Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

97period from 1890 to 1925, and has been referred to as the Eugenics Alarmistperiod. 252Through the influence and extension of Charles Darwin’s theory ofevolution by natural selection Englishman Francis Galton, the ‘father ofeugenics,’ asserted that not only should physical characteristics be considered asa product of natural selection but that characteristics involving moraldevelopment, and mental and intellectual development, should also be stronglyconsidered as the direct consequence of natural selection. In the early years of thetwentieth century Galton and fellow scientific collaborator Karl Pearson were, inthe light of the eugenics issue, speaking in terms of ‘race betterment’ and of aHoly War against social practices that impaired the moral and physical qualitiesof the human race. 253Those regarded as having a mental illness or intellectual impairment werenegatively regarded as socially deviant. That is, they were viewed as deviatingfrom acceptable social norms. This led such people to be regarded as a socialmenace. In North America, Dr Walter Fernald, a leading advocate for socialcontrol and superintendent of America’s first school for feeble-minded children,is cited by Wolfensberger as referring, in 1912, to deviant males as a “'menace ofthe greatest magnitude,’” whilst females were described in even more threateningterms when he stated, "[i]t is certain that the feeble-minded girl or woman in thecity rarely escapes the sexual experiences that too often result in the birth of moredefectives and degeneratives." 254Wolfensberger defines the institutions for people with intellectualdisability that developed during the Eugenics Alarmist period as instruments of“architectural segregation,” 255 a phrase reflecting the social and scientific desirefor institutions to offer control and separation of those regarded as a socialmenace from wider society.Institutions also became a source of widespread sterilisation practices, 256as will be discussed momentarily in the South Australian context.252 Wolfensberger, Normalization, 15, 131.253 Lewis, Managing Madness, 129.254 Wolfensberger, The Origin and Nature of our Institutional Models, 65.255 Wolfensberger, Normalization, 131.256 ibid.