Intelligence test scores, known as IQ, were given on a scale with an average range of 90 to 109. A score between 110 and 119 was considered above average, 120 to 139 was considered highly above average, and 140 and above was considered genius level. At the lower end, scores from 80 to 89 indicated poor or “lower average” intelligence, and scores from 70 to 79 indicated borderline intelligence. However, IQ ratings expressed something more for those in the lower brackets as they moved from neutral descriptions to labels that stigmatized individuals with that test score. People with scores from 50 to 69 were called “morons”, those from 20 to 49 were called “imbeciles”, and those with scores below 20 were called “idiots”.
The collective term – “mentally retarded” – defined people with a score below 70 points. This terminology was used in medicine, psychology, education and law. In the 1960s, these identifiers began to be eliminated from professional use, although by then they had entered everyday language as insults.
In The Orphans of Davenport, the terms mentioned are used as they were used at the time relevant to the events described here.
PROLOGUE. Nature or culture?
The young woman who checked into the maternity ward at the University Clinic in Iowa City on May 7, 1934, seemed disoriented. She gave the nurses two names and four surnames; she didn’t want or couldn’t say her real name, so the hospital staff chose it for her, and in Iowa administrative records she’s listed as Viola Hoffman[1]. She was able to provide so little information about herself that her medical documents did not include any information about her education or even her age[2]. At the hospital, it was standard practice for women like Hoffman to ask for their consent to undergo an intelligence test. Due to the patient’s poor mental condition, it is difficult to determine whether Hoffman understood what the IQ test was and whether she knew that if she obtained a poor result, she could be placed in a psychiatric facility and undergo sterilization. She agreed to the examination, but perhaps she realized that she could not refuse due to her low social status. That’s why one day Hoffman sat in a sparsely furnished hospital office for about an hour with a psychologist asking her one question after another, many of them involving concepts she might not have understood at the time. For example, she was asked to think about contrasting concepts, describing the differences between laziness and inaction, between poverty and misery, character and reputation, and evolution and revolution. If she answered three of the four questions correctly, her IQ would be in the average range. In another part of the test, she had to perform arithmetic tasks in her head. In yet another, designed to test attention and memory, she had to repeat a string of seven digits in the order she heard them, then backwards, then do the same with another string, then another[3]. Hoffman’s score of 66 put her IQ well below the average range of 90-109, and the diagnosis of “cretinism” was listed on her official Iowa records. At that time, the terms “moron”, “imbecile” and “idiot” were officially used to refer to people whose IQ test results fell numerically into the low intelligence category.
Intelligence tests appeared in America between 1910 and 1916 and quickly became a tool in the social policy crusade known as eugenics. Supporters of eugenics believed that all human characteristics were biologically determined and inherited, and the problematic ones, including alcoholism, the tendency to commit crimes and fall into poverty, epilepsy, madness and promiscuity, resulted from the individual’s low intelligence. People who exhibited such traits could be institutionalized and sterilized, and similar decisions were often based on the results of IQ tests. State authorities and representatives of the educated classes believed that these policies, designed to purge communities of unfit individuals, promoted the modern ideal – the creation of a society composed of able-bodied people – which was to be achieved by improving the composition of the racial population. Lewis Terman of Stanford University, a pioneer in the field of intelligence research, called IQ tests “the guiding light of the eugenics movement.”[4] In addition, eugenicists promoted “selective reproduction”, encouraging people with a stable social status and well-educated to have more offspring.
In the name of eugenics, doctors diagnosed people who might have problematic traits, such as epilepsy or alcoholism, and court officials were responsible for recognizing crime and sexual perversions, including prostitution. Psychologists who claimed that IQ tests were scientific in nature gained the status of recognized experts in the USA in the field of assessing the intelligence of people accused of committing crimes, recruits to the American army, residents of closed institutions, and finally hospital patients, such as Hoffman.
In the late 1920s, almost all states passed laws allowing forced sterilization of people of low intelligence, mostly poor people, mostly women[5]. Sometimes the decision to sterilize was made voluntarily, but in other cases – especially women of low social status – the power disparity between the person assigned to the procedure and the doctor or court official made it difficult to refuse.
Before the baby was born, doctors told Hoffman that the delivery would be by cesarean section. The reasons for this decision were not included in the case documentation, but when the patient found out about it, she asked for sterilization. Due to the fact that she was considered “mentally retarded”, a state guardian was assigned to sign a consent form for the procedure (Iowa was one of the few states that required consent). It is not known whether sterilization was suggested to Hoffman under duress or whether she requested it herself. Either way, it would be a routine procedure for her doctor. From the perspective of most ordinary mortals, “human ability and success were determined genetically, not environmentally” and accounted for the “superiority of middle- and upper-class whites”[6]. Therefore, Hoffman’s infertility was probably perceived as a solution beneficial to society and the person concerned: it would free her from the burden of raising a child whose dysgenic features and unfortunate hereditary conditions would be equivalent to condemning her to a life without hope. So it is better to prune the withering branch of the genetic tree.
In July, after Hoffman gave birth to a healthy baby boy, whom she named Wendell, her mental health deteriorated further. Although she took care of her son, she was not fully aware that she was his mother. Her hallucinations became more intense and she stopped taking care of her hygiene. Six weeks later, doctors declared her “insane” and committed her to Clarinda Hospital, an Iowa mental institution. The authorities who diagnosed her did not take into account the traumatic experiences during her pregnancy, when Hoffman’s husband, previously married three times, abandoned and divorced her.[7]. Hoffman’s symptoms of mental illness could have been related to antenatal depression, i.e. depression that appears during pregnancy. Today it is known that, as in the case of postpartum depression, this disorder is curable with psychotherapy and pharmacological treatment.
Due to his mother’s institutionalization, Wendell spent his first year in a juvenile detention center in Des Moines. In the summer of 1935, when the boy turned one year old, the state of Iowa declared Viola Hoffman cured of her mental illness and placed her under the care of her sister from Chicago. The state authorities were also supposed to allow Hoffman to regain custody of her son, but she decided to give up her parental rights. During the Great Depression, a divorced mother with a history of mental illness would have faced almost insurmountable economic and social barriers that would have made it impossible for her to obtain a job and support herself and her young child. So officials moved Wendell, now a ward of the state, 170 miles east to the Davenport Home, the state’s main orphanage in Iowa.
Orphans of Davenport ArtRage promotional materials
Footnotes:
[1]Charles A. Nelson III, Nathan A. Fox, Charles H. Zeanah Jr., “Anguish of the Abandoned Child”, Scientific American 308, no. 4 (2013): 62.
[2] Ralph Blumenthal, “Upheaval in the East: Obituary; The Ceausescus: 24 Years of Fierce Repression, Isolation and Independence”, New York Times, December 26, 1989, A18.
[3] Charles A. Nelson III, Elizabeth A. Furtado, Nathan A. Fox, and Charles H. Zeanah Jr., “The Deprived Human Brain: Developmental Deficits among Institutionalized Romanian Children—and Later Improvements—Strengthen the Case for Individualized Care,” American Scientist 97 (May–June 2009): 222.
[4] Bradley S. Hersh et. al., “Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome in Romania”, Lancet 338, no. 8768 (1991): 645.
[5] Mary Battiata, “Despite Aid, Romanian Children Face Bleak Lives,” Washington Post, January 7, 1991.
[6] Mary Battiata, “20/20 Inside Romanian Orphanages,” Washington Post, October 5, 1990.
[7] Susan Christian, “The Waiting Game: Hundreds of Americans Anxious about Adopting Romanian Orphans,” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1990.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
