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The Cloak of Competence
This new edition brings up to date a classic study of the everyday lives of previously institutionalized people with mental retardation. For the first time, the author allowed these people to speak about their own lives, their fears, and their hopes. He focused on the role of stigma in their lives and their efforts to pass as normal, as well as the need they had for normal benefactors.
Now, using the same ethnographic methods, Robert Edgerton follows up the original population over a period of three decades. His new findings greatly expand our knowledge of these individuals, suggesting that as they grow older they increase their social competence, life satisfaction, independence, and ability to contribute to the lives of others. Human service professionals and others concerned with mental retardation will welcome Edgerton's discussion of current issues such as the role of environmental factors in modifying mental retardation and the need for new conceptual approaches.
Now, using the same ethnographic methods, Robert Edgerton follows up the original population over a period of three decades. His new findings greatly expand our knowledge of these individuals, suggesting that as they grow older they increase their social competence, life satisfaction, independence, and ability to contribute to the lives of others. Human service professionals and others concerned with mental retardation will welcome Edgerton's discussion of current issues such as the role of environmental factors in modifying mental retardation and the need for new conceptual approaches.
276 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
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September 3, 2014
People with Cognitive Disabilities Define Life and Themselves on Their Own Terms
“It has been said that there is no sin except stupidity—a view which, though it may appeal to some, is not likely to receive universal approval. If there be sin relating to stupidity, it more properly resides in the fact that the social sciences have failed to make a concerted effort to develop a sociology, or social psychology, of stupidity.” Though the term “stupidity” may be offensive by today’s standards, what Robert B. Edgerton did in the 1960s was nothing short of revolutionary. He set out to not only examine people with cognitive disabilities, but to give them their own voice, to allow them the opportunity to express their own perceptions on the challenges they faced in adapting to society and city life—especially life beyond the institutions to which they were formerly confined.
Harnessing the Powers of the Social Sciences
Dr. Edgerton used the observational methods of anthropology to document the sociology of a marginalized population—perhaps even extending “anthropology” to describe a culture or subculture. His study sample comprised 110 patients from a state hospital in California. Dr. Edgerton selected for his subjects those he considered to be of the “upper stratum,” on the basis of not only their IQs, but also “their demonstrated social stability.” These people participated in vocational training programs and supervised work placements in the community. These 110 individuals were released between 1949 and 1958. Starting in 1960, Dr. Edgerton set out to locate these people and succeeded in finding all but 12. Financial and time constraints, however, limited the study sample to 53 individuals who settled within a 50-mile radius of the hospital.
Examining Atypical Lives in Detail
In the following chapter of the published study, Dr. Edgerton offered detailed vignettes of selected individuals, including two who married each other. This section forms the core of this ground-breaking book and is the most interesting and remarkable part. The descriptions include each person’s past, their struggles to make a living, sex and family life, hobbies, self-perception, and their outlook for the present and future. This revised edition also includes a postscript penned 30 years later, in 1992.
Dr. Edgerton brought up a sobering point in describing two subjects: “Hank and May typify many of the people who come to be labeled as persons with mild mental retardation. Their parents had little education, were emotionally disturbed, and apparently were thought by others to possess limited intelligence. As children, they lived in a violent and chaotic environment, neither child received even minimal acceptance or affection, and their formal schooling was at best perfunctory. One could hardly invent circumstances more likely to lead to impaired development.”
Donning a Cloak of Competency
Dr. Edgerton used the term “cloak of competency” in reference to the fact that there was very little to indicate any exceptionality. “Fred gives every appearance of being a happy-go-lucky, easy-going, altogether happy man,” wrote Dr. Edgerton of another of his subjects. “There is nothing in his appearance to suggest that he is anything less than a normal man.” However,” he adds, “It is only upon much closer inspection that Fred’s intellectual deficit becomes apparent. To the casual observer, he is an ordinary man, competent to live within the not-to-demanding constraints of his life circumstances.” Dr. Edgar used the term “competence” to refer to an individual’s ability to perform activities of daily living and capacity to be part of the community at large. He also employed the term to refer to one’s attempt to do so or “be seen as a normal person.”
The remaining chapters are also worth discussing, starting with “Life on the Outs,” in which Dr. Edgerton portrayed three dimensions of these individuals considered critical to life outside the hospital: making a living, managing sex and marriage, and making best of one’s leisure time. “Passing and Denial: The Problem of Seeming to Be Normal” takes the theme of the cloak of competence in greater depth —especially in relation to the stigma of having a cognitive disability, a theme further explored in a later chapter by that name. Meanwhile, Dr. Edgerton observed that nearly every individual surveyed secured benefactors, “normal persons who help them with many problems” in what he considered a “benevolent conspiracy.”
Dr. Edgerton’s descriptions of his subjects are sympathetic and poignant. And considering the time in which he conducted and published his study, his work is astonishingly groundbreaking, even by the standards of two decades after the follow-up study. People with cognitive disabilities had never been seen in this light, and the way they have has been changed forever.
“It has been said that there is no sin except stupidity—a view which, though it may appeal to some, is not likely to receive universal approval. If there be sin relating to stupidity, it more properly resides in the fact that the social sciences have failed to make a concerted effort to develop a sociology, or social psychology, of stupidity.” Though the term “stupidity” may be offensive by today’s standards, what Robert B. Edgerton did in the 1960s was nothing short of revolutionary. He set out to not only examine people with cognitive disabilities, but to give them their own voice, to allow them the opportunity to express their own perceptions on the challenges they faced in adapting to society and city life—especially life beyond the institutions to which they were formerly confined.
Harnessing the Powers of the Social Sciences
Dr. Edgerton used the observational methods of anthropology to document the sociology of a marginalized population—perhaps even extending “anthropology” to describe a culture or subculture. His study sample comprised 110 patients from a state hospital in California. Dr. Edgerton selected for his subjects those he considered to be of the “upper stratum,” on the basis of not only their IQs, but also “their demonstrated social stability.” These people participated in vocational training programs and supervised work placements in the community. These 110 individuals were released between 1949 and 1958. Starting in 1960, Dr. Edgerton set out to locate these people and succeeded in finding all but 12. Financial and time constraints, however, limited the study sample to 53 individuals who settled within a 50-mile radius of the hospital.
Examining Atypical Lives in Detail
In the following chapter of the published study, Dr. Edgerton offered detailed vignettes of selected individuals, including two who married each other. This section forms the core of this ground-breaking book and is the most interesting and remarkable part. The descriptions include each person’s past, their struggles to make a living, sex and family life, hobbies, self-perception, and their outlook for the present and future. This revised edition also includes a postscript penned 30 years later, in 1992.
Dr. Edgerton brought up a sobering point in describing two subjects: “Hank and May typify many of the people who come to be labeled as persons with mild mental retardation. Their parents had little education, were emotionally disturbed, and apparently were thought by others to possess limited intelligence. As children, they lived in a violent and chaotic environment, neither child received even minimal acceptance or affection, and their formal schooling was at best perfunctory. One could hardly invent circumstances more likely to lead to impaired development.”
Donning a Cloak of Competency
Dr. Edgerton used the term “cloak of competency” in reference to the fact that there was very little to indicate any exceptionality. “Fred gives every appearance of being a happy-go-lucky, easy-going, altogether happy man,” wrote Dr. Edgerton of another of his subjects. “There is nothing in his appearance to suggest that he is anything less than a normal man.” However,” he adds, “It is only upon much closer inspection that Fred’s intellectual deficit becomes apparent. To the casual observer, he is an ordinary man, competent to live within the not-to-demanding constraints of his life circumstances.” Dr. Edgar used the term “competence” to refer to an individual’s ability to perform activities of daily living and capacity to be part of the community at large. He also employed the term to refer to one’s attempt to do so or “be seen as a normal person.”
The remaining chapters are also worth discussing, starting with “Life on the Outs,” in which Dr. Edgerton portrayed three dimensions of these individuals considered critical to life outside the hospital: making a living, managing sex and marriage, and making best of one’s leisure time. “Passing and Denial: The Problem of Seeming to Be Normal” takes the theme of the cloak of competence in greater depth —especially in relation to the stigma of having a cognitive disability, a theme further explored in a later chapter by that name. Meanwhile, Dr. Edgerton observed that nearly every individual surveyed secured benefactors, “normal persons who help them with many problems” in what he considered a “benevolent conspiracy.”
Dr. Edgerton’s descriptions of his subjects are sympathetic and poignant. And considering the time in which he conducted and published his study, his work is astonishingly groundbreaking, even by the standards of two decades after the follow-up study. People with cognitive disabilities had never been seen in this light, and the way they have has been changed forever.
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