Gelb S A
School of Education, University of San Diego, CA 92110.
Ment Retard. 1995 Feb;33(1):1-9.
It is widely believed that the eugenics movements was largely responsible for the turn of the century perception that individuals with mental retardation were a social menace. However, that explanation fails to account for the vast corpus of 19th century degeneration theory, which, in the Progressive era, became the lens through which mental retardation was viewed. In this paper I have described the chain of theological and scientific reasoning that led to the linkage of mental retardation with the evolutionary "mark of the beast," a development that not only helped fuel the notorious myth of the "menace of the feeble-minded" but also cast a long shadow into this century.
人们普遍认为，优生学运动在很大程度上导致了世纪之交时人们认为智力迟钝者是社会威胁的观念。然而，这种解释无法说明19世纪大量的退化理论，在进步时代，这些理论成为了看待智力迟钝的视角。在本文中，我描述了一系列神学和科学推理过程，这些推理导致了智力迟钝与进化中的“兽之印记”联系在一起，这一发展不仅助长了臭名昭著的“低能者威胁”神话，还在本世纪投下了长长的阴影。
