ABSTRACT

Mental deficiency may usefully be regarded as a 'social problem' in the technical sense in which sociologists use the conception 'social problem'. There is a distinct possibility that many mental defectives become concrete social, legal, or economic problems simply because of the direct or indirect consequences of this requirement for initiation into social status and for no other reason. All societies regard it as right and proper that the young should learn the right ways to react towards symbols, things, and events—including the events of desiring food, sexual experience, attention, elimination, and 'power'. Mental defectives are probably more likely than any other group in our society to develop such negative self-images; the nearest analogue, which comes to mind is perhaps the person afflicted by compulsive homosexual drives. In other societies, persons with certain diseases—example, leprosy—may have been likely to develop similar images of the self and of others.