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terminology
labels: a divisive power grab

Why does terminology change – and who benefits from this? No, I have not had enough of experts. I
According to Chris Goodey, it’s all about power and contempt, have just had enough of one particular
kind of expert: one who claims their
and he has psychologists and intellectuals in his sights expertise is the core component of all
other expertise in all other fields of
human aspiration.
hat’s in a name? Once it was everyday language, is someone interested No label is an improvement upon
idiocy, then it was mental in the arts, ideas, philosophy, morals and another when all it means is a transfer of
Wdeficiency, then mental so on, and likes talking about them. And power from one labeller to the next, and
handicap, then mental retardation. For someone with a learning disability as of disdain and contempt for the powerless.
most people today, the phrase is learning currently defined – not to mention you or Intellectual disability is the latest. Learning
disability. I – is no less likely to be interested in disability can carry on being the worst
However, I keep tripping over something beauty or morals than anyone else. label apart from all the rest.
called “intellectual disability”. Having So psychologists and the medical people
started off at the top in medicine, who adopt their terminology are not From label to insult
psychiatry and psychology, this phrase is really intellectuals in the way the word is The story goes that one label is an
now percolating through the system. It is normally used. They have turfed such improvement upon another. It makes it
on the increase, and I confess that matters out of the nest, so as to replace clearer what we are talking about. Or it
publishers have forced to me use it myself, them with one particular item: cognitive replaces an insult. This begs the question:
although I always put it in quote marks. ability, for which they claim top spot. And can it ever be clear what we are talking
Hands up any reader who would only an expert in cognitive ability can tell about? And why does every new term
describe themselves as intellectual? No you what cognitive ability is. become at some point an insult?
one? An intellectual is always someone Even over the past century, there have
who is more ‘intellectual’ than you. But, experts and humans been more than 50 terms for the same
clearly, if you’re not an intellectual, then In the academic rat race, this is what thing. Which makes me ask: is there a
you must be intellectually disabled. So defines human beings and their place in ‘thing’ at all? Other than the fact that
why are only a small minority explicitly the natural world. you are not fully human some people, at some point in history,
labelled like this? Who are the unless you have it. And, by implication, need more support for certain things than
intellectuals, if not all of us? the more of it you have the more human others do.
The answer is: the sort of people who you are. So a cognitive psychologist is the On the one hand, ‘learning’ suggests
have come up with the phrase “intellectual supreme example of a human being. something formal, probably to do with
disability”. However, psychology is not an Well, it’s a point of view. It’s the point of psychology; on the other hand, all of us
intellectual pursuit – it’s a bureaucratic view of those who are temporarily in the have learning disabilities in some respect.
one, a filing system. A bureaucrat’s job is driving seat and have control over other It’s just that some of us need more
to sort individual items under general people’s lives. Perhaps, in the light of support for certain things than others.
headings; a psychologist’s job is to sort person-centred planning, their control is There’s no denying that the need is real.
individual people into general categories. diminishing, although the process is But this need is created by particular
An intellectual, on the other hand, in painfully slow. social conditions that come and go. For
example, the built environment, lifestyles,
and the nature and organisation of work
create different kinds of outsider.
People with what we call learning
disabilities today would not have been
noticed in a rural society in the past. And
we do not know what social conditions
will look like when another century has
Michael Havens Patient Care Technician/Flickr – in assessment and treatment centres, in
passed – problems for some people will
no longer exist and other problems, for
other people, will have surfaced.
Words matter, but physical segregation
schools – matters more. An inclusive
society wouldn’t have a word of any kind
because it wouldn’t have the concept.
Without conceptual segregation, there
can be no physical segregation – and
vice versa. n
Words matter: conceptual segregation leads to physical
segregation in institutions and schools, for example
Chris Goodey is a historian and writes
about the history of psychology
www.cl-initiatives.co.uk Community Living Vol 32 No 2 | Winter 2018 19