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Inside Out: Two First-Person Accounts of What It Means To Be Labeled "Mentally Retarded"
‘We have to assume that the mind is working no matter what it looks like on the outside. We can’t just judge by appearance…If you take away the label they are human beings.’ Ed Murphy
What does it mean to be ‘mentally retarded’? Professors Bogdan and Taylor have interviewed two experts, ‘Ed Murphy’ and ‘Pattie Burt,’ for answers. Ed and Pattie, former inmates of institutions for the retarded, tell us in their own words.
Their autobiographies are not always pleasant reading. They describe the physical, mental, and emotional abuses heaped upon them throughout their youth and young adulthood; being spurned, neglected, and ultimately abandoned by family and friends; being labelled and stigmatized by social service professionals armed with tests and preconceptions; being incarcerated and depersonalized by the state.
Ed and Pattie survived these experiences—evidence, perhaps, of the indefatigable will of the human spirit to assert its essential humanity—but the wounds they have suffered, and the scars they bear, have not been overcome. They are now contributing, independent, members of society, but the stigma of ‘mental retardation’ remains.
Their stories are both true and representative—powerful indictments of our knowledge of, our thinking about, and our ministrations to, the mentally handicapped. The interviewers argue that Ed and Pattie challenge the very concept of ‘mental retardation.’ Retardation, they assert, is an ‘imaginary disease’; our attempts to ‘cure’ it are a hoax.
Read Ed’s and Pattie’s accounts and judge for yourself.
What does it mean to be ‘mentally retarded’? Professors Bogdan and Taylor have interviewed two experts, ‘Ed Murphy’ and ‘Pattie Burt,’ for answers. Ed and Pattie, former inmates of institutions for the retarded, tell us in their own words.
Their autobiographies are not always pleasant reading. They describe the physical, mental, and emotional abuses heaped upon them throughout their youth and young adulthood; being spurned, neglected, and ultimately abandoned by family and friends; being labelled and stigmatized by social service professionals armed with tests and preconceptions; being incarcerated and depersonalized by the state.
Ed and Pattie survived these experiences—evidence, perhaps, of the indefatigable will of the human spirit to assert its essential humanity—but the wounds they have suffered, and the scars they bear, have not been overcome. They are now contributing, independent, members of society, but the stigma of ‘mental retardation’ remains.
Their stories are both true and representative—powerful indictments of our knowledge of, our thinking about, and our ministrations to, the mentally handicapped. The interviewers argue that Ed and Pattie challenge the very concept of ‘mental retardation.’ Retardation, they assert, is an ‘imaginary disease’; our attempts to ‘cure’ it are a hoax.
Read Ed’s and Pattie’s accounts and judge for yourself.
231 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
22 people want to read
About the author
Robert Bogdan
18 books7 followersRobert Bogdan is distinguished professor emeritus of special education, cultural foundations of education, and sociology at Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York).
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March 19, 2025one answer to henrik karlsson tweet “Has someone written a detailed and compassionate description of what it is like to experience the world at different levels of IQ? (or whatever IQ is trying to gesture at)”
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