DISABILITY THROUGHOUT LIFE
Being born with a disability has a lasting impact on a person’s life, and this impact will be reinforced to a greater or lesser extent by subsequent experiences. This is what we call a situation of disability: a social and relational situation that evolves over time depending on the context, without depending directly on a physical or psychological impairment (even if it is not completely separate from it). This situation has an impact on self-construction and personal, romantic, friendly and professional life.
Sometimes a disability occurs in the course of a person’s life, and the after-effects of an accident create a radical break between past and present life: you are no longer the person you were, and you have to learn to live again, with all the constraints associated with this new existence, which can become like a second birth.
Whether innate or acquired, disability is by definition part of the course of time: unlike an illness, it will not disappear, but it will sometimes be absent, more or less insistent, like a presence that reminds us of ourselves whether we want it to or not. The example of chronic pain shows this, with its recurrences and its diffuse presence, which can increase with age.
In other forms of disability, which are less visible and more linked to a specific condition than to physical damage (such as certain neuro-developmental disorders), we may be able to compensate for the effects with the help of habit. But while the disability may appear to disappear, we know nothing of the continuous efforts required to give an impression of normality in adulthood, which has an impact on life balance.
Finally, there is the ageing process, when people often enter an institution earlier (at least when the institution has not been their whole life), and the consequences of ageing are more painful than for any of us, even if, barring accidents, we will all end up experiencing more or less marked forms of disability as we age.
Pierre Ancet, University Professor, Head of the “Ethics and Vulnerability” division of the interdisciplinary research laboratory “Societies, Sensibilities, Care” (LIR3S), CNRS-Université de Bourgogne.
