Identities of Persons with Developmental Disorders

Abstract

This study examines a clients' practice of resisting their therapist in a particular therapeutic scenario, such as in the case of juveniles with developmental disorders receiving social skills training (SST). From the perspective of medicalization in sociology, relations of people to concepts in medicine have been considered in terms of subordination to the medical professions. Therefore, situations under which persons with developmental disorders come to terms with the concept of “developmental disorders” have tended to be considered as manifestations of such subordination. However, this perspective limits thorough understanding of actual situations under which those persons come to terms with the concept of “developmental disorders.” Therefore, this study takes actual SST sessions as data and explicates the interactional organizations of the sessions in which persons with developmental disorders come to terms with the concept.
SST sessions begin with the therapist urging the clients to share their disturbances that originate in daily life. The therapist proceeds by formulating the experiences as originating from the clients' own disorders and methods of communication. Hence, role-playing is introduced as a reasonable training method to improve the clients' communication abilities. Presented with this “individualized” conception of the disorder, the clients resist the therapist's attempts by reformulating their conflicts as originating from misunderstandings stemming from their surroundings. Accordingly, a necessary approach is not to engage in training but to correct the misunderstandings originating in the clients' surroundings.
The above scenario shows the critical practice of living the “social model of disability” to resist the “individualized” conception of developmental disorders. In addition, this resistance is facilitated by the resources that the session provides. In this sense, this opposition should be considered not as antagonism against medicalization from outside but as resistance through and from within medicalization.