Dictionary Definition
feebleminded adj
1 retarded in intellectual development [syn:
backward]
2 mentally deficient [syn: half-witted,
slow-witted]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Adjective
Extensive Definition
Feeble-minded was a term used from the late 19th
century through the early 20th century to loosely describe a
variety of mental deficiencies, including what would now be
considered mental
retardation in its various types and grades, and learning
disabilities such as dyslexia.
Originally it was not used as a particularly
pejorative term and
was, along with idiot and
moron, considered to be a
relatively precise psychiatric label in its day.
The American
psychologist Henry H.
Goddard, creator of the term moron, was director of the
Vineland Training School (Originally the Vineland Training
School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children) at Vineland,
New Jersey. Goddard was known for postulating most effectively
that "feeble-mindedness" was a hereditary trait, most likely caused
by a single recessive gene. This led Goddard to ring eugenic alarm bells in his 1912
work, The
Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness,
about those in the population who carried the recessive trait
despite outward appearances of normality.
In the first half of the 20th century,
"feeble-mindedness, in any of its grades" was a common criterion
for compulsory
sterilization in many U.S. states.
Jack London's
1914 story, "Told
in the Drooling Ward," describes inmates at a California
institution for the "feeble-minded." Such an institution existed
(the California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble-minded
Children, now the
Sonoma Developmental Center) close to the Jack London Ranch in
Glen Ellen, California. The story is a narrative told from the
point of view of a self-styled "high-grade feeb".
External links
- Told In the Drooling Ward Text of the Jack London story.
feebleminded in German: Schwachsinn