ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the journey of a registered blind psychologist thinking about the experience of being disabled within the psychological community. It looks back at how training as a psychologist and later as a CAT therapist informed the thinking and values that went on to facilitate the development of a disabled identity. This was in part through reflecting on the negative constructions of disability, initially within psychology and then more broadly within our society. This helped the author to reflect on how to think differently about disability and reflect on how to make it a positive part of one's identity and about how taking a leadership role was integral to this. This process was started by exploring the research within the field of psychology at the time the author undertook her Doctorate. The author considered the social construction of disability within psychological research and within the psychological community itself. This chapter will discuss how CAT ideas enabled further reflections about what reciprocal roles and procedures may have been played out in relation to the issue of being disabled. For example, striving to be viewed as ‘amazing’ to avoid being seen as tragic. The chapter reflects on how CAT as a discipline relates to disability and what reciprocal roles get played out within therapeutic relationships. The chapter examines how to create more helpful reciprocal roles and procedures regarding the author's and others relationship with and the construction of disability. The chapter includes how the author felt her leadership role was taken on reluctantly, but out of necessity, meaning that to survive being disabled in a non-disabled world she had to learn how to notice, name and address exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination. The author of this chapter took on a leadership role to address such issues, as she felt not doing this risked being blocked by barriers of discrimination and restrictive presumption.
