As a part of his Social Role Valorization theory, Wolfensberger describes 18 wounds that devalued people face. These might also be referred to as the “social consequences of disability.”
Wound 1 | Bodily impairment |
Wound 2 | Functional impairment |
Wound 3 | Relegation to low social status/deviancy |
Wound 4 | Attitude of rejection—disproportionately/relentlessly |
Wound 5 | Cast into one or more historic deviancy roles |
Wound 6 | Symbolic stigmatizing, “marking,” “deviancy imaging,” “branding” |
Wound 7 | Being multiply jeopardized/scapegoated |
Wound 8 | Distancing: usually via segregation and also congregation |
Wound 9 | Absence or loss of natural, freely given relationships and substitution with artificial/purchased ones |
Wound 10 | Loss of control, perhaps even autonomy and freedom |
Wound 11 | Discontinuity with the physical environment and objects, “physical discontinuation” |
Wound 12 | Social and relationship discontinuity and even abandonment |
Wound 13 | De-individualization, “mortification” reducing humanness |
Wound 14 | Involuntary material poverty, material/financial exploitation |
Wound 15 | Impoverishment of experience, especially that of the typical valued world |
Wound 16 | Exclusion from knowledge and participation in higher-order value systems (e.g. religion) that give meaning and direction to life and provide community |
Wound 17 | Having one’s life “wasted”; mindsets contributing to life wasting |
Wound 18 | Being the object of brutalization, killing thoughts and death maki |
Wolfensberger, W. (1998b). A Brief Introduction to Social Role Valorization: A High-order Concept for Addressing the Plight of Societally Devalued People and for Structuring Human Services (3rd ed.). Syracuse, NY: Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership & Change Agentry (Syracuse University) p. 12-21.