Wolf Wolfensberger

Wolf Wolfensberger Ph.D. (1934–2011) was a German-American academic who influenced disability policy and practice through his development of North American Normalization and social role valorization (SRV). SRV extended the work of his colleague Bengt Nirje in Europe on the normalization of people with disabilities. He later extended his approach in a radical anti-deathmaking direction: he exposed the Nazi death camps and their targeting of the disabled, and contemporary practices which contribute to geographic differences in longevity.

Early life

Born in Mannheim, Germany in 1934, Wolfensberger was sent to the countryside for two years during World War II, in order to escape the bombing. He emigrated to the USA in 1950 at 16 years of age.

Education

He studied philosophy at Siena College in Memphis, Tennessee, received a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology at St. Louis University, and a PhD in Psychology from Peabody College for Teachers (now part of Vanderbilt University), where he specialized in mental retardation and special education.

Career

Wolfensberger worked at Muscatatuck State School, Indiana ("state school" was a term for US intellectual disability total institutions) and interned at the E.R. Johnstone Training Center, New Jersey. He did a one-year National Institute of Health research fellowship (1962–1963) at Maudsley Hospital, (London, England) studying with Jack Tizard and Neil O'Connor. Wolfensberger was the Director of Research (1963–1964) at Plymouth State Home and Training School (Michigan). He was a mental retardation research scientist at the Nebraska Psychiatric Institute of the University of Nebraska Medical School in Omaha from 1964 to 1971.

Between 1971 and 1973, he was a visiting scholar at the National Institute on Mental Retardation in Toronto, Canada, and was the Director of the Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership and Change Agentry at Syracuse University in upstate New York until his death in 2011. He was a friend and colleague of the School of Education at Syracuse University, and supported the awarding of Ph.D.s, "community services" contributions throughout the US and worldwide, and lent support to federal projects such as Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Community Integration (1985–1995, to Steven J. Taylor, also Professor Emeritus) for which he was not compensated.

Contributions to the field

Much of Wolfensberger's work has been concerned with ideologies, structures and planning patterns of human service systems, especially concerning persons with intellectual disabilities and their families. He authored and co-authored more than 40 books and monographs, and wrote more than 250 chapters and articles. His books Changing Patterns in Residential Services for the Mentally Retarded, The Principle of Normalization, PASS and PASSING are probably best known since they formed the foundation for the 1970s students entering the workplace. His writing has been translated into 11 languages.

Wolfensberger was the originator of citizen advocacy and social role valorization, and he was the foremost propagator of normalization in North America. In 1999, Wolf Wolfensberger was selected by representatives of seven major mental retardation organizations as one of 35 parties that had been the most impactful on mental retardation worldwide in the 20th century.

Wolfensberger's papers are at the McGoogan Library of Medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.