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The handicapped person is usually seen as, and expected to play the role of, a deviant. The retardate, being handicapped and often multiply stigmatized, is a deviant by definition. Too often, our texts have tried to explain attitudes toward the retarded in a narrow sense. However, to understand trends within our field, and society's response to the retarded, one must first understand societal attitudes toward deviancy generally, because a wide range of deviances may elicit similar response or expectancy patterns from people.

Wilkins (1965) suggests that our attitudes toward deviance derive from the platonic notion that goodness, truth, and beauty are related to each other, and that deviations from norms (truth) are "errors" that, by analogy, must be related to evil and ugliness. Thus, attitudes toward deviance may be rather generalized. For instance, a person may react with similar emotions toward retardation as he does toward blindness, delinquency, and senility.

It is chastening to recall that retardates in American history were long grouped with other types of deviants. In early America, the Puritans looked with suspicion on any deviation from behavioral norms, and irregular conduct was often explained in terms of the supernatural, such as witchcraft. There is reason to believe that retardates were hanged and burned on this suspicion. Later in New England, records show that lunatics, "distracted" persons, people who were non compos mentis, and those who had fits were all classed together, perhaps with vagabonds and paupers thrown in (Deutsch, 1949). Connecticut's first house of correction in 1722 was for rogues, vagabonds, the idle, beggars, fortune tellers, diviners, musicians, runaways, drunkards, mutes, pilferers, brawlers -- and the mentally afflicted (Deutsch, 1949). As late as about 1820, retardates, together with other dependent deviants such as aged paupers, the sick poor, or the mentally distracted were publicly "sold" ("bid off") to the lowest bidder, i.e., bound over to the person who offered to take responsibility for them for the lowest amount of public support (Deutsch, 1949).

The 10th (1880) U.S. census first combined defectives, dependents, and delinquents for reporting purposes. The Public Health Service combined criminals, defectives, and delinquents as late as the 1920's.

The National Conference on Charities and Correction, between about 1875 and 1920, often grouped the idiotic, imbecilic and feebleminded with the deaf, dumb, blind, epileptic, insane, delinquent and offenders into one general class of "defectives." Few of us today are aware of the fact that the more contemporary term "mental defective" was coined to distinguish the retardate from these other "defectives," and it is no coincidence that many state institutions were for both the retarded and the epileptic. During the "indictment period," discussed later, an incredible range of deviances were associated with retardation; indeed, they were seen to be caused by it: illness; physical impediments; poverty; vagrancy; unemployment; alcoholism; sex offenses of various types, including prostitution and illegitimacy; crime; mental illness; and epilepsy. All these were called the "degeneracies."

"The chronic insane, the epileptic, the paralytic, the imbecile and idiot of various grades, the moral imbecile, the sexual pervert, the kleptomaniac; many, if not most, of the chronic inebriates; many of the prostitutes, tramps, and minor criminals; many habitual paupers, especially the ignorant and irresponsible mothers of illegitimate children, so common in poor houses; many of the shiftless poor, ever on the verge of pauperism and often stepping over into it; some of the blind, some deaf-mutes, some consumptives. All these classes, in varying degree with others not mentioned, are related as being effects of the one cause -- which itself is the summing up of many causes -- 'degeneracy'" (quoted by Johnson, 1903, p. 246).

The first institutions for the retarded were built in a period of optimism regarding mental illness and the education of the deaf and blind, and many facilities for these other deviancies were erected at that time. The later disillusionment about retardation was also not isolated, but part of a more generalized aversion toward, and virtual persecution of, deviances. Farm colonies were a logical development in mental retardation, but were also part of the history of mental institutions of the same period. During the early part of the century -- a very chauvinistic period -- numerous writers claimed that a large proportion of retardates came from foreign-born stock, contributing to the call for more restrictive immigration laws. This is perhaps an extreme example of how retardation was linked in the minds of many to other types of deviance. One could go on endlessly demonstrating the point that societal responses toward retardation were not specific, but were part of a more generalized pattern of response toward deviance.