TY - JOUR
T1 - C.F. Goodey. A history of intelligence and “intellectual disability”
T2 - the shaping of psychology in early modern Europe
AU - Simpson, Murray K.
PY - 2012/8
Y1 - 2012/8
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
U2 - 10.1093/shm/hks028
DO - 10.1093/shm/hks028
M3 - Book/Film/Article review
SN - 1477-4666
VL - 25
SP - 739
EP - 740
JO - Social History of Medicine
JF - Social History of Medicine
IS - 3
ER -