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Disability Dialogues

Advocacy, Science, and Prestige in Postwar Clinical Professions

Andrew J. Hogan

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A historical look at how activists influenced the adoption of more positive, inclusive, and sociopolitical views of disability.

Disability activism has fundamentally changed American society for the better—and along with it, the views and practices of many clinical professionals. After 1945, disability self-advocates and family advocates pushed for the inclusion of more positive, inclusive, and sociopolitical perspectives on disability in clinical research, training, and practice. In Disability Dialogues, Andrew J. Hogan highlights the contributions of disabled people—along with their family...

A historical look at how activists influenced the adoption of more positive, inclusive, and sociopolitical views of disability.

Disability activism has fundamentally changed American society for the better—and along with it, the views and practices of many clinical professionals. After 1945, disability self-advocates and family advocates pushed for the inclusion of more positive, inclusive, and sociopolitical perspectives on disability in clinical research, training, and practice. In Disability Dialogues, Andrew J. Hogan highlights the contributions of disabled people—along with their family members and other allies—in changing clinical understandings and approaches to disability.

Hogan examines the evolving medical, social, and political engagement of three postwar professions—clinical psychology, pediatrics, and genetic counseling—with disability and disability-related advocacy. Professionals in these fields historically resisted adopting a more inclusive and accepting perspective on people with disabilities primarily due to concerns about professional role, identity, and prestige. In response to the work of disability activists, however, these attitudes gradually began to change.

Disability Dialogues provides an important contribution to historical, sociological, and bioethical accounts of disability and clinical professionalization. Moving beyond advocacy alone, Hogan makes the case for why present-day clinical professional fields need to better recruit and support disabled practitioners. Disabled clinicians are uniquely positioned to combine biomedical expertise with their lived experiences of disability and encourage greater tolerance for disabilities among their colleagues, students, and institutions.

Reviews

Reviews

This book is a joy to read, because it is exactly the sort of careful historical analysis that we need. Dialogue and mutual respect between clinical professionals and disability advocates is literally a matter of life and death. I welcome this account because it will help build that. My father, who was a paediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital in the early 1960s would have loved this book, and so do I.

Disability Dialogues offers stimulating historical analysis of three contemporary American clinical professions—psychology, pediatrics, and genetic counseling—showing how disability consciousness and disability advocacy have unevenly permeated their missions and practices. Hogan successfully uses controversies over disability to illuminate regulatory and funding contexts, while highlighting the professional stakes in innovation and infighting.

Disability Dialogues presents the complex ways that the clinical professions promoted or resisted positive sociopolitical narratives of disability and how their interventions were influenced by disabled self-advocates challenging medical paternalism. A masterful and indispensable study, this book offers multilayered perspectives for seamlessly bridging disability history with the history of medicine and science.

With clarity and insight, Andrew Hogan shows how pediatrics, clinical psychology, and genetic counseling perceived disability advocacy as a challenge to their scientific status. Hogan calls for greater representation of disabled people in such professions. Centering the voices of disabled professionals and consumers, Disability Dialogues is an important and timely book for historians of science and disability scholars.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
264
ISBN
9781421445335
Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction. Disability Advocacy in Postwar America
Chapter 1. Clinical Psychology: Evolving Disability Perspectives and Advocacy
Chapter 2. Pediatrics: Moves Toward Leadership

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction. Disability Advocacy in Postwar America
Chapter 1. Clinical Psychology: Evolving Disability Perspectives and Advocacy
Chapter 2. Pediatrics: Moves Toward Leadership in Developmental Disabilities
Chapter 3. Genetic Counseling: Identity and Role in a New Clinical Field
Chapter 4. Advocacy Before Evidence? Disability Controversies in Clinical Psychology
Chapter 5. Developmental Disabilities and Subspecialization in Pediatrics
Chapter 6. Keeping the Conversation Open: Genetic Counseling, Disability, and Selective Abortion
Epilogue. The Need for Disabled Clinical Professionals
Notes
Index

Author Bio
Andrew J. Hogan
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Andrew J. Hogan, Ph.D.

Andrew J. Hogan (OMAHA, NE) is the Fr. Henry W. Casper, S.J. Professor of History and an associate professor in the Departments of History and Medical Humanities at Creighton University.