Wolf Wolfensberger’s Posthumous Works

Editorial foreword

Susan Thomas & Marc Tumeinski

 This is the first in what we hope will eventually be the dissemination of a number of “occasional papers,” i.e., papers published on an irregular basis but typically focusing on specific themes or a single author. In this case, what unites the papers is their author, the late Dr. Wolf Wolfensberger (1934-2011). We are pleased to make available these previously unpublished texts of his (in one case, co-authored) produced at various points in his long career. We are appreciative of the access to these original materials held in the Wolf P. Wolfensberger Collection, Robert S. Wigton Department of Special Collections and Archives, McGoogan Health Sciences Library, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, and in particular for the gracious assistance of Darby Kurtz at the Library. We encourage readers to access the Archive material available online through the McGoogan Library website Digital Commons https://www.unmc.edu/library/special-collections/archives.html to visit the Archives in person for research, and to consider supporting the Archives in other ways including financially (via the Wolfensberger Collection Fund). 

The International Social Role Valorization Association (ISRVA) provided generous financial support for research in the above archives. These papers are available online from the ISRVA website (socialrolevalorization.com), under the Resources tab. It is our hope that other previously unpublished materials may be added in the future.

We are especially grateful for the ongoing support of and cooperation from the Wolfensberger family.

As noted, none of these papers have been previously published. If intended for publication, they would have been “manuscripts in preparation,” and to Dr. Wolfensberger, “preparation” meant ongoing thought about the topic, and ongoing collection of additional material, sources, and responses and critique from colleagues. Thus, the papers must all be considered unfinished, and had they been published while Dr. Wolfensberger was alive, he would probably have edited them further, and maybe even changed or nuanced his position over time.

The following papers address various topics and were originally written for distinct purposes and audiences. Dr. Wolfensberger composed these writings at different points in his career, some just after he had received his doctorate, others when he was working in Nebraska, others in Syracuse, NY where he spent the majority of his working life. The introduction to each item tells the context.

While the papers do not necessarily share a common theme, they provide insight into and are evidence of Dr. Wolfensberger’s developing thought over time.

A note on language

Susan Thomas

In these early writings (late 1960s-early 1970s), Dr. Wolfensberger uses the term “retardate,” which was a not uncommon usage in the field of service to mentally impaired people then. He eventually saw the negative imagery conveyed by the term, in equating a person with their impairing condition, and changed his terminology. Here is how he taught about it in the workshop he gave on “Reflections on a lifetime in human services and mental retardation,” an abbreviated version of which was published in the major journal in the field that was then entitled Mental Retardation (Wolfensberger, 1991).

The term ‘retarded’ used to mean that a child was one or more grades behind in school. Then some unknown person began to speak of ‘mental’ rather than grade retardation, and so the term ‘mental retardation’ suddenly became very popular in the late 1950s, without any public debate. (The term could not be found until after 1959 in the library subject catalogue of the New York Academy of Medicine [Wang, 1959].) The new term caught on almost overnight, being seen as a major step toward enlightenment. It was the politically correct term of its day. Unfortunately, much as people who had previously been called ‘mentally defective’ came to be referred to simply as ‘defectives,’ so it also quickly became customary to call them ‘retardates.’ One compensation for retarded people being called ‘retardates’ was that non-retarded people began to be called ‘normals.’ This lasted about 15 years, until Gunnar Dybwad–a leader in the field from the 1950s on–began to refer to nonretarded people as ‘normates,’ which was one of the things that put the jinx on the term ‘retardate’.

He continued: 

One thing that I hope this presentation will do is give listeners a political correctness shock, because they will learn that things that without any doubt were the sacred political correctness of their day are the abominations of ours; and so may the political correctnesses of our day become the abominations of tomorrow.

Later, he wrote a searching critique of the quest for the “perfect” term to refer to impairing conditions, especially when those conditions are devalued (Wolfensberger, 2002).

In one item, Dr. Wolfensberger also uses the term Negro to refer to people who today are likely to be called African-American; again, that was then the accepted term. Later, he adopted the convention African-American.

Thus, we hope readers will be able to rise above the language in some of these writings. After all, to change the terminology now would be committing the archival sin of historical revisionism (rewriting history to conform to contemporary thinking)–and likely a few years hence, that terminology that had been current would be considered outmoded and have to be replaced; and then a few years hence, that terminology … etc.

References

Wolfensberger, W. (1991). Reflections on a lifetime in human services and mental retardation. Mental Retardation, 29(1), 1-15.

Wolfensberger, W. (2002). Needed or at least wanted: Sanity in the language wars. Mental Retardation, 40, 75-80.

Posthumous Works