Imbecile
Imbecile was a medical term used to describe a person with moderate to severe mental retardation, as well as for a type of criminal. It arises from the Latin word imbecillus, meaning weak, or weak-minded. "Imbecile" was once applied to people with an IQ of 26–50, between "moron" (IQ of 51–70) and "idiot" (IQ of 0–25).
The term was further refined into mental and moral imbecility.[1][2] The concepts of "moral insanity", "moral idiocy"," and "moral imbecility", led to the emerging field of eugenic criminology, which held that crime can be reduced by preventing "feeble-minded" people from reproducing.[3]
"Imbecile" as a concrete classification was popularized by psychologist Henry H. Goddard[4] and was used in 1927 by United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in his landmark ruling in the forced-sterilization case Buck v. Bell.
The term is closely associated with psychology, psychiatry, criminology, and eugenics. The term imbecile quickly passed into vernacular usage as a derogatory term, and fell out of professional use in the 20th century.
[edit] References
- ^ Kerlin, Isaac N. (1889). "Moral imbecility". Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-minded Persons, 15–18.
- ^ Fernald, Walter E. (1 April 1909). "The imbecile with criminal instincts". American Journal of Psychiatry. 65(4): 731–749.
- ^ Rafter, Nicole Hahn (1998). Creating Born Criminals. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252067419.
- ^ Goddard, Henry Herbert (1915). The Criminal Imbecile; an Analysis of Three Remarkable Murder Cases. New York: The Macmillan Company.
