ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two aspects of the meaning of a disability or chronic illness: the practical and the emotional. Counsellors as well as others can be caught by the assumption that illness, a distorted body, a difficulty speaking, or a slowness of intellectual grasp must all be accompanied by a lack of emotional strength. In counselling, people with disabilities and their families can examine and sometimes change the emotional meaning of a condition. Grief arises with the giving up of some past reality, which may include ordinary hopes and expectations for the future. Acceptance is clearly bound up with recognizing reality and grieving for what has to be given up. Disappointment, resentment, and unrealistic expectations mingle with experience of unthinking or defensive behaviour or mistakes on the part of doctors. In journals for counsellors and psychoanalytical psychotherapists articles about work with physical illness and disability have appeared regularly in the literature over the last five years.
