Mental Retardation in America : A Historical Reader

by Noll, Steven

• ISBN13: 9780814782477
• ISBN10: 0814782477
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-02-01
• Publisher: New York University Press

Summary

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.This is a highly readable and well-edited historical anthology, a wide-ranging collection that deals with mental retardation over two centuries. The book deserves perusal by anyone interested in mental retardation. The plot is powerful, and the questions profound.--New England Journal of Medicinestrongly recommended -- Library JournalInteresting collection of pieces.--Gainesville SunIlluminates the history of mental retardation in America, a subject that has largely been ignored by scholars. This volume goes far beyond the history of institutional care, and covers such subjects as the role of families, changes in concepts of retardation and educational theory, and the role of the state. Mental Retardation in America will contribute toward a new understanding of the subject and serve as a stimulus to further research.--Gerald N. Grob, Rutgers UniversityThe book will be of value to scholars concerned with the newly emerging history of disability.--Journal of the History of the Behavioral SciencesThe anthology provides sound links between the shaping of knowledge and circumstances from reports to legislatures, theses, and classifications of feebl-minded.--History of Education QuarterlyThe expressions idiot, you idiot, you're an idiot, don't be an idiot, and the like are generally interpreted as momentary insults. But, they are also expressions that represent an old, if unstable, history. Beginning with an examination of the early nineteenth century labeling of mental retardation as idiocy, to what we call developmental, intellectual, or learning disabilities, Mental Retardation in America chronicles the history of mental retardation, its treatment and labeling, and its representations and ramifications within the changing economic, social, and political context of America.Mental Retardation in America includes essays with a wide range of authors who approach the problems of retardation from many differing points of view. This work is divided into five sections, each following in chronological order the major changes in the treatment of people classified as retarded. Exploring historical issues, as well as current public policy concerns, Mental Retardation in America covers topics ranging from representations of the mentally disabled as social burdens and social menaces; Freudian inspired ideas of adjustment and adaptation; the relationship between community care and institutional treatment; historical events, such as the Buck v. Bell decision, which upheld the opinion on eugenic sterilization; the evolution of the disability rights movement; and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(23)
Steven Noll
James W. Trent Jr.
Part I Before the Asylum
A Selection from Report Made to the Legislature of Massachusetts (1848)	23	(4)
Samuel G. Howe
A Thesis on Idiocy	27	(13)
William B. Fish
The Legacy of the Almshouse	40	(25)
Philip M. Ferguson
``Beside Her Sat Her Idiot Child'': Families and Developmental Disability in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America	65	(27)
Penny L. Richards
Part II Defining and Categorizing: Establishing ``The Other''
Report of Committee on Classification of Feeble-Minded	87	(2)
The New Classification (Tentative) of the Feeble-Minded: Editorial	89	(3)
Mongols in Our Midst: John Langdon Down and the Ethnic Classification of Idiocy, 1858--1924	92	(28)
David Wright
``Mongolian Imbecility'': Race and Its Rejection in the Understanding of a Mental Disease	120	(10)
Daniel J. Kevles
Rearing the Child Who Never Grew: Ideologies of Parenting and Intellectual Disability in American History	130	(35)
Janice Brockley
The Parable of The Kallikak Family: Explaining the Meaning of Heredity in 1912	165	(21)
Leila Zenderland
Fictional Voices and Viewpoints for the Mentally Deficient, 1929--1939	186	(21)
Gerald Schmidt
Sexuality and Storytelling: Literary Representations of the ``Feebleminded'' in the Age of Sterilization	207	(25)
Karen Keely
Part III The Age of Institutionalization and Sterilization
The Eugenical Sterilization of the Feeble-Minded	225	(7)
Harry Laughlin
The Criminalization of Mental Retardation	232	(26)
Nicole Rafter
The State and the Multiply Disadvantaged: The Case of Epilepsy	258	(23)
Ellen Dwyer
The ``Sociological Advantages'' of Sterilization: Fiscal Policies and Feeble-Minded Women in Interwar Minnesota	281	(27)
Molly Ladd-Taylor
Part IV From Top and Bottom: Parents and the State in the Mid-Twentieth Century
Hope for Retarded Children	303	(5)
Eunice Kennedy Shriver
``Mental Deficients'' Fighting Fascism: The Unplanned Normalization of World War II	308	(14)
Stephen A. Gelb
Education for Children with Mental Retardation: Parent Activism, Public Policy, and Family Ideology in the 1950s	322	(29)
Kathleen W. Jones
``Nice, Average Americans'': Postwar Parents' Groups and the Defense of the Normal Family	351	(20)
Katherine Castles
Formal Health Care at the Community Level: The Child Development Clinics of the 1950s and 1960s	371	(13)
Wendy M. Nehring
A Pivotal Place in Special Education Policy: The First Arkansas Children's Colony	384	(36)
Elizabeth F. Shores
Part V The Promise and Problems of Community Placement: Back to a Beginning?
U.S. Supreme Court Decision on Capital Punishment and Mental Retardation (2002)	413	(7)
Historical Social Geography	420	(25)
Deborah S. Metzel
The Litigator as Reformer	445	(21)
David J. Rothman
Sheila M. Rothman
No Profits, Just a Pittance: Work, Compensation, and People Defined as Mentally Disabled in Ontario, 1964--1990	466	(28)
Geoffrey Reaume
Family Values	494	(7)
Michael Berube
About the Contributors	501	(4)
Index	505