Inventing the Feeble Mind

Inventing the Feeble Mind

Author: James Trent

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0199396205

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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.


Idiocy

Idiocy

Author: Edward Seguin

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-12-22

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 9780484388528

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Excerpt from Idiocy: And Its Treatment by the Physiological Method Idiots have been educated in all times by the devotion of kind-hearted and intelligent persons, and with the best means they could borrow from ordinary schools; until the progress Of physiology Opened the possibility Of the adaptation of its principles to the general training of children. But other elements were mature. The right of all to education was acknowledged, if not yet fulfilled with the imperfect means at command; the deaf and the blind were already instructed by special methods; and several children, marked by nature, accident, or crime, with the characters Of idiocy, had been subjected to physiological and psychological experiments. Can idiots be educated, treated, improved, cured? To put the question was to solve it. There is a sort Of mysterious upheaval Of mankind in the way new things spring up, which commands our awe. At a given hour, anything wanted by the race makes its appearance simultaneously from so many quarters, that the title Of a single individual to discovery is always contested, and seems clearly to belong to God manifested through man. The origin of the methodical treatment of idiots. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.


Modernity and the Appearance of Idiocy

Modernity and the Appearance of Idiocy

Author: Murray Simpson

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780773442894

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By conducting an 'archaeological' discourse analysis, this study demonstrates how intellectual disability is produced, not as a conceptual entity, but as a discursive field. It traces its four principal conceptual parameters - functioning, organic pathology, intelligence and development.


Idiocy

Idiocy

Author: Patrick McDonagh

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1846310954

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In ancient Athens, “idiots” were those selfish citizens who dishonorably declined to participate in the life of the polis, and whose disavowal of the public interest was seen as poor taste and an indication of judgment. Over time, however, the term idiot has shifted from that philosophically uncomplicated definition to an ever-changing sociological signifier, encompassing a wide range of meanings and beliefs for those concerned with intellectual and cognitive disability. Idiocy: A Cultural History offers for the first time a analysis of the concept, drawing on cultural, sociological, scientific, and popular representations ranging from Wordsworth’s “Idiot Boy” and Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge to Down’s “Ethnic classification of idiots.” It tracks how our changing definition of idiocy intersects with demography, political movements, philosophical traditions, economic concerns, and the growth of the medical profession.