceptualizing it as a deviation from the “norm”; or, something to be remedied, rehabilitated, or cured. This is a very elitist and disempowering approach to understanding disability because it assumes that individuals with disabilities are passive subjects who are sitting around and waiting for the, generally, able-bodied medical and rehabilitation professionals to develop cures, therapies, and other treatments that will allow individuals with disabilities to enter the “mainstream” and participate as a full-member of society. But the origins of these attitudes began much earlier.

In the Western world we can trace the origins of our attitudes towards disability all the way back to the first literate cultures: the Greeks, Romans, and Jews. In the Old Testament and in Greek and Roman mythology we see the beginnings of the “first” model of disability: the “moral” model of disability. The moral model of disability is based upon the assumption that disability, deformity, or any deviant appearance or behavior is a direct manifestation of the displeasure of God/the Gods. The moral model of disability usually interpreted this deviance as a sign from the God/Gods that the parents or the individual had committed some sin or other act of transgression. Indeed, beginning in the New Testament and through the Middle Ages as superstition ran rampant among the population there was a widespread belief that cognitive disabilities and mental illness were the direct result of demonic possession. For example look at how these individuals with disabilities are portrayed in the New Testament:

• Matthew Chapter 8 verses 28 & 33-- “(28) And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. (33) And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils.”
• Matthew Chapter 9 verse 32-- “As they went out, behold, they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a devil.”
• Matthew Chapter 12 verse 22-- “Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.”

Now, it’s difficult to determine whether these attitudes were the actual attitudes of Jesus and his disciples because the majority of English translations of the Bible came through the pens of medieval monks and scholars who were steeped in the superstition of their day. But, we do have to give credence to the fact that these translations of the Bible have been some of the most influential writings in Western culture and have formed the backbone of social attitudes that continue up through today. Indeed, it is easy to look at the moral model of disability as an outdated understanding of disability that has gone out of fashion, but the fact is that remnants of it are still evident today… as the conversation I overheard earlier today seems to indicate.

So, although I could go on and on about the origin of attitudes towards individuals with disabilities I'd better leave it at this. I still need material for a later posting.

Keep on keepin' on...

Matt