This article analyzed the experience of physical disability by focusing on individuals' identity, which was discussed through the categories "being and feeling deficient" and "stigma", guided by self-concept as a sociocultural construction that is updated daily and entered into a singular trajectory. This was a qualitative study of social-anthropological nature based on phenomenology. Eight men and five women with acquired physical deficiency were interviewed using a semi-structured interview plan, and the data were subjected to thematic analysis. Being and feeling deficient involved an ambiguity in relation to the reductionist concept that guides the system legitimizing this condition, which is faced with a more comprehensive meaning expressed in everyday performance. Identity was reaffirmed as a self-concept (re) constructed in subjective and intersubjective interactions, without detachment from a historically, culturally and socially contextualized biography.
Physical disability; Anthropology and health; Stigma; Experience of illness