Michael Heap's Reviews > Disabling Professions

Throughout my professional career (in clinical and forensic psychology) I always wondered if I and my colleagues (most of whom I looked up to) were not as much part of the answer as part of the problem. I have continued along this vein since retiring. Maybe it’s partly because, during my training in the mid-1970s, I was exposed to the writings of the priest and philosopher Ivan Illich and his collaborators and their book Disabling Professions. This describes how certain influential (and, in the UK at least, largely state-funded) professions thrive by cultivating disability and neediness in their target populations. The book obviously greatly influenced me at the time and has continued to do so ever since. I can't recall that the writers came up with any answers that were all that practical, but where I am now with these issues (along with many other people, though some have rather extreme and uninformed opinions) is that we need to create a healthier social and physical environment in which people can thrive and where they are more empowered to come to their own understanding of the challenges of life and how they can meet those challenges, rather than believing they need 'experts' to solve them on their behalf.