72 



life of the individual, to determine the mental and physical defects that 

 produce delinquency and feeble-mindedness. 



Feeble-mindedness is a term used to describe individuals who have 

 not attained a normal mental status when compared with individuals of 

 the community. If their mental status is of such a character that they 

 are not able to make the necessary adjustments in a complex social life 

 they are deemed feeble-minded. This does not mean that there are no ad- 

 justments that they can make, but that they are able to react only to the 

 simpler situations in life. Some feeble-minded children display remark- 

 able alertness and acute sensitivity, and superficially one would not expect 

 that there is any mental defect; but upon closer examination and study 

 such an individual is found to be deficient in all matters that require 

 complex associations and comparisons. By applying any one of the 

 numerous scales for determining intelligence to such an individual, parts 

 of the scales are answered with very great ease — namely, those parts that 

 liertain to fineness of discrimination in sense impression, either visual or 

 auditory. But when any part of the scale that requires reasoning, associa- 

 tions, comparisons, or complex mental processes is applied to her. she 

 fails miserably. If a child is six years of age and only measures three 

 years in intelligence there is some reason to expect feeble-mindedness. If 

 a child is seven years of age and only measures three years, it becomes 

 quite evident that development is so far retarded that the individual may 

 be very well classified as feeble-minded. Between the ages of seven and 

 sixteen, if the mental age is found to be four years or more below the 

 biological age, there is reason to expect that you are dealing with a feeble- 

 minded person. This is an arbitrary standard that is fairly well adopted 

 by psvcho-clinicists in the United States. It is possible, however, to find 

 individuals sixteen years of age who only measure twelve years of age 

 psychologically whose mental retardation is due to disease or other causes 

 than native weakness. Such individuals would form exceptions and should 

 not be regarded as feeble-minded, for there would be a possibility of their 

 very rapid development at a later period: but on the whole we are pretty 

 safe in defining a feeble-minded individual as one whose mental develop- 

 ment is as much as four or more years below the normal of a child of 

 his age. 



Since having defined the feeble-minded girl, ! shall endeavor to treat 

 my topic from three different standpoints. First, how to discover her: 

 second, what are her symptoms? and. third, what shall we do with her? 



