ABSTRACT

Given facilitators’ unanimous belief in the validity and veracity of the claims made through facilitated communication (FC), one would have to ask why. One would also have to question why allegedly competent clients would not exercise their newfound “voices” by attempting to wrestle control over their lives from the state. In fact, as zealous as they are in their proselytization of FC, the facilitators remain curiously complacent and strangely silent with respect to advocating for things as the undoing of state-authorized guardianships, which put control of major life decisions concerning the client into the hands of an anonymous bureaucracy. In many respects influence is actually built into the process of FC. The facilitators’ disregard for their clients’ obvious verbal and nonverbal behavior denies clients the opportunity to protest, repair, modify, comment, or otherwise express the pragmatic functions of communication outside of the confines of FC.