Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

66The observer becomes less the onlooker and more the one who recognises a senseof kinship or solidarity with the burdened other. She/he and the other both livewith limits, seeking to aspire and achieve in life amidst the limitations imposedupon them. The relationship develops an egalitarian character. The kindredobserver invests a sense of positive regard and worth in the other as they see theother both sharing with them in the limits of the human condition, and in thecapacity to achieve amidst those limits.Contrastingly, but with certain parallels to this model, disabilitytheologian Amos Yong promotes a model that describes all people asexperiencing disability at some time. Whilst, unlike the limitations model,disability is not to be avoided, it does approximate this model in terms ofcommon kinship and true interrelationship. 1432.3.3 The Medical ModelAs referred to at the beginning of this chapter, the Medical model ofdisability is generally defined as that which views “disability as a defect orsickness which must be cured through medical intervention.” 144 Much of ourunderstanding of disability has been dominated by this model, and the subsequentcategorizing of disability under the headings of sickness, disease andrehabilitation. 145 Until recently this model has largely stood unquestioned by thewider community.According to this model the locus of disability lies solely in the person,and thus it is the person who is in need of a cure, hence the role of rehabilitation.However, where the disability cannot be cured, the social response in Westernsociety has, generally speaking, been to institutionalise the person in question, 146thus separating the one who is considered diseased or sick and, according to theprevailing social norms, abnormal, from an otherwise healthy society.The consequence of being widely regarded as diseased or sick is that theperson in question then becomes in need of rescuing or saving by those with therequisite professional medical skills to do so. 147143 Yong, Amos. Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity.(Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007), 257.144 Kaplan, The Definition of Disability, sec.1, par.2.145 Hyland, Tanya. "A Critical Analysis of the Ontario Disability Support Program Act andSocial Citizenship Rights in Ontario." (quantitative research, Carleton University, 2001), 19.146 ibid., 20.147 Campbell, Gillett, & Jones. Medical Ethics, 184.