Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States

ISBN-10
0520082435
ISBN-13
9780520082434
Series
Inventing the Feeble Mind
Category
History
Pages
356
Language
English
Published
1994
Author
James W. Trent

Description

Trent contends that the economic vulnerability of mentally retarded people and their families, more than the claims made for their intellectual or social limitations, has determined their institutional treatment. He finds that the focus on technical and usually psychomedical interpretations of mental retardation has led to a general ignorance of the maldistribution of resources, status, and power so evident in the lives of the retarded. Superintendents, social welfare agents, IQ testers, and sterlizers have utilized these psychological and medical paradigms to insure their own social privilege and professional legitimacy. Rather than simply moving "from care to control," state schools have made care an effective and integral part of control. In analyzing the current policy of deinstitutionalization, Trent concludes it has been more successful in dispersing disabled citizens than in integrating them into American communities

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