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A History of Intelligence and Intellectual Disability

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A History of Intelligence and Intellectual Disability A HISTORY OF INTELLIGENCE AND “INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY” Starting with the 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 labelled 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 socio-political and religious contexts of intellectual ability and disability, and demonstrates how these concepts became part of psychology, medicine and biology. Goodey examines a wide array of classical, late medieval and Renaissance texts, from popular guides on conduct and behavior to medical treatises and from religious and philosophical works to poetry and drama. Focusing especially on the period between the Protestant Reformation and 1700, Goodey challenges the accepted wisdom that would have us believe that “intelligence” and “disability” describe natural, trans-historical realities. Instead, Goodey argues for a model that views intellectual disability and indeed the intellectually disabled person as recent cultural creations. His book is destined to become a standard resource for scholars interested in the history of psychology and medicine, the social origins of human self-representation, and current ethical debates about the genetics of intelligence. C.F. Goodey has researched and published on the history of “intellectual disability,” including the ethical and social implications of the concept, for more than 20 years. His articles have appeared in a number of scholarly journals, including History of Science, Medical History, History of the Human Sciences, Political Theory and Ancient Philosophy. He formerly held teaching and research posts at Ruskin College, Oxford, the Open University and the University of London Institute of Education, and is currently an independent consultant working for national and local government services on learning disability in the UK. A History of Intelligence and “Intellectual Disability” The Shaping of Psychology in Early Modern Europe C.F. GOODEY First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 525 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © C.F. Goodey 2011 C.F. Goodey has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Goodey, C.F. A conceptual history of intelligence and “intellectual disability”: the shaping of psychology in early modern Europe. 1. Intellect. 2. Intellect – Social aspects. 3. Intellect – Religious aspects. 4. Intellect – Early works to 1800. 5. Mental retardation. 6. Mental retardation – Social aspects. 7. Mental retardation – Religious aspects. 8. Mental retardation – Early works to 1800. 9. Stereotypes (Social psychology) – Europe – History. 10. Psychology – Europe – History. I. Title 153.9’09–dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Goodey, C.F. A history of intelligence and “intellectual disability”: the shaping of psychology in early modern Europe / C.F. Goodey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Thought and thinking—Europe—History. 2. Intellect—Europe—History. 3. Psychology—Europe— History. I. Title. BF441.G656 2011 153.909—dc22 2011001042 ISBN 13: 978-1-4094-2021-7 (hbk) Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Part 1 Problematical Intellects in Ancient Greece 1 Ancient Philosophy and the “Worst Disability” 15 2 Aristotle and the Slave’s Intellect 25 Part 2 Intelligence and Disability: Socio-economic Structures 3 The Speed of Intelligence: Fast, Slow and Mean 39 4 Quick Wit and the Ingenious Gentleman 49 Part 3 Intelligence and Disability: Status and Power 5 In-group, Out-group: the Place of Intelligence in Anthropology 63 6 Honour, Grace and Intelligence: the Historical Interplay 77 7 “Souls Drowned in a Lump of Flesh”: the Excluded 93 Part 4 Intelligence, Disability and Honour 8 Virtue, Blood, Wit: from Lineage to Learning 103 9 “Dead in the Very Midst of Life”: the Dishonourable and the Idiotic 125 Part 5 Intelligence, Disability and Grace 10 From Pilgrim’s Progress to Developmental Psychology 151 11 The Science of Damnation: from Reprobate to Idiot 179 Part 6 Fools and Their Medical Histories 12 The Long Historical Context of Cognitive Genetics 207 13 The Brain of a Fool 219 14 A First Diagnosis? The Problem with Pioneers 235 Part 7 Psychology, Biology and the Ethics of Exceptionalism 16 The Wrong Child: Changelings and the Bereavement Analogy 261 17 Testing the Rule of Human Nature: Classification and Abnormality 281 Part 8 John Locke and His Successors 18 John Locke and His Successors: the Historical Contingency of Disability 313 Works Cited 347 Index 369 Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without all those people and their families who, by swapping experiences and ideas with me in the course of applied research and practice, have encouraged my belief in the practical applicability of history. Direct support came from Priscilla Alderson, Istvan Hont, Linda Jordan, Patrick McDonagh, the late Roy Porter, Lynn Rose, Roger Smith, Richard Sorabji and Tim Stainton. I would like to thank the many others who have contributed along the way: students, friends, colleagues and those in the medical and psychological professions who have discussed these topics openly and without fear. The Leverhulme Trust financed the first stages of research. Parts of the book exist in more primitive form in articles written for various journals to whose editors and referees I am also indebted (details are in the list of Works Cited). Historians should know that freaks, if tolerated – and even flattered and fed – can show astonishing influence and longevity. After all, to any rational mind, the greater part of the history of ideas is a history of freaks. —E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory Introduction Intelligence stands at the core of modern lives. It marks us out from the rest of nature. It is crucial to our sense of self and an instant yardstick for sizing up others. Psychologists measure it, biologists search for its DNA, women demand it of sperm donors; learned professors from Harvard to Heidelberg foresee our descendants turning into transhuman, bodiless intelligences able to migrate as software to other planets. If these are the dreams of intelligence, the nightmare is its absence. This means being denied family, friends and ordinary relationships; doctors give us treatment without our consent and withhold it when we need it; social workers stop us having sex, sterilize us or take away our children; psychiatrists lock us up without right of appeal; police officers frame us; courts acquit the parents who kill us; and politicians fund geneticists to make sure people like us never turn up again. Both dream and nightmare are so vivid it seems they must be based on some hard scientific reality, but the question “What is intelligence?” has only ever been answered by a shifting social consensus. So perhaps, like the stuff of dreams and nightmares, it too belongs in a realm of mere appearances. But in that case so does intellectual disability. Indeed, our anxieties about it may one day seem as strange as some of our ancestors’ anxieties do to us. The pioneers of modern science such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton were certain that the devil was real, as real as this chair I am sitting on is to me; and while we now know he was a mere figment of their imaginations, this is no guarantee that some of the objects to which we apply our own, twenty-first­ century scientific method are not just as fantastical. Nevertheless, even if intelligence is only a matter of appearances, appearances matter. Social structures have not only flattered and fed the concept but set it to work to ensure their own survival. It is socially active, helping to bind social structures together, to alienate their human creators from themselves and from each other, and to dull our brains with alternating doses of self-flattery and self-abasement. It also identifies certain people we do not like having around, and only if intellectual disability is also seen as mere appearance can the speciousness of intelligence itself be exposed. The concepts of intelligence and intellectual disability are mutually reinforcing. While this book chiefly explores pre- and early modern concepts of disability, it is also about intelligence. Without each other they are nothing. We tend to assume that “intellectual disability” is a permanent historical fixture, that all societies would have recognized the same thing in the same human type. But the idea of an intelligence that defines membership of the human species is itself modern. And if we sent people we now call intellectually disabled in a time machine to ancient Greece and asked if they resembled the people in that society with some seemingly equivalent label (“fools,” etc.), the answer would be no, even though such an experiment would yield a positive result for physical disability and in part for mental illness. Of course there are always people around who seem unable to grasp certain complex everyday activities. What changes, though, is the content of those activities and their centrality to the life which the rest of us in any one era expect to lead. At any given historical moment, the people thus excluded seem to be a separate and permanent natural kind, but in fact their psychological profile alters radically in the long term along with the social context feeding it.
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