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Long ago, Talcott Parsons articulated the basic dilemma facing such groups:

"The sick role is. . .a mechanism. . .channels deviance so that the two most dangerous potentialities, namely group formation and successful establishment of the claim of legitimacy, are avoided. The sick are tied up, not with each other deviants to form a 'subculture' of the sick but each with a group of nonsick, his personal circle, and, above all, physicians. The sick thus become a statistical status and are deprived of the possibility of forming a solidary collectivity. Furthermore, to be sick is by definition to be in an undesirable state, so that it simply does not 'make sense' to assert a claim that the way to deal with the frustrating aspects of the social system is for everyone to get sick." (Parsons 1951, p. 477)

A mundane but dramatic way of characterising this phenomenon can be seen by looking at the rallying cries of current liberation movements. As the 'melting pot' theory of America was finally buried, people could once again say, even though they were three generations removed from immigrants, that they were proud to be Greek, Italian, Hungarian, or Polish. With the rise of black power, a derogatory label became a rallying cry: 'Black is beautiful!'. And when female liberation saw their strength in numbers, they shouted: 'Sisterhood is powerful!' But what about those with a chronic illness or disability. Could we yell: Long live cancer!' 'Up with multiple sclerosis!' 'I'm glad I had polio?' 'Don't you wish you were blind?'. Thus the traditional reversing of the stigmata will not so easily provide a basis for a common positive identity.

Their struggle over labels often follows a pattern. It is far easier to agree in terms that should not be used than the designations that should replace them (Peters 1986abc). As with the racial, ethnic (More 1976), and gender groups (Shear 1984, 1985) before them, many had begun to note the negative qualities of certain 'disability references' (Biklen and Bogdan 1977; Corcoran 1977); and others created quite useful glossaries (Shear 1986; and see separate listing of 'brochures' at end of references).

Since, as Phillips (1986) notes, the names one calls oneself reflect differing political strategies, we must go beyond a list of 'dos' and 'don'ts' to an analysis of the functions of such labelling (Chaffee 1987; Gill 1987; Gillett 1987, Lindsey). As long ago as 1651, Thomas Hobbes, in setting his own social agenda, saw the importance of such clarification, 'seeing then that truth consists in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeks precise truth has need to remember what every name he uses stands for; and to place it accordingly; or else he will find himself entangled in words as a bird in lime twigs; the more he struggles the more belimed' (Hobbes 1950, p. 26). There are at least two separate implications of such naming which have practical and political consequences.

The first is connotational and associational. As Kenneth Burke (1950, p. 4) once stated, 'Call a man a villain and you have the choice of either attacking or avenging. Call him mistaken and you invite yourself to attempt to set him right'. I would add, 'Call a person sick or crazy and all their behaviour becomes dismissable'. Because someone has been labelled ill, all their activity and beliefs -- past, present, and future -- become related to and explainable in terms of their illness (Goffman 1961). Once this occurs, society can then deny the validity of anything which they might say, do, or stand for. Being seen as the object of medical treatment evokes the image of many ascribed traits such as weakness, helplessness, dependency, regressiveness, abnormality of appearance, and depreciation of every mode of physical and mental functioning (Longmore 1985; Goodwin 1986; Zola 1982). In the case of a person with a chronic illness or a permanent disability, these traits, once perceived to be a temporary accompaniment of an illness, become indelible characteristics. The individual is trapped in a state of suspended animation socially, is perpetually a patient, is chronically viewed as helpless and dependent, in need of care but 'incurable' (Longmore 1985, p. 420).

A second function of labelling is its potential for spread, pervasiveness, generalisation. An example of such inappropriate generalising was seen in a study by Conant and Budoff (1982). They found that a group of sighted children and adults interpreted the labels 'blind' and 'legally blind' as meaning that the person was totally without vision: something which is true for only a small segment of people with that designation. What was, in reality, problematic became a given. A second example of this process is when the disability and person are equated. While it is commonplace to hear of doctors referring to people as the 'appendicitis in Room 306' or 'the amputee down the hall', such labelling is more common in popular culture than one might believe. My own analysis of the crime-mystery genre (Zola 1987), noted that after an introductory description of characters with a disability, they are quite often referred to by their disability, eg. 'the dwarf', 'the blind man', 'the one-armed', 'the one-legged'.