John O’Brien
Celebrating the Genius of Wolf Wolfensberger
John O’Brien
Researcb & Practice for Persons witb Severe Disabilities 2011, Vol. 36, No. 1-2, 76-79 copyrigbt 2011 by TASH
For 50 years, people with intellectual disabilifies, their families, and their allies have parficipated in a profound, if incomplete, shift in how their place in society is valued and understood, in the ways their possibilifies for develop- ment and contribufion can be imagined, and in the means available to assist them to lead good lives. As the persis- tent shadows of eugenics and Social Darwinism have di- minished and praefices of segregafion and bureaucrafic control have increasingly been supplanted, it has become possible to meet growing numbers of people with disabil- ifies who live good lives in ordinary communifies. Unfil his death on 27 February 2011, Wolf Wolfensberger poured his genius into the entire half-century of this shift
