Restoration, Reality and Christopher Reeve

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In Reeve's view, reality is a psychological crutch. His propaganda to that effect undermines those--particularly the young and newly injured--who are struggling to face reality, master it and make a life for themselves from their wheelchairs.

Odder still is Reeve's belief that people in wheelchairs don't dream enough about getting out of them. (Hence the $2 million ad.) On the contrary. The problem is that some--again, the newly devastated young especially--dream about it too much.

When I was injured, I had a roommate in my four-bed ward who was making no effort to continue his education or plan for a new career. One day he told me why: "I'm going to wait seven years for a cure. Then I'm going to kill myself."

The false optimism Reeve is peddling is not just psychologically harmful, cruelly raising hopes. The harm is practical too. The newly paralyzed young might end up emulating Reeve, spending hours on end preparing their bodies to be ready to walk the day the miracle cure comes, much like the millenarians who abandon their homes and sell their worldly goods to await the Rapture on a mountaintop. These kids should instead be spending those hours reading, studying and preparing themselves for the opportunities in the new world that high technology has for the first time in history made possible for the disabled.

They can have jobs and lives and careers. But they'll need to work very hard at it. And they'll need to start with precisely the psychological acceptance of reality that Reeve is so determined to undermine.

If I am wrong, the worst that can happen is that when the miracle comes, the nonbelievers will find themselves overtrained and overtoughened. But if Reeve is wrong, what will his dreamers be left with?