Clinic of Disability

Simone Korff Sausse is a psychologist and psychoanalyst, a member of the Societe Psychanalytique de Paris, and emeritus lecturer at the Psychoanalytical Studies Faculty at the University Denis Diderot, Paris. She has conducted studies into the psychoanalytical approach in care for disabled children and their families, and into the creative process in artists. She is a founding member of Seminaire Universitaire International sur la Clinique du Handicap. Regine Scelles is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology at the Paris West University Nanterre La Defense. She works in a department providing early help to disabled children and has considerable experience working in disabled people's own domestic environments. She has published works on the family and multiple disabilities and is a founding member of Seminaire Universitaire International sur la Clinique du Handicap.

• Introduction -- Virility, masculine identity, and disability -- The traumatic effects of encountering disability: the bond and psychic transmission put to the test -- Cultural interpretation of disability -- Prediction, disability, and genetics -- The psychoanalytical approach to disability -- The normality of the abnormal: disability, norms, and normality -- The enigma of disability: talking about it with children, listening to them, letting them talk to each other -- Bodies lost and bodies gained: the major periods in the history of disability -- Prenatal diagnosis and handicap -- Your child is a vegetable! Ethical requirements for all clinical practices in dealing with severe disability -- Adolescence: psychic process or a mere stage in biology?

'For decades, those struggling with disabilities have remained very much on the margins - often overlooked, ignored, pitied, or mistreated. Happily, mental health professionals have worked hard to place disability at the very centre of clinical discourse, so that everyone may now benefit from the fruits of new developments in the psychological therapies. Simone Korff Sausse and Regine Scelles have gathered a group of some of the most impressive disability psychoanalysts in France and have served up a feast of clinical insight, progressive psychotherapeutic practice and, above all, a sense of hopefulness for the future. This book should occupy a seminal place on the bookshelves of every practitioner of the psychological arts.'- Professor Brett Kahr, Senior Fellow, Tavistock Relationships, Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, London, and founding Trustee and Director of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability 'The disability therapy field will be enriched by the translation into English of the long-standing work of French colleagues. A key group of eminent academics led by Professor Simone Korff Sausse and Professor Regine Scelles have transformed the French attitude to intellectual disability by their annual inter-university conferences under the auspices of Seminaire Universitaire International sur la Clinique du Handicap. A profound psychoanalytic and philosophic thread runs through the contributions.'- Baroness Sheila Hollins, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry of Disability at St George's University of London and Past President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and of the British Medical Association'In this book, outstanding clinical and academic writers present the essence of their original and inspiring psychoanalytic research in and approach to physical and mental disability in an inclusive perspective. Their reflections are embedded in a rich French cultural tradition with a high clinical relevance. A revelation!'- Johan De Groef, former President of the European Association on Mental Health in Intellectual Disability and the Belgian School for Psychoanalysis