ABSTRACT
This book discusses the concepts that, in the disability world, are taken entirely for granted, most notably the "handicapped smile" and "secondary handicap". It states that, as the years go by, one will find more examples of Valerie's unique ideas and concepts seeping out into the world, just as words such as the "conscious", the "unconscious", and "projection", which were initially specialist psychoanalytic terms, now populate mainstream discourse. While disability psychotherapy shares the DNA of psychotherapy, it also has some genetic variants that necessitate differences in some aspects of clinical approach. The book argues that the more the principles of disability psychotherapy are adopted in work with patients without disabilities, then the better the quality of their therapy. Disability psychotherapy describes the use of psychological therapies in work with people with disabilities. It is used by people with intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, and autism.
