ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a psychology of disability, which positions psychology as a functionalist science that develops as the discipline of the individual treats individuals in ways that maintain the disablist status quo. Disability studies theory and research have emerged in response to the politicisation of disabled people. Disability studies attends to the social, cultural, material, economic and material conditions of exclusion. Psychology is a broad discipline that encompasses many different theoretical positions including humanism, cognitivism, behaviourism, psychoanalysis, existentialism and biological. A critical psychology of disability has much to say about the constitution and functioning of society. Community psychologists pitch their analysis of psychology in the community as the place in which to address issues of social change and well-being. The chapter considers the ways in which a functionalist psychology maintains an individualistic conception of disability, while a phenomenological psychology opens up possibilities for addressing disablism in the social relationships and interactions of the community.
