Intellectual Disability

This book explores why, after forty years of funded policies of social inclusion, persons living with an intellectual disability are still separated from the social fabric of neoliberal societies. David Treanor shows how the nature of the reform process is driven unnecessarily by the economic neoliberal paradigm, the cultural misconceptions of intellectual disability, and the inattention accorded to personal relationships between persons living with and without an intellectual disability.

Starting with the controversial hypothesis that not only human intelligence but also its antithesis 'intellectual disability' are nothing more than historical contingencies, C.F. Goodey's paradigm-shifting study traces the rich interplay between human types and the radically changing characteristics attributed to them. From the twelfth-century beginnings of European social administration to the onset of formal human science disciplines in the modern era, "A History of Intelligence and 'Intellectual Disability'" reconstructs the sociopolitical and religious contexts of intellectual ability and disability and demonstrates how these concepts became part of psychology, medicine and biology.