The “Two Cultures” in Clinical Psychology: Constructing Disciplinary Divides in the Management of Mental Retardation
Andrew J. Hogan Creighton University
Isis, Vol. 109, no. 4 (2018): 695-719
In a 1984 article, psychologist Gregory Kimble lamented what he saw as the two distinct cultures of his discipline. Writing in American Psychologist, a prominent professional journal, he noted, “In psychology, these conflicting cultures [scientific and humanistic] exist within a single field, and those who hold opposing values are currently engaged in a bitter family feud.” 1 In making his argument, Kimble explicitly drew upon British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow’s
1959 lecture The Two Cultures, in which Snow expressed concern about a lack of intellectual engagement between scientists and humanists, and about the dominant position of the humanities in British education and culture. Kimble used Snow’s critique to help make sense of what he perceived to be a similar polarizing divide between “scientific” and “humanistic” psychologists. 2
As Kimble described it, humanistic psychologists differed form their scientific colleagues in placing their ambitions to enact certain social policies and to promote particular social values- based ideologies ahead of the need for the scientific validation of these approaches. Kimble demonstrated his purported two cultures divide in psychology using survey data he collected from 164 American Psychological Association (APA) members. Each was part of either APA
Division 3 (Experimental Psychology) or one of three other Divisions, which represented special interest groups within the psychology field. His results, illustrated on a spectrum from scientific to humanistic orientation, showed a purported divide between experimental psychologists on the scientific side, and their humanistic colleagues in the other three Divisions (See Figures 1,2). 3 As a prominent member of Division 1 (General Psychology), Kimble expressed a commitment to unifying the discipline, and hoped that all psychologists could find common ground in a general, unified behavioral theory. Kimble’s particular vision of disciplinary unity suggests that he fell closer to the scientific side of his spectrum.4 Throughout this paper, I draw upon Kimble’s formulation of the scientific vs. humanistic divide in psychology, along with other purported two cultures divergences in the discipline, to examine varying perspectives on mental retardation. 5
Fractious divides were not limited to differences in orientation between APA Divisions.
They also permeated multiple specialty areas. Professionals who studied mental retardation—an interdisciplinary field that included clinical psychologists, educators, and sociologists— identified similar divergences. In a 1987 editorial titled “The Two Cultures Revisited”, Louis
Rowitz, a sociologist who specialized in mental retardation, argued, “There is an inherent conflict between the service side and the research and academic side of the [mental retardation] field. Each side has developed its own culture, its own value system, and its own interpretation of the direction of the field.”6 Having identified this purportedly polarizing divide in his specialty, Rowitz argued for a third way, based in a common set of overriding values, which would put the priorities of people with mental retardation ahead of professional interests.
Notably, Rowitz, and many others who adopted the two cultures framework, did not limit their focus to describing rifts in terms of scientific vs. humanistic cultures, as Snow and Kimble did, but rather used the construction to identify a variety of purported divisions in their fields.
Snow’s “two cultures” concept was a well-known trope in postwar America, and widely mobilized in scientific and clinical literature during the 1980s and 1990s. However, references to the two cultures frequently showed little familiarity with the details of Snow’s argument and its reception.7 Professionals who identified a two cultures divide in their discipline or specialty often sought to highlight divergences that went beyond methodological preferences. Indeed, many
2 academic fields accommodate both quantitative and qualitative specialists, as well as data-driven and theory-focused practitioners, who all still subscribe to the same paradigmatic interests. The
“two cultures” rhetorical construction was intended to suggest a deeper rift: one that frequently began early in professional training, just as cultural immersion starts in childhood or in the first weeks of a new job. When Kimble and subsequent psychologists pointed to another “culture” in their own discipline, they did so in part to open up a conversation about what it meant to be a psychologist, and what was the purpose of doing psychological research. 8 Central to this was a consideration of the discipline’s fundamental and longstanding identity, ambitions, and goals.9
References to the “two cultures” across many scientific and clinical disciplines and specialty areas during the late-twentieth century reveal similar rhetorical uses of this concept outside of psychology. Among these articles, those focusing on a single discipline, such as nursing, ecology, biochemistry, or medicine, also invoked the two cultures construction to encourage discussion about the foundational values and aspirations of their field. This explication frequently led to a focus on the nature of professional training, as the authors considered where discipline specific attributes were established, and how they could be passed on to, or improved upon, in the next generation. When a two cultures divide was identified in a interdisciplinary area, such as animal ethics, alcoholism research, or biomedicine, the authors questioned how differences—in vocabulary, level of analysis, and markers of professional achievement—could be overcome to identify shared values and ambitions.10
Historians of science and medicine have studied various theoretical and methodological debates and trends in the twentieth-century “psy” professions, which include psychiatry, psychology, and neurology.11 Among these important contributions, coverage of postwar clinical psychology has largely been limited to examining professional skirmishes with psychiatry over
3 training, the practice of psychotherapy, and the prescription of pharmaceuticals. 12 This paper adds to our historical understanding of postwar psychology by examining the construction of multiple purported disciplinary divisions, with a particular focus on clinical psychologists and other mental retardation specialists. I highlight a debate over the role and value of residential institutions. While some argued that all residential institutions should be closed because they were stigmatizing and dehumanizing, others believed that at least some institutions should be reformed—with the assistance of scientific assessment and validation—because their services would always be necessary for certain individuals, especially the most profoundly affected.
Previous work in the history and sociology of science has compared the differing cultures of scientific disciplines, demonstrating that there is no one, unified scientific method or culture.
Rather than examining debates about mental retardation in terms of a single, polarizing “two cultures” divide, like those characterized by Snow, Kimble, and Rowitz, this paper examines the rhetorical construction of, and intersections between, multiple overlapping “cultures” in psychology.13 I explore three such divides, as defined and characterized by psychologists: humanistic vs. scientific/empirical, individual vs. community/social system oriented, and etiological vs. level-of-impairment focused. Psychologists identified and described these divergences from specific viewpoints, and with certain end goals.14 I argue that divergent views among clinical psychologists about mental retardation, and crucially the localization of its causes—in individual bodies, minds, and genomes or within social institutions—reflected their position among the multiple “cultures” of psychology. Importantly, differing perspectives on the origin and nature of mental retardation led to divergent beliefs about its proper management, in particular whether a continued role for residential institutions could benefit some of the affected.
4 “Two cultures” debates in psychology were frequently animated by longstanding concerns about the discipline’s perceived scientific legitimacy. My analysis of articles referencing the two cultures from across scientific and clinical fields, as described above, makes it clear that the sense of identity, prestige, and purpose among professionals was influenced in part by the expectations of other closely related disciplines. In the case of psychology, two cultures narratives often involved a consideration of whether the discipline was—or should be— more like the natural sciences and medicine, or the social sciences. Discussions about the scientific legitimacy of psychology have existed since the nineteenth century, and for many late- twentieth century psychologists, the status of psychology in the hierarchy of scientific and clinical professions remained an important issue.15 Other psychologists accused their colleagues of “physics envy” and a desire for gaining “hard science” legitimacy through a commitment to experimental methods and universal laws of human and animal behavior.16 As I show, these status concerns directly impacted professional perspectives in psychology on the localization of mental retardation’s causes, as well as the appropriate social policies for its management. 17
Postwar Training Models in Clinical Psychology
Postwar clinical psychology existed at the often-fraught intersection of research and applied practice in the broader psychology discipline. While the origins of clinical psychology can be traced back to the late nineteenth century, a key moment in its history occurred during planning for the end of WWII. In the 1940s the United States Veterans Administration (VA), anticipating the significant mental health needs of returning veterans, invested in training many new clinical psychologists to work as assistants and adjuncts to medical psychiatrists. Notably, the VA required that their staff clinical psychologists receive PhD level training, with the
5 assumption that they would be engaged in similar work as their still more highly regarded and better compensated MD psychiatrist administrators and colleagues.18 The PhD prerequisite led to a series of meetings in which academic psychologists debated the appropriate training regimen for a new generation of clinical psychologists. Many academic psychologists were concerned that a sizeable influx of practice-oriented clinical psychologists would dilute the research orientation of their field, which was seen by many as an important component of its scientific legitimacy.19 In 1947, the prominent experimental psychologist Samuel Fernberger pondered whether a shift among psychologists away from a focus on basic, experimental research would be akin to “killing the goose that laid the golden eggs?”20
The leaders of academic psychology departments were anxious to maintain a strong research concentration in their PhD programs, even as they increasingly trained psychologists who would go into applied clinical practice. In 1949, participants in the Conference on Graduate
Training in Clinical Psychology, held in Boulder, Colorado and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), formulated the “scientist-practitioner” training model with the goal of retaining a strong research orientation. The newest generation of clinical psychologists would receive instruction in clinical practice, while also being required to complete rigorous training in academic research design, methodology, and analysis. This was an ambitious goal. As the
Executive Committee acknowledged upfront in the Boulder Conference report, “In one sense the development of the profession of clinical psychologist constitutes something of an educational experiment, in that clinical psychologists are being trained both as scientists and as practitioners .
. . Many of the problems discussed in this book are related to this relatively unique attempt to combine two types of training that are ordinarily provided in separate curricula.” 21
6 While the Boulder training model was widely adopted, over the coming decades its rigorous research training requirements did not prove successful in quelling the tide of PhD clinical psychologists out of academia. With the growing public demand for psychotherapy during the 1950s and 1960s, clinical psychologists began offering these services in private practice. As historian of medicine Nancy Tomes has described, this led to conflicts with psychiatrists, who regarded psychotherapy as a medical procedure requiring their supervision. 22
While clinical psychologists sought to break away from the dominance of psychiatry in mental health services, they also worked to establish their own independent identity, perspective, and values. An important leader in this campaign was George W. Albee, a clinical psychologist and
APA president (1969-70). Albee criticized what he called psychiatry’s “sickness model”, which focused on identifying organic causes of mental illness and offering pharmaceutical treatments.
He instead promoted a “social-developmental model” for clinical psychology, which sought to identify and cultivate individual strengths, rather than highlight defects and weaknesses.23
As Albee worked to forge a unifying identity for clinical psychologists in resisting the dominance of psychiatry, the clinical psychology subdiscipline also showed signs of broader divides in American psychology, between researchers and applied practitioners. As president of the APA Division of Clinical Psychology (Division 12), and later as APA president, Albee was critical of the existing ‘scientist-practitioner’ training model in clinical psychology, based on the
Boulder Conference. He promoted new training programs located outside of academic psychology departments, which he argued were ill-equipped to train clinicians because of their scientific research focus. In 1970, Albee predicted that the divide between scientists and practitioners would continue to grow in clinical psychology, potentially to the point of
“separation or divorce” and the formation of two parallel professional organizations. 24
7 Rifts also appeared within university psychology departments. Beginning in the late
1960s, many academic psychologists lamented the perceived fracturing of their discipline in published commentaries, due to divides in methodology, values, and social goals. In his 1984 article, Gregory Kimble introduced psychologists to C.P Snow’s “two cultures” concept as he sought to bring together various accounts of psychology’s “bitter family feud”.25 Kimble defined a bipolar spectrum from “the tender-minded or humanistic position” to “the tough-minded or scientific position”. This distinction in part reflected a divide between psychologists who valued experimental methods in line with the natural sciences, and those who adopted more qualitative, observational, or interpretive approaches.26 As Kimble described it however, the rift went deeper, to include divides in whether psychologists believed in objective forms of knowledge production, the generality of laws, and predictability of nature (characteristics of the “scientific culture”), or privileged research directly relevant to improving the human condition and accepted intuitive/common-sense forms of knowledge production (as the “humanistic culture” did). In the sections ahead, I explore divisions in psychology during the decades leading up to Kimble’s analysis, and how clinical psychologists adopted the “two cultures” construction in subsequent years to describe, and make sense of, various other overlapping divergences in their field. 27
Opposition to Residential Institutions
The growth of clinical psychology to become the largest subdiscipline of American psychology by 1962 took place during a period of shifting research and service locations, from residential institutions to community clinics.28 While the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric hospitals was underway in the 1960s, the number of children who were institutionalized due to mental retardation continued to increase throughout the decade. Physicians often recommended
8 institutionalization to parents of newborns with Down syndrome. Many believed that everyone was best protected and served when a child with Down syndrome, or another stigmatizing form of mental retardation, was raised in an institution rather than a family’s home and community.
Parents groups, such as the National Association for Retarded Children advocated for a reversal of this trend, but medical hopelessness around mental retardation remained quite strong. 29
The continued efforts of parent advocates, along with the growing civil rights movement and revelations about dehumanizing abuse in residential institutions, led to a decline in the institutionalization of children with mental retardation during the 1970s.30 Almost all clinical psychologists agreed by this time that the present state of residential institutions was unacceptable. Some promoted reform, arguing that greater investment in buildings, staff training, and services would improve institutions. These psychologists believed that institutionalization would always be the best option for certain individuals with mental retardation, and argued that empirical scientific assessment and validation could be used to reform the existing facilities.
Other clinical psychologists viewed all institutions as inherently stigmatizing and saw deinstitutionalization as a humanistic political cause. These psychologists—who were strongly influenced by 1960s sociological studies on residential institutions, labeling, and stigma, as well as criticism of the mental illness concept from within psychiatry—argued that all reform efforts would ultimately fail because the institutional model was itself flawed and inhumane. 31
One prominent postwar opponent of residential institutions for mental retardation was
Yale University clinical psychologist Seymour Sarason. In 1942, Sarason completed a PhD in clinical psychology at Clark University in Worchester, Massachusetts.32 During the war, he worked at the newly opened Southbury Training School in rural Connecticut, a residential institution with strong reform ambitions. The first superintendent of Southbury, Mr. Ernest
9 Roselle, was an educator rather than a psychiatrist—an unusual leadership choice for the time.
Sarason was drawn to Southbury by its focus on education and community reintegration, and by
Roselle specifically, who he noted, “was as morally straight as they come, committed to making
Southbury as humane a setting as possible.” Roselle hired Sarason to develop a psychology department, with the understanding that research would raise the profile of the institution. 33
Sarason entered his career with the goal of refuting eugenics era presumptions about the inheritance of mental retardation in particular families and subcultures. As a college student in the 1930s, he had learned about psychologist Henry H. Goddard’s eugenic study of the Kallikak family, his influential presumptions about the germ line inheritance of mental deficiency, and the social policies that were justified by this research.34 Given his ambitions, Sarason initially viewed Southbury as a perfect fit. He saw it as an institution that “existed for its residents” rather than the typical situation in which “the residents existed for the organization.” As Sarason later recounted however, Southbury’s unique orientation and positive reform efforts did not last for long. It failed to become a primarily educational institution that quickly transitioned people back to the community. Instead, many who entered Southbury became long-term residents, and it soon had a waiting list for admission, just like the original Connecticut state residential institution.35
Sarason spent decades after his three years at Southbury Training School pondering how a residential institution with such strong and positive ambitions for reform so quickly took on what he viewed as the dehumanizing characteristics of traditional institutions. A major factor, he believed, was location. When he first arrived, Sarason noted that Southbury was, “in the middle of nowhere, my first lesson in how American society geographically segregated handicapped individuals.”36 It was clear to Sarason that the school’s isolated rural location was, “defeating of its basic rationale” to educate its residents for immediate reintegration into society. 37 He later
10 concluded that Southbury took on the traits of other residential institutions because its primary social role was ultimately to segregate people from society rather than to better include them. 38
Importantly, Southbury was also a location in which research on mental retardation took place in isolation, rather than through integration into and engagement with local communities.
After his years at Southbury, Sarason joined the Department of Psychology at Yale, in
1945, and quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a full professor in 1953. During this time,
Sarason published a significant amount of traditional psychology research, involving surveys of college students about topics like test anxiety, along with analysis of the value of psychological testing for children with mental deficiency and cerebral palsy.39 Throughout this time, he remained focused on finding effective and legitimate ways (for psychologists) of demonstrating the shortcomings of mental retardation testing, presumptions, and management. This work culminated in Sarason’s first book, Psychological Problems in Mental Deficiency (1949), which sought to complicate understandings of the relationship between intelligence and personality, and highlighted the significance of cultural context (family, community, and geographic) for the development of both. Sarason later described the book as being, “as much social commentary as it was a marshalling of evidence, an ideological statement as much as it was an effort at scholarship.” In it, Sarason balanced social analysis with traditional psychological research, which allowed him to make arguments that countered biological reductionist perspectives and societal misconceptions of mental deficiency, while also bolstering his academic profile.40
A Community Oriented Clinical Psychology
During the 1960s and 1970s, Sarason played a leading role in formulating a community orientation in psychology. His efforts contributed to the development of a new subdiscipline
11 called community psychology. Most of the founding members of community psychology in the mid 1960s came from a training background in clinical psychology. Instead of the traditional
“individual-clinical” orientation of clinical psychology, community psychologists promoted a
“community-ecological perspective”.41 Seeking an alternative to the Boulder “scientist- practitioner” model of clinical psychology, community psychologists adopted the identity of
“participant-conceptualizers” at an organizational conference for the new subdiscipline in 1965.
They were involved in community engagement and action efforts, and conducted academic research as a part of their participation in these activities. 42 The resulting embrace by community psychologists of more intuitive/common-sense approaches to research design and knowledge production was characteristic of what Kimble called the “humanistic culture” of psychology.
Sarason was similarly critical of the Boulder training model, arguing that it embedded clinical psychology in what he called a “medical-psychiatric culture”. In his 1988 autobiography,
Sarason presented his longstanding alternative vision, noting, “To me, clinical psychology was more than an endeavor to repair individual misery. It was also an endeavor to identify and influence institutional contexts that engendered and reinforced the misery.” Throughout his career, Sarason argued for a community/social systems perspective in psychology, which he envisioned as resembling the critical structural analysis of the social sciences.43
In 1962, Sarason opened the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic, an organization that employed primarily clinical psychologists, but was not a traditional clinical setting. Faculty in the Psycho-Educational Clinic spent most of their time embedded in community organizations, like schools, residential institutions, and social work offices, instead of seeing clients in their offices. Rather than one-on-one psychotherapy, Psycho-Educational Clinic faculty intervened in, and worked to change, schools and other community institutions. In the process, they learned
12 about the historical and cultural context that contributed to the initial creation of that particular setting. Sarason viewed this method of community engagement and action as a useful basis for academic research and knowledge production. As he later put it, “Social action can be for the university researcher a potent vehicle for contributing to general knowledge.” 44 Through helping to develop and participating in efforts to reform schools and residential institutions, Psycho-
Educational Clinic faculty learned about how new community settings were created. Learning from these experiences, Sarason hoped to derive general knowledge that could answer questions like, “Why did the Southbury Training School lose its innovative force and go downhill?”45
The Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic was Sarason’s response to what he called the
“asocial stance” of American psychology. Sarason frequently noted that psychological theory almost entirely focused on, “the individual organism and virtually dismisses the social order.”46
This tendency to focus on individuals, and particularly their perceived deficiencies, can be seen in clinical psychology’s postwar fascination with psychoanalytic theory, as well as the earlier contributions of psychologists like Goddard to the American eugenics movement.47 Historian
Kurt Danziger has argued that even postwar social psychology in the US was, “dominated by an individualistic social ontology”, and was unwilling assimilate the study of groups.48 Countering his discipline’s focus on the individual, Sarason sought to bring a new community orientation to psychology, which focused on social institutions and systems. Rather than looking for biological or behavioral causes and treatments for individuals, Sarason pointed to the role of social settings in creating and labeling individuals with mental retardation. As he put it in 1974, “our ‘humane’ institutions are manufacturers of social disease.” Residential institutions, he argued, dehumanized and stigmatized, rather than educated and reintegrated, because they deprived people with mental retardation of a sense of inclusiveness and belonging: what he called “the
13 psychological sense of community.” While this perspective had gained ascendance in the social sciences during the 1960s, it was a challenging vision to introduce in the Yale Psychology
Department, where individual and laboratory based experimental research remained dominant. 49
Sarason directed the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic for almost a decade. A number of the junior faculty that he hired to staff the clinic, including Murray Levine, N. Dickon Reppucci, and Edison J. Trickett, went on to play leading roles in community psychology, but would do so at other universities.50 By the early 1970s, it had become apparent that none of the junior faculty that Sarason had hired to work in the Clinic, who were also faculty members in the Yale
Department of Psychology, would receive tenure. Sarason later recounted, “the faculty at the clinic were not highly regarded by our department . . .They did not fit the mold of the empirical researcher who does discrete, quantitatively analyzed studies that derive from and are related to
‘mainstream’ theoretical issues.” Put another way, Sarason’s Psycho-Educational Clinic faculty did not fit with the predominantly “scientific culture” of the Yale psychology department. From the beginning, Sarason had known that most of his junior faculty would not receive tenure, but had hoped that at least one would be given the chance to stay at Yale. After recognizing that this was not going to happen, Sarason left the Psycho-Educational Clinic in 1971. Levine, one of
Sarason’s earliest hires, later noted that Sarason found it very difficult to develop close relationships with students and junior faculty, only to see them leave Yale after a short period. 51
When it became clear that he would not receive tenure at Yale, Levine took a tenured position at the University of Buffalo. He recounted, “I wasn’t doing a lot of experimental work, that was the cross-cutting dimension. At that point experimental social psychology was a big deal at Yale.” Reflecting on the challenges of using experimental methods in the community he explained, “I tried to set up an experimental design, but in the school I was at 25% of the kids
14 turned over within the year . . . We had all kinds of trouble. Teachers were not happy with the idea of random assignment. They said, ‘if you don’t take this kid I’m quitting.’”52 Experimental methods were challenging to enact in community settings, as opposed to the isolation of the laboratory, clinic, or college classroom. Also, unlike most experimental psychologists, community psychologists sought to flatten research hierarchies and to empower their participants to be fully and equally involved in the research process. This did not fit with the scientific norms of research design in most prestigious psychology departments.53 Research involving community engagement and action was complex and time-consuming. This slowed the completion of dissertations and often prevented faculty from publishing in the best journals, making it difficult to earn tenure at places, like Yale, that privileged controlled experimental research. 54
The Yale Psycho-Educational Clinical differed, in its identity and ambitions, from psychology’s “scientific culture” and traditional focus of individuals. As Sarason put it, “We did not, except infrequently, systematically collect data that we aggregated and analyzed quantitatively. We scanned, participated, and observed, organizing our experiences in a descriptive or narrative way. We were also interveners and advocates, describing in detail what had gone before and what came after our efforts. We never ‘proved’ anything. We sought to identify and describe problems and processes.”55 This description fit more closely with what
Kimble called psychology’s other “humanistic culture”, in its preference of intuition over objectivism, embrace for indeterminism instead of lawfulness, and privileging of social relevance and improvement over basic knowledge production. 56 While the Psycho-Educational
Clinic was a psychological research organization, its humanistic and community/social systems orientation did not fit with the norms of psychology departments at Yale and other prestigious
15 universities. However, as I describe in the next section, Sarason and his colleagues were not alone in promoting alternative viewpoints on psychological research and mental retardation.
Wolf Wolfensberger and the Normalization Principle
Another strong critic of residential institutions during the 1960s and 1970s was clinical psychologist Wolf Wolfensberger, a German immigrant who came with his family to the United
States in 1950, at age 16. Wolfensberger completed a PhD in clinical psychology at Peabody
College (now part of Vanderbilt University) in 1962, and worked in multiple residential institutions before, during, and after his required, one-year clinical internship. Most clinical psychologists during this era completed their internships in psychiatric settings, under the guidance of physicians: another aspect of the clinical psychology’s scientist-practitioner training model and “medical-psychiatric culture” that drew strong criticism from George Albee, Sarason, and others.57 Many clinical psychologists were also employed in psychiatric institutions. In 1964,
Wolfensberger was hired by the Nebraska Psychiatric Institute, and was given an academic appointment in the University of Nebraska Medical College Department of Psychiatry.
During his time in Nebraska, Wolfensberger successfully led a push for new state policies that moved away from residential institutions and toward full community integration for people with mental illness and retardation.58 He was a prominent proponent of the normalization principle, calling for “making available to the mentally retarded patterns and conditions of everyday life that are as close as possible to the norms and patterns of the mainstream society.” 59
Normalization was initially formulated in multiple Scandinavian countries by Bengt Nirje, Niels
Erik Bank-Mikkelsen, and Karl Grunewald. The principle came to be more widely known in the
United States after the 1969 publication of Changing Patterns in Residential Services for the
16 Mentally Retarded, edited by Wolfensberger and Robert B. Kugel, who was his dean at the
Nebraska Medical College. The Changing Patterns report was produced on behalf of the US
President’s Committee on Mental Retardation, of which Kugel was a member. Under the direction of Wolfensberger, Changing Patterns featured many of the major voices in the burgeoning movement for the deinstitutionalization and normalization of people with mental retardation. The contributors included Bank-Mikkelsen, Grunewald, Nirje, and Sarason, as well as Burton Blatt, an educational psychologist and advocate of reforming residential institutions.60
Wolfensberger’s efforts to promote and enact the normalization principle did not go over well with many of his colleagues at the Nebraska Psychiatric Institute. In 1970, he published a paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry outlining the implications of normalization for psychiatric services. The next month, Time magazine reported on Wolfensberger’s article, in a piece called “Is Basket Weaving Harmful?”, which highlighted what Wolfensberger called the
“mortification” of individuals who were housed in residential institutions, and his criticism of their artificial daily schedules and activities.61 As Wolfensberger’s advocacy for normalization gained national prominence in the early 1970s, his prospects for receiving tenure in the Nebraska
Psychiatry Department diminished. He later noted, “Unlike other professors who perished when they did not publish, I perished in good part because of what I published.” While he had the strong support from his co-editor and dean, Wolfensberger believed that Kugel was unwilling to defend him amidst the opposition to his ideological positions of their psychiatric colleagues.62
In 1971, Wolfensberger left Nebraska for a visiting position at Canada’s National
Institute on Mental Retardation in Toronto. The next year, he published The Principles of
Normalization in Human Services, a book made up in part of articles that he had been unable to publish in mainstream psychiatry and mental health journals.63 Soon thereafter, Wolfensberger
17 was offered another academic position in Burton Blatt’s Center for Human Policy at Syracuse
University. This time he received tenure, but was responsible for generating half of his salary on his own. Wolfensberger served as the Director of the Training Institute for Human Service
Planning at Syracuse. As part of this, he regularly organized multi-day seminars on the normalization principle in which he taught service providers how to implement his ideals. These seminars were also an important source of income for Wolfensberger and the Training Institute. 64
Lecture slides from Wolfensberger’s Training Institute seminars show how he presented normalization from a community/social systems perspective (See Figures 3,4,5). Wolfensberger argued that the geographic localization of residential institutions and services for people with mental retardation reflected their position in society and contributed to their stigmatization. On his presentation slides, he highlighted how resources and services for people with disabilities were often located far away from population centers, in large, overcrowded institutions, which were far away from families and communities. Wolfensberger also emphasized his concept of
“juxtaposition”, noting that disability services were most often located near what he called socially devalued locations, like graveyards and garbage dumps, and rarely in close proximity to socially valued institutions like exclusive private schools or the mayor’s residence. 65 With this geographic analysis, Wolfensberger conveyed his community/social systems oriented perspective that the stigmatization and dehumanization of people with mental retardation was a product of societal relations, rather than a natural response to an individual’s inherent characteristics. His conception was influenced by sociological research on stigma and residential institutions by Erving Goffman.66 Addressing these issues from a social policy perspective,
Wolfensberger argued that if people with disabilities were better integrated into and around socially valued locations and roles, they would be perceived and treated more positively.
18 During the mid 1970s, Wolfensberger developed an assessment program for disability service-providing institutions called PASS (Program Analysis of Service Systems). He and his colleagues used this rigorous tool, which included 50 ratings, to determine whether a service setting aligned with the normalization principle. PASS was an effort to standardize, legitimate, and quantify a process of determining the extent to which the environments of large residential institutions, small group homes, and many settings in between, corresponded to a particular set of humanistic ideals. Wolfensberger understood the demonstrative power of scientific evidence for psychologists and policymakers, and believed that some aspects of normalization could be validated through empirical investigation. However, he noted that other elements were, “at least to some extent ‘trans-empirical’ (if not fully nonempirical).” While he suggested that significant empirical evidence validating the normalization principle already existed—though it was spread across the literature of various disciplines—Wolfensberger argued that, “Ultimately, the most important issues in human services (as in life, politics, economics, religion, etc.) have not, are not, and never will be decided on the basis of ‘research,’ or even on the basis of empiricism and evidence. They will be settled on the plane of values and ideologies, or even of passion.” 67
Wolfensberger’s defense of normalization, which was based on intuitive social values and a sense of obligation to improve the human condition, rather than a commitment to objectivism and empirical methods, was grounded in the convictions of psychology’s “humanistic culture”.
Like Sarason, Wolfensberger dedicated much of his career to demonstrating that institutionalization did more to create and stigmatize people with mental retardation than to care for and reintegrate them into broader society. In fact, both men argued that this stigma extended to the professional staff of residential institutions, whose association with these socially devalued locations led to others interpreting them as “second-rate” clinicians.68 Some of Sarason and
19 Wolfensberger’s arguments about the shortcomings of residential institutions were widely adopted in mainstream clinical psychology during the 1970s. However, their common interest in identifying and altering the pathologizing aspects of communities and social systems, rather than diagnosing and treating individuals, remained marginalized in academic clinical psychology; as did Sarason and Wolfensberger’s “humanistic culture” based embrace of intuitive and socially engaged research. In the next section, I examine criticism of normalization from psychology’s
“scientific culture”, as well as researchers who strongly promoted the study of individuals.
“A Banner in Search of Some Data”
Debates about the positive value and efficacy of deinstitutionalization and normalization increased in vigor during the 1980s. The preceding decades saw rapid deinstitutionalization of psychiatric and mental retardation facilities, often with insufficient funding going to community integration and support.69 Widespread recognition of these failures facilitated a more open resistance to deinstitutionalization policies by institutional administrators and other critics, who sought to promote a different but ongoing role for residential institutions.70 While most clinical psychologists supported the basic tenets of normalization, many questioned the feasibility and appropriateness of the deinstitutionalization of all people with mental retardation. Supporters of the continued existence of residential institutions frequently pointed to what they believed was a lack of evidence supporting the humanistic argument for universal deinstitutionalization. They believed that more empirical studies were needed to justify shuttering all institutions.71 This long simmering debate became most intense in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when proponents of universal deinstitutionalization and critics of this policy engaged in a spiteful back-and-forth in the pages of American Psychologist and the American Journal on Mental Retardation (AJMR).
20 One prominent proponent of the need for more empirical validation of residential settings for people with mental retardation was Edward Zigler, a clinical and developmental psychologist at Yale. Zigler began as an assistant professor in the Yale Psychology Department in 1959, after completing a PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Texas, Austin and an internship at
Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts. His research focused on how living in a residential institution affected the individual motivation of children with mental retardation, including how they performed on intellectual and other psychological tests, and their adjustment after release.
As part of this, Zigler was a major proponent of the developmental perspective, which argued that most children with mental retardation, and especially those without a clear organic cause, went through the same developmental stages as normal children, but did so more slowly.72
Throughout his career, Zigler was a proponent of reforming residential institutions and approaching children with mental retardation as whole persons. While he supported many of the basic aims of normalization, Zigler was a critic of adherence to normalization as a humanistic ideological movement. In testimony before the US Congress in 1976, Zigler dismissively described normalization as, “a banner in search of some data.” 73 Zigler reiterated this appraisal in a 1990 AJMR article, by criticizing what he called the “‘social address’ model” of residential institutions held by normalization proponents, which focused on the geographic localization of residential institutions within states and communities. He noted, “We have conceptualized institutions . . . only as places, not as places within which interactions occur”, and went on to argue, “we need specific knowledge about how each type of setting . . . influences those social psychological variables that impinge upon the person’s everyday life.” 74 Zigler critiqued
Wolfensberger’s community/social systems oriented analysis of how the stigma and social value associated with particular locations impacted institutionalized populations. He instead called for
21 a renewed focus on how conditions within particular institutions affected individual persons. In response, Wolfensberger identified Zigler as one of the primary opponents of normalization. 75
Zigler’s AJMR piece was part of an ongoing an increasingly contentious conversation between promoters of normalization and complete deinstitutionalization; and supporters of the continued assessment and reform of residential institutions. Following Wolfensberger and
Sarason, advocates of deinstitutionalization promoted a community/social systems orientation, and adopted perspectives from what Kimble and other psychologists (sometimes dismissively) called psychology’s “humanistic culture”. They identified mental retardation as a pathologizing label and residential institutions as primarily a means of isolation and protectionism. Zigler and other supporters of a continued role for residential institutions promoted the more traditional focus of clinical psychology on individual pathology, diagnosis, and treatment. Aligning with psychology’s “scientific culture”, they argued that empirical analysis could identify the best setting to support each person with mental retardation, and that in at least some cases residential institutions were likely to be the superior option. These professionals put greater emphasis on clinical research examining the interactions of specific individuals with particular environments.
In 1989, clinical psychologists and normalization advocates Stephen Greenspan and
Mary Cerreto framed the differing perspectives on proper management of mental retardation as reflective of a broader “two cultures” divide of in psychology. Citing Louis Rowitz’s 1987 editorial “The Two Cultures Revisited”, Greenspan and Cerreto noted, “the general schism in psychology between researchers and practitioners is also found among those who study or work with people who have mental retardation. The side of this schism on which one falls is evidenced by one’s attitudes toward the human service philosophy of ‘normalization.’” They pointed to a
1987 piece by psychologists Sharon Landesman and Earl Butterfield as representative of the
22 other side, stating that, “a number of mental retardation researchers (whose backgrounds are often in experimental psychology) are very resistant to [normalization].” Greenspan and Cerreto argued, “It is clear that the controversy over normalization is more ideological than scientific. In this, we agree with Landesman and Butterfield, but although they lament the lack of empirical validation for normalization, we accept it, because value systems cannot, and should not, be subjected to empirical testing.”76 Like other supporters of universal deinstitutionalization, and in line with Kimble’s characterization of psychology’s “humanistic culture”, Greenspan and
Cerreto resisted the call for empirical and experimental evidence supporting their position and criticized the view of psychologists who insisted on further scientific study and validation.
Landesman and Butterfield were given an opportunity to respond in the same issue. They did so by highlighting their own ideals to improve understanding and treatment, stating, “we reiterate our call for intensified efforts to increase our knowledge base about human development and the effects of treatment in the field of mental retardation.” 77 They supported the position held by Zigler and other institutional reform advocates that more evidence was the best path to ethical and effective care. The next year however, Landesman took on a less conciliatory tone when addressing the position of those who dismissed the need for scientific evaluation, and made social values based arguments in support of universal deinstitutionalization. She commented,
“An antievaluation and antiscience mood unfortunately has surfaced in the normalization reform effort . . . This self-styled humanistic thrust has been accompanied by some efforts to suppress findings and observations rather than to understand why divergent or negative results occur.” 78
This characterization appeared as part of a series of responses to Zigler’s 1990 AJMR article, which offered a range of perspectives spanning various divides. For instance, while a strong promoter of empirical validation and research focusing on individuals, Landesman, based on her
23 own professional experience, disagreed with Zigler that residential institutions could be reformed to benefit people with mental retardation. Thus, Landesman was not supporting a role for continued institutionalization; she was defending her identity within psychology’s “scientific culture” and its fundamental belief in the need for empirically based decision-making. 79
Another divide examined in the 1990 AJMR article series involved the relationship between scientific research and advocacy. Zigler advocated a dual role for scientists in producing knowledge and working to improve the lives of people with mental retardation. Landesman endorsed this stance, and argued that researchers needed to do more to bring scientific skepticism and inquiry into service locations.80 Other contributors, including University of Nebraska psychiatrist Frank Menolascino and clinical psychologist Jack Stark, were critical of Zigler’s view of the helping role of scientists. Stark and Menolascino, who had been a close colleague of
Wolfensberger during his Nebraska years, were prominent normalization advocates. They lamented, “the gap between the research and advocacy community,” and argued, “What is missing is the utilization of research, a reciprocal process in which service needs are conveyed to researchers and vice versa.” Stark and Menolascino commented that scientists only spoke to one another when they formulated research designs, and did not reach out to people with disabilities or their advocates to learn what they needed or desired. The same was true, Menolascino and
Stark noted, in the assessment of service settings, which rarely integrated user feedback about successes and failures. For Menolascino and Stark, like Sarason, bringing together science and advocacy meant empowering community members to be equal participants in the research process. This approach, which embraced intuition, empathy, and social activism in research design, fit with psychology’s “humanistic culture”. Whereas, psychologists aligned with the discipline’s “scientific culture” saw such engagement as compromising to research objectivity. 81
24 In 1992, Zigler and his former postdoctoral fellow Robert Hodapp, published an article titled “Integration and Development: Reconciling two conflicting perspectives” which sought to deescalate the normalization debate and identify common ground. In line with Kimble’s adoption of the “two cultures”, the authors described “two distinct ‘world views’”, one rooted in social values and the other in science.82 Hodapp and Zigler suggested that the divisive rhetoric among mental retardation researchers and advocates was akin to previous science and society conflicts over heliocentric theory and Darwinian evolution. Seeking to resolve this divergence, they argued, “both sides are incorrect . . . each advocates only one of several nonexclusive values.
Neither individual development not societal integration is an all-encompassing value that should be followed in every instance.” Though Zigler and Hodapp embraced a more open-minded position, they remained dismissive of normalization advocates, who they saw as uncritically accepting a uniform ideology. This embrace did not fit with the perspective of those on, “the science side of the issue”, who called for more research and clear proof of success. 83 While this article did not end the debate, it was a sincere effort to tamp down an overheated conflict. By this time however, as I describe in the next section, new divergences were emerging in the understanding of mental retardation, which added another layer to existing professional divides.
Mental Retardation and the “New Genetics”
Professional reflections on the “two cultures” of clinical psychology and the mental retardation field continued and evolved in the 1990s as new approaches to research, diagnosis, and management grew in prominence. In 1994, Robert Hodapp published an article in AJMR with Elisabeth Dykens, a clinical psychologist at Yale. Hodapp and Dykens referenced C.P.
Snow in identifying another “two cultures” divide in psychology, between a “level-of-
25 impairment” and an etiological focus in mental retardation research. Most clinical psychologists, they argued, were interested in the level-of-impairment of individuals with mental retardation, which was assessed based on IQ scores and adaptive skills. On the other hand, the attention of etiology focused professionals, which included geneticists and psychiatrists, was oriented toward distinguishing specific conditions, like fragile X, Prader-Willi, and Williams syndromes. In the middle were developmental psychologists, who were historically more mixed, and followed
Edward Zigler in distinguishing between cases of mental retardation with a clear etiology (called organic) and those of unknown cause. However, they still rarely focused on specific etiologies. 84
Hodapp and Dykens made their case by surveying articles in nine journals in the mental retardation field, demonstrating that three of these journals primarily published articles that focused on etiological (primarily genetic) distinctions, and six were oriented mostly towards level-of-impairment distinctions. They argued that this divide existed beyond the location of publication, and had led to a more concerning lack of communication between professionals in the two cultures. As part of this the authors noted, “behavioral researchers are generally either unconcerned with etiology or skeptical of its importance; etiology-based workers are almost equally unaware of basic issues in behavioral research in mental retardation.” 85 Dykens and
Hodapp hoped to bridge this divide by encouraging more behavioral research on etiologically specific conditions. While they acknowledged that variation would exist within etiological groups, they believed that a general awareness of common behavioral outcomes for a particular condition would be valuable for researchers and families in making management decisions.
Embracing a focus on specific etiologies, which were primarily genetic syndromes, was not a natural or comfortable step for most clinical psychologists and other mental retardation specialists. As Dykens noted in 1995, “Although the so-called ‘new genetics’ calls for improved
26 research on syndromic behavior, this work has not been a priority in the larger mental retardation field.”86 Notably, Dyken’s article was the only entry indexed under the subject heading
“genetics” in volume 99 of AJMR. The next two volumes of the journal, published between
1995-1997, had no index subject heading for genetics. There were several reasons for the resistance to etiological perspectives in the mental retardation field. Most significantly, etiological categories were premised on organic diagnosis, which many clinical psychologists and special educators viewed as a reductive, “sickness model” approach to understanding mental retardation. They believed that such diagnoses had few implications for individual care. The genetic syndrome perspective also drew upon a language, including concepts such as nucleotides, phenotypes, and probabilities of expression, which was unfamiliar to most psychologists and educators. In addition, given the 40-year history of attempts to free and distinguish themselves from psychiatric and medical perspectives and oversight, clinic psychologists were understandably hesitant to embrace etiologic categories as central to their approach to managing mental retardation.87 At the same time however, optimism for the revolutionary promises of genetic technologies was at new heights in the 1990s. With the Human
Genome Project and molecular revolution, many new funding opportunities were available. 88
Hodapp and Dykens believed that clinical psychologists who specialized in mental retardation had more to gain than lose from an embrace of the new genetics. They first presented their “two cultures” argument and call for more engagement with geneticists in the early 1990s at the Gatlinburg Conference on Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. This annual gathering of clinical psychologists had been taking place in Gatlinburg, Tennessee since the
1960s. Dykens recalled a critical reception of their presentation, and significant doubts about accepting a role for genetics in the behaviorally oriented field of clinical psychology. 89 Data on
27 the topical area of past presentations at the Gatlinburg Conference after 2000 suggests an initially slow but steady uptake of an emerging etiological perspective. By 2001, 15% of presentations involved a focus on genetic syndromes, which expanded to more than 20% on average during the next decade.90 Over this time, Dykens, Hodapp, and many other psychologists promoted genetic syndrome etiologies as useful but imperfect indicators of likely “behavioral phenotypes.”
However, resistance continued to exist in the broader mental retardation field, especially among special educators, who often viewed genetic diagnoses as more likely to be stigmatizing labels than helpful evidence in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of individuals.91
While an etiological focus was not mutually exclusive with a community orientation or a
“humanistic culture” perspective on mental retardation, it often directed attention to specific, clinically defined individual attributes, genetic mutations, disease categories, and patient populations. Etiologies like malnutrition and lead poisoning could be linked to larger community and structural reform efforts. However, most clinical psychologists who embraced the etiological perspective in studying mental retardation tended to focus on a few specific clinical disorders. 92
Some etiologically focused researchers, including Dykens and Hodapp, brought social systems and humanistic perspectives to their studies of, and advocacy for, specific conditions, but these efforts did not translate to the 50% of people with mental retardation who did not have a clear etiology.93 As Hodapp acknowledged, scientists often gravitate toward topics that they believe to be “doable”. From an etiological perspective, forms of mental retardation without a clear diagnosis are more difficult to study. Importantly, this sense of greater feasibility associated with etiologically defined genetic syndromes led, after 1980, to increased collaboration between clinical psychologists—especially those who identified with psychology’s “scientific culture”— and biomedical researchers. This renewed trend toward privileging the role of genetics in mental
28 retardation encouraged the continued growth of what Sarason called clinical psychology’s
“psychiatric-medical culture”, which focused on studying, managing, and treating individuals. 94
Conclusions
In 1990, at the height of scientific vs. humanistic “two cultures” tensions in clinical psychology, Richard M. McFall presented his “Manifesto for a Science of Clinical Psychology.”
The speech was McFall’s presidential address for the Section for the Development of Clinical
Psychology as an Experimental/Behavioral Science, a special interest group within the APA
Division of Clinical Psychology.95 McFall argued, “if clinical psychology is ever to establish itself as a legitimate science, then the highest standards must be set and adhered to without compromise.” He asserted that all clinical psychologists should see themselves as scientists first, and stated that he could not envision any other appropriate identity for professionals in this subdiscipline. Further defining his view of scientific legitimacy, McFall expressed his belief that doing good science required, “dispassionate, objective, and critical evaluations.” 96
From the perspective of some other clinical psychologists, including many I highlight in this paper, McFall’s manifesto represented only one particular form of psychological research, which was not exactly similar, or mutually exclusive, from their own viewpoint. For instance, community oriented clinical psychologists were not dispassionate researchers. Rather, they saw empowerment and activism as fundamental to their professional approach. Likewise, while those clinical psychologists who Gregory Kimble associated with psychology’s “humanistic culture” recognized the value of objective research, they also viewed critical scientific evaluation as a potential roadblock to achieving particular societal and policy goals.97 Clinical psychologists
29 who were not committed to the individual focused, “scientific culture” of their discipline, did not believe that more intuitive and socially inclusive research designs were less critical or valuable.
As I have described, debates about scientific legitimacy, methodology, and the proper ambitions of psychological research affected professional perspectives on mental retardation.
Though many clinical psychologists were highly critical of residential institutions, they remained strong supporters of the need for empirical validation of universal deinstitutionalization before it was widely adopted. Normalization advocates often criticized psychologists for dismissing social values based arguments, and for slowing the deinstitutionalization process by turning it into a controlled experiment.98 However, clinical psychologists who were committed to defending dispassionate, objective empiricism—even when it meant undercutting social policy positions that they preferred—did so in part out of an interest in protecting the scientific legitimacy of psychology. They also believed that empirically validated policies would be more effective and beneficial in the long run. Ultimately, of course, value-laden assumptions—whether about the dehumanizing nature of residential institutions, the effects of social segregation on the psychological sense of community, the causes of mental retardation, or the need for empirical validation—informed the views of all professionals across psychology’s multiple “cultures”.
The identification of “two cultures” divides occurred across the literature of late twentieth-century scientific and clinical professions. This rhetorical construction was widely used to highlight the perceived presence of a deep-seated rift in a field, and to encourage renewed conversation about the proper nature and purpose of research in the area. In suggesting a single polarizing divide however, two cultures references often overshadowed the multiple intersecting factors that shape professional identity and ambitions. When considering a purported two cultures divide in a scientific or clinical community, historians must take care to look
30 beyond constructed polarities, to instead analyze the resulting discussions about professional training and purpose. Examining the various intersecting identities of scientific and clinical professionals will facilitate historians of science and medicine in more deeply understanding both the fixity and fluidity of polarizing perspectives in our society. For scientists and clinicians, highlighting professional divergences may help to bolster their prestige and publication records, but doing so may also harm those affected by the policies under debate. Further analysis of how multiple “cultures”—comprising deeply held identities, ambitions, and goals—intersect within a discipline or research area may contribute to the identification of overlooked common ground, which could facilitate efforts to better support and integrate marginalized populations.
1 Gregory A. Kimble, “Psychology’s Two Cultures,” American Psychologist, 1984, 39(8):833-
839.
2 Ibid; C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution: The Rede Lecture, 1959
(New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959). Kimble was not alone in using Snow’s two cultures construction to grapple with the postwar fracturing of his discipline. Victor McKusick similarly pointed out what he saw as the “two cultures” of medical genetics, resulting from a divide between MD trained clinicians and PhD trained academic researchers. See Victor A. McKusick,
“The Growth and Development of Human Genetics as a Clinical Discipline.” American Journal of Human Genetics, 1975, 27(3):261-273, on p. 270.
3 Kimble, “Psychology’s Two Cultures” (cit. n. 1). The APA currently has 54 Divisions comprising subdiscipline specialists. The other psychologists surveyed were from Division 9
31
(Society for the Psychological Study of Science Issues), Division 29 (Psychotherapy), and
Division 32 (Humanistic). Those surveyed by Kimble were only members of one Division.
4 Ibid; Gregory A. Kimble, “Behaviorism and Unity in Psychology,” Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 2000, 9(6):208-212. In this article, I focus on “two cultures” divides as they were characterized and made use of by my historical actors in psychology. For more on the specific social and cultural context of the two cultures debate that began with C.P. Snow’s 1959
Rede lecture see Guy Ortolano, The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural
Politics in Postwar Britain (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009).
5 I do so while being mindful that the term humanistic psychology had multiple meanings during the postwar period, and that some of my actors may not have readily identified with this label.
For more on the history and cultural impacts of the specific subdiscipline of humanistic psychology, which emerged in the 1950s under the leadership of Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, and Rollo May see Jessica Grogan, Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties
Culture and the Shaping of the Modern Self (New York: Harper Perennial, 2013).
6 Louis Rowitz, “The Two Cultures Revisited,” Mental Retardation, 1987, 25(2):65-66, on p.
65.
7 For a paper that thoroughly engages with Snow’s argument and its reception see Philip
Darbyshire, “Nursing, Art and Science: Revisiting the Two Cultures,” International Journal of
Nursing, 1999, 5123-5131.
8 For more on the development of “epistemic cultures” in scientific practice see Karin Knorr-
Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1999), on p. 1-11. Knorr-Cetina highlights the role of social separation and
“internally referential systems” in the formation of specific cultures, with a focus on high energy
32 physics and molecular biology. In this paper, I focus on the signifiance of professional identity and social goals in a clinical subdiscipline, rather than the practices of laboratory technoscience.
9 Having set up the “two cultures” problem in psychology, Kimble attempted to resolve it in two later papers, through a common commitment to an empirical and deterministic behavioral science. Gregory A Kimble, “Psychology From the Standpoint of a Generalist.,” American
Psychologist, 1989, 44(3):491-499; Gregory A. Kimble, “Behaviorism and Unity in
Psychology,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2000, 9(6):208-212.
10 For this analysis, I identified and examined a total of ten articles from scientific and clinical disciplines other than psychology, which referenced a “two cultures” divide. Darbyshire,
“Nursing, Art and Science” (cit. n. 7); Holling, “Two Cultures of Ecology,” Conservation
Ecology, 1998, 2(2):4; Arthur Kornberg, “The Two Cultures: Chemistry and Biology,”
Biochemistry, 1987, 26(22):6888-6891; Henrik Wulff, “The Two Cultures of Medicine:
Objective Facts Versus Subjectivity and Values,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine,
1999, 92(11):549-552. For use in interdisciplinary areas see McKusick, “The Growth and
Development of Human Genetics” (cit. n. 2); David Fraser, “Animal Ethics and Animal Welfare
Science: Bridging the Two Cultures,” Applied Animal Behavior Science, 1999, 65(3):171-189;
Ann Lennarson Greer, “The Two Cultures of Biomedicine: Can There be Consensus?,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 1987, 258(19):2739-2740; Penny Owen, “Clinical Practice and Medical Research: Bridging the Divide Between the Two Cultures,” British Journal of
General Practice, 1995, 45557-560; Alan C. Ogborne, “Bridging the Gap Between the Two
Cultures of Alcoholism Research and Treatment,” British Journal of Addiction, 1988, 83729-
733; C.S. Donald Kennedy, “Two Cultures,” Science, 2003, 299(5610):1148-1149.
11 Nikolas S. Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge, UK:
33
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), p. 10-17. On the history of American psychology see James H.
Capshew, Psychologists on the March: Science, Practice, and Professional Identity in America,
1929-1969 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999); Ellen Herman, The Romance of
American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California
Press, 1995); John C. Burnham, Paths Into American Culture: Psychology, Medicine, and
Morals. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press, 1988); Kurt Danziger, Constructing the Subject:
Historical Origins of Psychological Research (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990);
Donald S. Napoli, Architects of Adjustment: The History of the Psychological Profession in the
United States. (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1981). On clinical psychology specifically see Nancy Tomes, “The Development of Clinical Psychology, Social Work, and Psychiatric
Nursing: 1900–1980s,” in History of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology, ed. Edwin R. Wallace
IV and John Gach (New York: Springer, 2008), pp. 657-682. On the history of psychiatry and deinstitutionalization see Andrew T. Scull, Decarceration: Community Treatment and the
Deviant—A Radical View (Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977); Gerald N. Grob, From
Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1991); Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry: From the Age of the Asylum to the Era of
Prozac (New York: Wiley, 1997). On psychoanalysis specifically see Nathan G. Hale Jr, The
Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States: Freud and the Americans, 1917–1985
(Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995).
12 For an extensive history of clinical psychology from inside the subdiscipline see John M.
Reisman, A History of Clinical Psychology, Second Edition (New York: Hemisphere, 1991).
13 Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures (cit. n. 8). For an examination of how differing approaches to knowledge production influence multiple disciplines and professions see John V. Pickstone,
34
Ways of Knowing: A New History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 2000). On the construction of boundaries to distinguish science from other cultural activites see Thomas F. Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
14 My approach is informed by historians of science Jeroen Bouterse and Bart Karstens, who examined differing characterizations of the two cultures divide by C.P. Snow and George Sarton, and argued that, “each formulation of the divide is different and needs to be seen within the intellectual and institutional agenda of the author who constructed it.” See Jeroen Bouterse and
Bart Karstens, “A Diversity of Divisions: Tracing the History of the Demarcation Between the
Sciences and the Humanities,” Isis, 2015, 106(2):341-352, on p. 342.
15 Mitchell G. Ash, “Psychology” in The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 7: The Modern
Social Sciences, ed. Theodore M. Porter and Dorothy Ross (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 2003), pp. 251-274; William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Holt and
Company, 1890); Sigmund Koch, “The Nature and Limits of Psychological Knowledge: Lessons of a Century Qua ‘Science’,” Amer. Psychol., 1981, 36(3):257-269; Gary Gutting, “How
Reliable Are the Social Sciences?,” New York Times, 2012; Timothy D. Wilson, “Stop Bullying the ‘Soft’ Sciences: The Social Sciences Are Just That – Sciences,” Los Angeles Times, 2012;
Alex B. Berezow, “Why Psychology Isn’t Science,” Los Angeles Times, 2012.
16 Howard H. Kendler, Psychology: A Science in Conflict (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1981), p. 111-114; Stephen Toulmin and David E. Leary, “The cult of empiricism in psychology, and beyond,” in A Century of Psychology as Science, ed. Sigmund Koch and David E. Leary
(Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1985), pp. 594-617, on p. 598, 601,
608; Thomas Hardy Leahey, A History of Modern Psychology (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1994),
35 p. 24-25; Jefferson M. Fish, “What Anthropology Can Do for Psychology: Facing Physics Envy,
Ethnocentrism, and a Belief in ‘Race’,” American Anthropologist, 2000, 102(3):552-563, on p.
553-554; Stephen Greenspan, “How Do We Know When it’s Raining Out? Why Existing
Conceptions of Intellectual Disability Are All (or Mostly) Wet,” Psychology in Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities Newsletter, 2012, 37(2):4-8, on p. 4. Laboratory investigation, experimental methods, and “instrumental objectivity” have been central to the psychology discipline’s efforts, since the late nineteenth century, to distinguish its “scientific” studies of the mind from the “unscientific” methods of philosophy. See Deborah J. Coon, “Standardizing the
Subject: Experimental Psychologists, Introspection, and the Quest for a Technoscientific Ideal,”
Technology and Culture, 1993, 34(4):757-783, on p. 762-4; Jeremy T. Blatter, “Screening the
Psychological Laboratory: Hugo Münsterberg, Psychotechnics, and the Cinema, 1892–1916,”
Science in Context, 2015, 28(1):53-76; Ash, “Psychology” (cit. n. 15), p. 260; Lorraine Daston,
“Objectivity and the Escape From Perspective,” Social Studies of Science, 1992, 22(4):597-618.
17 Thomas F. Oltmanns and Leonard Krasner, “A Voice for Science in Clinical Psychology: The
History of Section III of Division 12,” The Clinical Psychologist, 1993, 46(1):25-32.
18 Tomes, “The Development of Clinical Psychology” (cit. n. 11).
19 Reisman, A History of Clinical Psychology (cit. n. 12).
20 Samuel W. Fernberger, “The Future of Psychology, or the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs.,”
Amer. Psychol., 1947, 2(6):209-210, on p. 210.
21 Victor Raimy, Training in Clinical Psychology (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950), p. v. For more on the professional impacts of the Boulder Model see Reisman, A History of Clinical
Psychology (cit. n. 12); Andrew T. Scull, “Contending Professions: Sciences of the Brain and
Mind in the United States, 1850–2013,” Sci. Context, 2015, 28(1):131-161.
36
22 Tomes, “The Development of Clinical Psychology” (cit. n. 11).
23 George W. Albee, “Emerging Concepts of Mental Illness and Models of Treatment: The
Psychological Point of View,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 1969, 125(7):870-876, on p. 870.
24 George W. Albee, “The Uncertain Future of Clinical Psychology,” Amer. Psychol., 1970,
25(12):1071-1080, on p. 1078.
25 Kimble, “Psychology’s Two Cultures” (cit. n. 1), p. 835. Kimble’s 1984 paper appears to be the first to specifically reference Snow’s two “cultures” in the psychology literature, and it was often cited in later articles. However, the disciplinary divisions Kimble described were nothing new to psychologists. For the earlier accounts see William D. Hitt, “Two Models of Man,” Amer.
Psychol., 1969, 24(7):651-658; Howard H. Kendler, Psychology: A Science in Conflict (cit. n.
16); Sigmund Koch, “The Nature and Limits of Psychological Knowledge” (cit. n. 15); Arthur
W. Staats, “Paradigmatic Behaviorism, Unified Theory, Unified Theory Construction Methods, and the Zeitgeist of Separatism,” Amer. Psychol., 1981, 36(3):239-256. Kimble traced the tough vs. tender minded distinction in psychology to William James. See William James, Pragmatism:
A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking (New York: Longmans, 1907).
26 On these divides see Kendler, Psychology: A Science in Conflict (cit. n. 16), p. 111-114.
27 While most clinical psychologists worked outside of academia by the 1980s, I have chosen to focus on those with university affiliations because, they more often held leadership positions and were more influential as actively publishing proponents of differing views on mental retardation.
Reisman, A History of Clinical Psychology (cit. n. 12), p. 377. All of the presidents of the APA
Division of Clinical Psychology between the late 1960s and 2000 held academic positions, with three exceptions during the mid 1980s when clinical practitioners successfully elected their own.
37
28 Robert F. Lockman, “Characteristics of APA Members in the 1962 National Scientific
Register,” Amer. Psychol., 1962, 17(11):789-792.
29 James W. Trent Jr, Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United
States (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1994), p. 250-252; Allison C. Carey, On the
Margins of Citizenship: Intellectual Disability and Civil Rights in Twentieth-Century America
(Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press, 2009), p. 84-86; Scull, Decarceration (cit. n. 11);
Katherine Castles, “‘Nice Average Americans’: Postwar Parents’ Groups and the Defense of the
Normal Family,” in Mental Retardation in America: A Historical Reader, ed. Steven Noll and
James W. Trent Jr. (New York: NYU Press, 2004), pp. 351-370; David Wright, Downs: The
History of a Disability (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011).
30 Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind (cit. n. 29), p. 264; Carey, On the Margins of Citizenship,
(cit. n. 29), p. 165. For more on revelations of dehumanizing conditions see Burton Blatt and
Fred Kaplan, Christmas in Purgatory: A Photographic Essay on Mental Retardation (Boston,
MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1966); David J. Rothman, Strangers At the Bedside: A History of How
Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
31 For sociological theory see Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance
(New York: The Free Press, 1963); Lewis Anthony Dexter, “On the Politics and Sociology of
Stupidity in Our Society,” Social Problems, 1962, 9(3):221-228; Erving Goffman, Asylums:
Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden City, NY: Anchor
Books, 1961); Jane R. Mercer, “Social System Perspective and Clinical Perspective: Frames of
Reference for Understanding Career Patterns of Persons Labelled as Mentally Retarded,” Soc.
Probl., 1965, 13(1):18-34. For criticism from within psychiatry see Thomas J. Scheff, Being
Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1966); Thomas S. Szasz, “The Myth of
38
Mental Illness,” Amer. Psychol., 1960, 15(2):113-118; R. D. Laing, Aaron Esterson, Sanity,
Madness, and the Family (London, UK: Tavistock, 1964).
32 Clark University was one of the most prominent academic institutions in psychology during the early-to-mid twentieth century. Its first president was the psychologist G. Stanley Hall, who was the advisor of Henry H. Goddard for his doctoral degree awarded in 1899, and famously invited Sigmund Freud to Clark University to give five lectures, during his only trip to the
United States in 1909. Dorothy Ross, G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet. (Chicago,
IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1972). On Freud’s visit and its longstanding significance see Hale,
The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis (cit. n. 11); John C. Burnham, After Freud Left: A Century of Psychoanalysis in America (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2012).
33 Seymour B. Sarason, The Psychological Sense of Community: Prospects for a Community
Psychology. (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1974); Seymour B. Sarason, The Making of an
American Psychologist: An Autobiography. (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1988), p. 134.
34 Sarason, The Making of an American Psychologist (cit. n. 33), p. 87-8. Sarason attended Dana
College beginning in 1935, which later became Rutgers University – Newark.
35 Ibid, p. 168. For more on the social role of residential institutions during the mid twentieth century see Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind (cit. n. 29), p. 206-23.
36 Sarason, The Psychological Sense of Community (cit. n. 33), p. 133.
37 Ibid, p. 165.
38 Ibid, p. 218-220; Seymour B. Sarason, George Zitnay, France Kaplan Grossman, The Creation of a Community Setting (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Division of Special Education and
Rehabilitation, 1971), p. 17-19.
39 Seymour B. Sarason and Esther Kroop Sarason, “The Discriminatory Value of a Test Pattern
39 in the High Grade Familial Defective,” Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1946, 2(1):38-49;
Seymour B. Sarason and Esther Kroop Sarason, “The Discriminatory Value of a Test Pattern
With Cerebral Palsied, Defective Children,” J. Clin. Psychol., 1947, 3(2):141-147; Alice E.
Boehm and Seymour B. Sarason, “Does Wechsler’s Formula Distinguish Intellectual
Deterioration From Mental Deficiency,” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1947,
42(3):356-358; Seymour B. Sarason and George Mandler, “Some Correlates of Test Anxiety,” J. of Abnorm. Soc. Psychol., 1952, 47(4):810-817.
40 Seymour B. Sarason, Psychological Problems in Mental Deficiency. (New York: Harper,
1949); Sarason, The Making of an American Psychologist (cit. n. 33), p. 247-8.
41 Seymour B. Sarason, “Community Psychology, Networks, and Mr. Everyman,” Amer.
Psychol., 1976, 31(5):317-328, on p. 319. For more on the origins of the community psychology subdiscipline see James G. Kelly, “Exemplars of Community Psychology : A Video Introduction to the History of the Field (Video Recording, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2003), especially interview with Stanley F. Schneider.
42 Chester C. Bennett, Community Psychology: A Report of the Boston Conference on the
Education of Psychologists for Community Mental Health (Boston, MA: Boston University,
1966), p. 7-8. For more on the history and unique approaches of community psychology see
Richard T. Walsh, “A Social Historical Note on the Formal Emergence of Community
Psychology,” American Journal of Community Psychology, 1987, 15(5):523-529; Richard T.
Walsh, “The Evolution of the Research Relationship in Community Psychology,” Amer. J.
Community Psychol., 1987, 15(6):773-788.
43 Sarason, The Making of an American Psychologist (cit. n. 33), p. 286, 289. For Sarason’s view of the four founding principles of community psychology see p. 405-6.
40
44 Sarason, The Psychological Sense of Community (cit. n. 33), p. x.
45 Sarason, The Making of an American Psychologist (cit. n. 33), p. 359.
46 Seymour B. Sarason, Psychology Misdirected (New York: The Free Press, 1981), p. 27, 111.
47 Hale, The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis (cit. n. 11), p. 302; Sarason, The Making of an
American Psychologist (cit. n. 33), p. 87-88, 300-332; Reisman, A History of Clinical
Psychology (cit. n. 12), p. 374-378.
48 Kurt Danziger, “The Project of an Experimental Social Psychology: Historical Perspectives,”
Sci. Context, 1992, 5(2):309-328, on p. 321.
49 Sarason, The Psychological Sense of Community (cit. n. 33), p. x; Murray Levine, interview with author, 14 April 2017. For more on previous efforts to facilitate broader collaboration in psychological research at Yale see Jill G. Morawski, “Organizing Knowledge and Behavior At
Yale’s Institute of Human Relations,” Isis, 1986, 77(2):219-242.
50 For accounts of the career paths of community psychologists including Sarason, Levine,
Reppucci, and Trickett see Kelly, “Exemplars of Community Psychology” (cit. n. 41); James G.
Kelly, Anna V. Song, Six Community Psychologists Tell Their Stories: History, Contexts, and
Narrative (New York: Hayworth Press, 2014).
51 Sarason, The Making of an American Psychologist (cit. n. 33), p. 373-4; Murray Levine, interview with author, 14 April 2017.
52 Murray Levine, interview with author, 14 April 2017.
53 As historian of psychology Jill Morawski has shown, during the mid twentieth century there were concerns that undisciplined investigators or experimental subjects could alter the apparent objectivity of even carefully controlled social psychology laboratory experiments. This resulted in “epistemological dizziness” and led to a sense of “crisis” among some experimental social
41 psychologists. There was no such anxiety among community psychology researchers, who encouraged the active collaboration of their participants, and oriented their research aims around specific community interests and needs. See Jill G. Morawski, “Epistemological Dizziness in the
Psychology Laboratory: Lively Subjects, Anxious Experimenters, and Experimental Relations,
1950–1970,” Isis, 2015, 106(3):567-597, on p. 570-2. On the standardization of experimental subjects in the history of psychology see Danziger, Constructing the Subject (cit. n. 11); Coon,
“Standardizing the Subject” (cit. n. 16).
54 N. Dickon Reppucci, interview with author, 21 September, 2017
55 Sarason, The Making of an American Psychologist (cit. n. 33), p. 374.
56 Kimble, “Psychology’s Two Cultures” (cit. n. 1), p. 833-4.
57 Albee, “The Uncertain Future” (cit. n. 24); George W. Albee, “Give Us a Place to Stand and
We Will Move the Earth,” Clin. Psychol., 1967, 20(2):51-53; Sarason, The Making of an
American Psychologist (cit. n. 33), p. 289.
58 Wolf Wolfensberger, The Principles of Normalization in Human Services (Toronto, ON:
National Institute on Mental Retardation, 1972).
59 Bengt Nirje, “The Normalization Principle and Its Human Management Implications,” in
Changing Patterns in Residential Services for the Mentally Retarded, ed. Robert B. Kugel and
Wolf Wolfensberger (Washington, DC: President’s Committee on Mental Retardation, 1969), pp. 179-195, on p. 181.
60 In 1969, many of the recommendations of Changing Patterns were significantly outside of the mainstream of American psychiatry. While the US President’s Committee on Mental Retardation printed and distributed the report, they did not endorse its contents or policy positions.
61 Wolf Wolfensberger, “The Principle of Normalization and Its Implications to Psychiatric
42
Services,” Amer. J. Psychiat., 1970, 127(3):291-297; “Is Basket Weaving Harmful?,” Time, 12
October 1970, 96(15):63.
62 Wolf Wolfensberger, “A Contribution to the History of Normalization with a Primary
Emphasis on the Establishment of Normalization in North America between 1967-1975,” in A
Quarter-century of Normalization and Social Role Valorization: Evolution and Impact, ed.
Robert J. Flynn and Raymond A. LeMay (Ottawa, ON: Univ. of Ottawa Press, 1999), pp. 51-
108, on p. 88.
63Ibid; Wolfensberger, The Principles of Normalization (cit. n. 58).
64 Burton Blatt to Wolf Wolfensberger, 12 March 1979, Wolf Wolfensberger Collection,
McGoogan Library of Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center (hereafter
Wolfensberger Collection), Box 9.1 “People – Inactive”, Burton Blatt Folder; Ronny Vink to
Wolf Wolfensberger, 26 May 1983, Wolfensberger Collection, Box 7B.3 “Interesting
Correspondence by Year” 1983 Folder.
65 Wolfensberger Collection, “Wolfensberger Artifacts”, PASS Rating Folder and Residential-
Institutionalization/Deinstitutionalization Folder; Wolfensberger, The Principles of
Normalization (cit. n. 58), p. 35-38.
66 Goffman, Asylums (cit. n. 31); Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled
Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963). For more on the influence of Goffman’s work on
Wolfensberger’s perspective see Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind (cit. n. 29), p. 243.
67 Wolf Wolfensberger, “Research, Empiricism, and the Principle of Normalization,” in
Normalization, Social Integration and Community Services, ed. Robert J. Flynn and Kathleen E.
Nitsch (Austin, TX: Pro-Ed, 1980), pp. 117-129, on p. 117-8, 124-5.
43
68 Sarason, The Psychological Sense of Community (cit. n. 33), p. 178; Wolfensberger, The
Principles of Normalization (cit. n. 58), p. 115-116.
69 Scull, Decarceration (cit. n. 11); Grob, From Asylum to Community (cit. n. 11), p. 303-304.
70 Marie Skodak Crissey and Marvin Rosen ed., Institutions for the Mentally Retarded: A
Changing Role in Changing Times (Austin, TX: Pro-Ed, 1986).
71 For Wolfensberger’s response to criticism about a lack of evidence supporting normalization see Wolfensberger, “Research, Empiricism, and the Principle of Normalization” (cit. n. 67).
72 Edward Zigler, “Developmental Versus Difference Theories of Mental Retardation and the
Problem of Motivation,” American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 1969, 73(4):536-556; Edward
Zigler and Robert M. Hodapp, Understanding Mental Retardation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1986). Zigler was also well-known as one of the founders and longtime supporters of the Head Start program. See Edward Zigler and Sally J. Styfco, The Hidden History of Head
Start (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010).
73 Edward Zigler, “Looking Back 40 Years and Still Seeing the Person with Mental Retardation as a Whole Person,” in Personality and Motivational Differences in Persons with Mental
Retardation, ed. Harvey N. Switzky (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001), pp. 3-
56; Edward Zigler and Robert M. Hodapp, Mark R. Edison, “From Theory to Practice in the
Care and Education of Mentally Retarded Individuals,” American Journal on Mental
Retardation, 1990, 95(1):1-12, on p. 7.
74 Zigler, “From Theory to Practice” (cit. n. 73), p. 7.
75 Wolfensberger, “Research, Empiricism, and the Principle of Normalization” (cit. n. 67).
76 Stephen Greenspan and Mary Cerreto, “Normalization, Deinstitutionalization, and the Limits of Research: Comment on Landesman and Butterfield,” Amer. Psychol., 1989, 44(2):448-449, on
44 p. 448; Rowitz, “The Two Cultures Revisited” (cit. n. 6); Sharon Landesman and Earl C.
Butterfield, “Normalization and Deinstitutionalization of Mentally Retarded Individuals:
Controversy and Facts,” Amer. Psychol., 1987, 42(8):809-816.
77 Sharon Landesman and Earl C. Butterfield, “Cooperation and Knowledge Are Essential to
Achieve Goals of Normalization,” Amer. Psychol., 1989, 44(2):449.
78 Sharon Landesman Ramey, “Staging (and Re-Staging) the Trio of Services, Evaluation, and
Research,” Amer. J. Ment. Retard., 1990, 95(1):26-29, on p. 27.
79 Ibid., on p. 28; Sharon Landesman Ramey, interview with author, 22 August 2017.
80 Ibid; Zigler, “From Theory to Practice” (cit. n. 73).
81 Danziger, Constructing the Subject (cit. n. 11); Coon, “Standardizing the Subject” (cit. n. 16);
Morawski, “Epistemological Dizziness” (cit. n. 53); Zigler, “From Theory to Practice” (cit. n.
73), p. 9; Landesman Ramey, “Staging (and Re-Staging)” p. 29; Edward Zigler, Robert M.
Hodapp, Mark R. Edison, “Themes in the Debate About Normalization: Rejoinder,” Amer. J.
Ment. Retard., 1990, 95(1):30-31, on p. 31.
82 Robert M. Hodapp and Edward Zigler, “Integration and Development: Reconciling Two
Conflicting Perspectives,” McGill Journal of Education, 1992, 27(3):279-292, on p. 279.
83 Ibid, p. 280-1.
84 Robert M. Hodapp and Elisabeth M. Dykens, “Mental Retardation’s Two Cultures of
Behavioral Research,” Amer. J. Ment. Retard, 1994, 98(6):675-687, on p. 675; Zigler,
“Developmental Versus Difference Theories” (cit. n. 72). The prevalence of mental retardation resulting from organic causes (of genetic, environmental, or neurological origin) was a topic of interest throughout the 20th century. Among psychologists, estimates have generally ranged between one-third and one-half of mental retardation cases having an organic cause. In general,
45 the trend has been towards the assumption of a higher prevalence for organic causes, following the development of new genetic and molecular technologies, and a decreasing focus on
“borderline” mental retardation (IQ 70-85) since the early 1970s. See E. O. Lewis, “Types of
Mental Deficiency and Their Social Significance,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 1933,
79(325):298-304; Herbert J. Grossmann, Manual on Terminology and Classification in Mental
Retardation (Washington, DC: American Association on Mental Deficiency, 1973); Zigler and
Hodapp, Understanding Mental Retardation (cit. n. 72), p. 68-89.
85 Hodapp and Dykens, “Mental Retardation’s Two Cultures” (cit. n. 84), p. 680.
86 Elisabeth M. Dykens, “Measuring Behavioral Phenotypes: Provocations From the ‘New
Genetics’,” Amer. J. Ment. Retard., 1995, 99(5):522-532, on p. 522.
87 Ibid; Albee, “Emerging Concepts of Mental Illness” (cit. n. 23), p. 870; Robert M. Hodapp and
Deborah J. Fidler, “Special Education and Genetics Connections for the 21st Century,” The
Journal of Special Education, 1999, 33(3):130-137.
88 Andrew J. Hogan, Life Histories of Genetic Disease: Patterns and Prevention in Postwar
Medical Genetics (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016).
89 Elisabeth M. Dykens, interview with author, 5 May 2017.
90 Robert M. Hodapp and Deborah J. Fidler and E. Depta, “Blurring Boundaries, Continuing
Change: The Next 50 Years of Research in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities,”
International Review of Research in Developmental Disabilities, 2016, 50:1-31, on p. 13-14.
91 Hodapp and Fidler, “Special Education and Genetics” (cit. n. 87); Elisabeth M. Dykens and
Robert M. Hodapp, “Research in Mental Retardation: Toward an Etiologic Approach,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2001, 42(1):49-71.
46
92 Etiologically focused research on mental retardation frequently returns to the same five most common or well-understood conditions: Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, Williams syndrome, and autism. See Hodapp and Dykens, “Mental Retardation’s
Two Cultures” (cit. n. 84); Dykens and Hodapp, “Research in Mental Retardation” (cit. n. 91).
93 Elisabeth M. Dykens, interview with author, 5 May 2017; Robert M. Hodapp, interview with author, 4 May 2017; Elisabeth M. Dykens, “Toward a Positive Psychology of Mental
Retardation,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 2006, 76(2):185-193. For further discussion of the prevalence of mental retardation with known (organic) causes see n. 77.
94 Robert M. Hodapp, interview with author, 4 May 2017; Sarason, The Making of an American
Psychologist (cit. n. 33), p. 289. These trends are particularly prominent in newer APA divisions, which emerged from clinical psychology, such as: Division 33 on Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities, the Society for Health Psychology (Division 38), and the Society of
Pediatric Psychology (Division 54).
95 In 1966, a special interest group (Section III) was formed within the APA Division of Clinical
Psychology (Division 12) to represent clinical psychologists who primarily identified as scientific researchers. The Section for the Development of Clinical Psychology as an
Experimental/Behavioral Science, which was renamed the Society for a Science of Clinical
Psychology in 1991, was a small but vocal contingent of a few hundred Division 12 researchers.
The founders and members of Section III were never happy with the specificity of their original name, but were forced by the leaders of Division 12 to identify as something more than scientists, since under the Boulder Model all clinical psychologists were considered scientists.
On the history of Section III of Division 12 see Oltmanns and Krasner, “A Voice for Science in
Clinical Psychology” (cit. n. 17), p. 26-30.
47
96 Richard M. McFall, “Manifesto for a Science of Clinical Psychology,” Clin. Psychol., 1991,
44(6):75-88, on p. 79.
97 Kimble, “Psychology’s Two Cultures” (cit. n. 1).
98 Wolfensberger, “Research, Empiricism, and the Principle of Normalization” (cit. n. 67);
Greenspan and Cerreto, “Normalization, Deinstitutionalization” (cit. n. 76).
48