Disabled people and reconstruction of identity: inclusion or stigmatisation
Disabled people and reconstruction of identity: inclusion or stigmatisation

Summary/Abstract: Managing social identity, reconstruction of identity, constructing own biography from scratch is something that a person with acquired disability must cope with. People with inborn disability create their identity of a disabled from the beginning. They are prepared/raised/educated to take the part of a person with disabilities in the society. Can a person who acquired disability experience such accelerated adaptation? The stigma of disability will remain with them forever. It is disability that will become the central category which will determine their social identity. In the article the author raises the problems connected with setting up the line between personal and social identity, between satisfying the need to be unique and the need to belong, between defining a person through the prism of stigma (Erving Goffman) and perceiving them as representative of a specific type of personality (Alfred Schutz). How deep is the mark of a person with disability that this disability imprints in their life is best known only by the people who live with it. The article is an attempt to answer the following questions. Is it possible to manage the social identity or the person needs to reconstruct their identity or construct their biography from scratch? What are the chances of dealing with a disability stigma? What is the identity created or reconstructed in the process of social stigmatisation going to be like? Is it possible to come out of the process of stigmatisation?

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