Inventing the Feeble Mind

Inventing the Feeble Mind PDF Author: James Trent
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199396205
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Pity, disgust, fear, cure, and prevention--all are words that Americans have used to make sense of what today we call intellectual disability. Inventing the Feeble Mind explores the history of this disability from its several identifications over the past 200 years: idiocy, imbecility, feeblemindedness, mental defect, mental deficiency, mental retardation, and most recently intellectual disability. Using institutional records, private correspondence, personal memories, and rare photographs, James Trent argues that the economic vulnerability of intellectually disabled people (and often their families), more than the claims made for their intellectual and social limitations, has shaped meaning, services, and policies in United States history.

Inventing the Feeble Mind

Inventing the Feeble Mind PDF Author: James Trent
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199396205
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Pity, disgust, fear, cure, and prevention--all are words that Americans have used to make sense of what today we call intellectual disability. Inventing the Feeble Mind explores the history of this disability from its several identifications over the past 200 years: idiocy, imbecility, feeblemindedness, mental defect, mental deficiency, mental retardation, and most recently intellectual disability. Using institutional records, private correspondence, personal memories, and rare photographs, James Trent argues that the economic vulnerability of intellectually disabled people (and often their families), more than the claims made for their intellectual and social limitations, has shaped meaning, services, and policies in United States history.

Inventing the Feeble Mind

Inventing the Feeble Mind PDF Author: James W. Trent Jr.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520917279
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
James W. Trent uses public documents, private letters, investigative reports, and rare photographs to explore our changing perceptions of mental retardation over the past 150 years. He 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.

Inventing the Feeble Mind

Inventing the Feeble Mind PDF Author: James W. Trent (Jr.)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199396183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Inventing the Feeble Mind explores the history of intellectual disability from its several identifications in the United States over the past 200 years: idiocy, imbecility, feeblemindedness, mental deficiency and defectiveness, mental retardation, and most recently intellectual disability.

Mental Retardation in America

Mental Retardation in America PDF Author: Steven Noll
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814782485
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
The 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.

The Manliest Man

The Manliest Man PDF Author: James W. Trent
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN: 1558499598
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
He was a veteran of the Greek War of Independence, a fervent abolitionist, and the founder of both the Perkins School for the Blind and the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Children. Married to Julia Ward Howe, author of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," he counted among his friends Senator Charles Summer, public school advocate Horace Mann, and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A committed reformer, Howe believed in the perfectibility of human beings and spoke out in favor of progressive services for disabled Americans. He embraced a notion of manliness that included heroism under fire but also compassion for the underdog and the oppressed. Though hardly a man without flaws and failures, he nevertheless represented the optimism that characterized much of antebellum American reform. The first full-length biography of Howe in more than fifty years, The Manliest Man offers an original view of his personal life, his association with social causes of his time, and his efforts to shape those causes in ways that allowed for the greater inclusion of devalued people in the mainstream of American life. Book jacket.

Phallacies

Phallacies PDF Author: Kathleen M. Brian
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019045900X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Phallacies: Historical Intersections of Disability and Masculinity is a collection of essays that focuses on disabled men who negotiate their masculinity as well as their disability. The chapters cover a broad range of topics: institutional structures that define what it means to be a man with a disability; the place of women in situations where masculinity and disability are constructed; men with physical and war-related disabilities; male hysteria, suicide clubs, and mercy killing; male disability in literature and popular culture; and more. All the authors regard masculinity and disability in the historical contexts of the Americas and Western Europe, with particular attention to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taken together, the essays in this volume offer a nuanced portrait of the complex, and at times competing, interactions between masculinity and disability.

The Improvement of the Mind

The Improvement of the Mind PDF Author: Isaac Watts
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description


The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded

The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded PDF Author: Molly McCully Brown
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0892554789
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2017 Harrowing poems from a dark corner of American history by the winner of the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry. Haunted by the voices of those committed to the notorious Virginia State Colony, epicenter of the American eugenics movement in the first half of the twentieth century, this evocative debut marks the emergence of a poet of exceptional poise and compassion, who grew up in the shadow of the Colony itself.

A History of Mental Retardation

A History of Mental Retardation PDF Author: R. C. Scheerenberger
Publisher: Brookes Publishing Company
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description


The Girls and Boys of Belchertown

The Girls and Boys of Belchertown PDF Author: Robert N. Hornick
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN: 155849944X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
During much of the twentieth century, people labeled "feeble-minded," "mentally deficient," and "mentally retarded" were often confined in large, publicly funded, residential institutions located on the edges of small towns and villages some distance from major population centers. At the peak of their development in the late 1960s, these institutions--frequently called "schools" or "homes" --housed 190,000 men, women, and children in the United States. The Girls and Boys of Belchertown offers the first detailed history of an American public institution for intellectually disabled persons. Robert Hornick recounts the story of the Belchertown State School in Belchertown, Massachusetts, from its beginnings in the 1920s to its closure in the 1990s following a scandalous exposé and unprecedented court case that put the institution under direct supervision of a federal judge. He draws on personal interviews, private letters, and other unpublished sources as well as local newspapers, long out-of-print materials, and government reports to re-create what it was like to live and work at the school. More broadly, he gauges the impact of changing social attitudes toward intellectual disability and examines the relationship that developed over time between the school and the town where it was located. What emerges is a candid and complex portrait of the Belchertown State School that neither vilifies those in charge nor excuses the injustices perpetrated on its residents, but makes clear that despite the court-ordered reforms of its final decades, the institution needed to be closed.