Disability remains among the least theorized subjects in psychoanalysis. This is notable but not surprising: the relational anxiety that disability provokes in the non-disabled is pervasive, and psychoanalysts are not exempt. This paper introduces the concept of the disabling object — a persecutory internal structure through which social prejudice and structural ableism are psychically internalized and perpetuated. Integrating psychoanalytic ideas on racism, anxiety, and object relations with insights from critical disability studies, the paper explores how disability becomes a site of projected anxiety and disavowed vulnerability, shaping internal, interpersonal, and social experience. Through theoretical elaboration and clinical and personal vignettes, the disabling object is shown to obstruct symbolization, foreclose grief, and reproduce social hierarchies within the mind. Psychoanalysis, Dr. Crosby argues, must confront its own ableist investments to help clinicians sustain contact with psychic pain and difference as generative rather than annihilating.
Learning Objectives:
1-Define the concept of the disabling object and describe how structural ableism can become internalized as a persecutory psychic structure.
2-Identify clinical manifestations of the disabling object.
3-Distinguish the disabling object from adjacent psychoanalytic concepts and articulate what is specific about disability as a site of internalized prejudice
Jay Crosby, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in New York. He is on the faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and affiliated with the Greene Clinic.
Donald Moss, MD has been practicing psychoanalysis in New York for 45 years. He is the author of five books and 60+articles. His most recent book, "Psychoanalysis in a Plague Year", won the Gradiva Prize. He is the recipient of the Elizabeth Young-Bruehl prize from the IPA for his work against prejudice and the Haskell Norman prize for excellence in psychoanalysis. He conducts private seminars in New York and internationally. He is on the faculty of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.