Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

41accommodate people with an intellectual disability to offer those for whom theybear responsibility, mutually enriching, liberating relationship. This inabilityderives from the understanding that the contemporary institution is principallydesigned to offer professional, health care service based on a fundamentalobjectified, medicalised regard for those for whom they bear responsibility. 59Secondly, those who are so regarded are socially oppressed andmarginalised by dint of living in a facility that isolates and limits them fromparticipation in what may be reasonably considered as a socially-lived contextand lifestyle that approximates an acceptable sense of social normality. 60 Such59 The medical conceptualisation of the institution will be contextualised in laterconsideration of the historic background to the modern institution in chapter 3. It will also beincluded in consideration of the institutional narratives that are the focus of this extendedreflection in chapter 5. Amongst the wide range of literature on this subject, the medicalisednature of the contemporary institution is well detailed in, McKnight, J. The Careless Society:Community and Its Counterfeits. (New York: Basic Books, 1995). Literary sources thatdescribe the institution from a biographical and autobiographical ‘resident’ perspective areparticularly instructive. See,Allen, Thomas, Rannveig Traustadottir, and Lisa Spina. "Sixty Years in the Institution." InDeinstitutionalization and People with Intellectual Disabilities: In and out of Institutions,edited by Kelley Johnson and Rannveig Traustadottir, 33-49. (London: Jessica KingsleyPublishers, 2006).Hall, Victor, and Sheena Rolph. "'I've Got My Freedom Now': Memories of Transitions intoand out of Institutions, 1932 to the Present Day." In Deinstitutionalization and People withIntellectual Disabilities: In and out of Institutions, edited by Kelley Johnson and RannveigTraustadottir, 163-70. (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006).Johansen, Emil, and Kristjana Kristiansen. ""Gone Fishin'': From Institutional Outing to RealLife." In Deinstitutionalization and People with Intellectual Disabilities: In and out ofInstitutions, edited by Kelley Johnson and Rannveig Traustadottir, 171-76. (London: JessicaKingsley Publishers, 2006).60 Early consideration of the importance of social normality is found in the work of thepioneers and early advocates of the concept of normalisation whereby people with anintellectual disability are observed to experience the conditions of life that approximate thenorms of everyday society. See,Nirje, Bengt. "The Normalization Principle and Its Human Management Implications." InThe History of Mental Retardation: Collected Papers, Volume 2, edited by Marvin Rosen,Gerald Clark and Marvin Kivitz, 361-76. (Baltimore: University Park Press, 1969). Theauthor posits a definition that approximates the above. See 363.See also,Wolfensberger, Wolf. Normalization: The Principle of Normalization in Human Services.(Toronto: National Institute on Mental Retardation, 1976), and,Bank-Mikkelsen, Niels. "The Growth and Development of a New Administration for theMentally Retarded, Set up in Denmark in 1959." In Minda Lectures: Series One to Eight -1963–1980, edited by Minda Inc., 38-50. (Adelaide: Minda Inc., 1967).Criticism of the normalisation principle has included concern over a perceived emphasis onsocial conformity, rather than respect for difference. See,Rapley, Mark, and Steve Baldwin. "Normalisation – Metatheory or Metaphysics? AConceptual Critique." Australia and New Zealand Journal of Developmental Disabilities 20,no. 2 (1995): 141-57.The strident criticism of social worker and disability advocate Michael Oliver is of particularnote, especially in regard to his concern that normalisation fails to address issues regardingthe systemic oppression of people with disability, and even the capacity for normalisation tocontribute to that oppression. See,