C.F. Goodey. A history of intelligence and “intellectual disability”: the shaping of psychology in early modern Europe

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    Abstract

    In this breath-taking work of scholarly inquiry, C. F. Goodey demonstrates, and demonstrates with a forensic precision, that our modern understandings of ‘intellectual disability’ are the highly contingent, and even accidental, outcomes of various historical processes, which crystallised only around 400 years ago. Goodey goes beyond establishing that intellectual disability is not a ‘natural kind’, arguing that, contrary to most constructionist accounts, it did not emerge as an object within psychology or medicine. Instead, and here lies perhaps the most important of Goodey's arguments, intellectual disability developed in the interstitial spaces created by efforts to handle dilemmas around predestination and free-will in Protestant theology.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)739-740
    Number of pages2
    JournalSocial History of Medicine
    Volume25
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Aug 2012

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