Intellectual disability and the myth of the changeling myth

✍ Scribed by C. F. Goodey; Tim Stainton

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 111 KB
• Volume: 37
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.1032

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

This article investigates the historical sources for the idea of the “changeling” or substitute child as an explanation for congenital intellectual disability. Pre‐modern sources for this idea are elite and theological as much as popular and folkloric, nor do they refer to intellectual disability in any sense recognizable to us. Rather, both the concept of intellectual disability and the notion of a transhistorical changeling myth emerge from the historical core of modern psychology. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.