Inventing the Feeble Mind

Download or read book Inventing the Feeble Mind written by James Trent and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.