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Title: Christmas in Purgatory by Burton Blatt, Fred Kaplan ISBN: 0-937540-00-5 Publisher: Human Policy Pr Pub. Date: December, 1974 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Eveyone Should read this book
Comment: I was told of this book in a meeting at of the company I work for.
We Provide Care to MR/DD people. This book is very disturbing and also enlighting. It makes me feel good to know that we, as a society have for the most part worked to change what these poor souls went through. A must read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Shocked
Comment: I was introduced to Christmas in Purgatory in 1996, when I took a course at Western Washington University called Introduction to Execeptional Children. There was no introduction to the essay, it was simply named in an assignment. Needless to say, I was horrified. I'm placing an order for it today as I feel that students taking courses related to people with disabilities need to see this. The book cannot be found on the national library system (in Norway), and therefore I've decided to buy a copy and donate it to my local university.
Rating: 5
Summary: Important
Comment: Those who would dismiss this book as overgeneralized and flawed forget that institutions were originally established not to protect disabled people from society, but society from disabled people.
Popular notion of the time held disabled people would be much more of a hindrance than help to society, and looked odd. Thus, if they were locked up, society would know where they were at all times while being able to pretend that they did not exist to begin with. Indeed, when Blatt and Kaplan's expose appeared, it set off controversy from those who had the audacity to defend the charges against very quickly turning public sentiment.
Although they are certainly free to articulate what they consider flaws with the book, it is difficult to believe that critics of this work would actually want to downplay the seriousness of these (and other) investigations if they were in those instutitions. Indeed, I strongly suspect they would want to be treated like human beings and given adequate care and a stimmulating environment.
As a diabled person myself, the contents of the book hit very close to home. Fortunate enough to be born in 1979, I realized that had I been born 20 years earlier, I most likely would have been one of the unfortunate people in the institutions investigated in this essay. While I previously had been aware of the disability rights movement's work in this area, reading this book gave me a whole new perspective on my work as a disability rights activist.
Because this book was never positioned as an indictment of all facilities, I am suprised by the rather hostile nitpicking and the blanket statement allegations. I believe this says more about the individuals reviewers than the quality of the authors themselves, and should not be weighted when looking at this book.The institutions in this essay were picked because the actual practices stood in sharp contrast to the "help and loving environment" they promised parents and relatives that patients would get. Woe is the person who even suggests that this was not as bad as people have made it out to be.
If it is difficult to believe the conditions doccumented in this book, it is because of the continued ease with which society is encouraged to view disabled people as helpless children, rather than potential Supreme Court nominees, doctors, lawyers etc...Ironically, baby and bath allegories demonstrate the urgency with which this book should be designated as required reading for anybody considering a degree in social sciences or a job in a related field.
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Title: Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States by James W., Jr Trent ISBN: 0520203577 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: December, 1995 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Origin and Nature of Our Institutional Models by Wolf Wolfensberger ISBN: 093754003X Publisher: Human Policy Pr Pub. Date: June, 1975 List Price(USD): $10.50 |
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Title: Asylums : Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates by Erving Goffman ISBN: 0385000162 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 18 October, 1961 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Angels in the Architecture: A Photographic Elegy to an American Asylum (Great Lakes Books) by Heidi Johnson ISBN: 0814329500 Publisher: Great Lakes Books Pub. Date: 05 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Beauty is Therapy : Memories of the Traverse City State Hospital by Earle E. Steele, Kristen M. Hains ISBN: 0970477805 Publisher: Denali and Co. Pub. Date: 01 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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