The aim of this thesis is to outline the story of intellectual disability from a medical perspective as experienced by the author during more than 40 years working in the NSW Health system. Most of the writing over the last 30 years is from a sociological perspective after the idea of normalization changed the philosophy of care, and medical perspectives have been largely absent. The first chapter provides an introduction and historical background to the concept of intellectual disability. The story over the centuries is one of parallels and conflicts in the medical and sociological discourses. The second chapter examines the representation of intellectual disability both in the symbolic sense in art, literature and film, and the political sense as advocacy and human rights and the effect of the social rights discourse on processes of inclusion and exclusion. The third chapter is an account of the history of intellectual disability in NSW, Australia since colonization, and the impact of the social rights movement on changes of policy and provision of services. The conclusion looks at the future and the structure of the Ideal Society. The thread, which runs throughout these aspects of intellectual disability and unites the themes, is that of changing discourses. New discourses emerge as others are silenced and the same discourse can also have different meanings at different times in history. The ideas were presented as papers at international meetings of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disability (IASSID): Foucault’s Power Knowledge Model applied to Genetic Screening. (Helsinki 1996); Intellectual Disability in Literature and Film. (Seattle 2000); Prejudice and Identity in Intellectual Disability. (Montpellier 2004);Intellectual Disability in Literature and Film was presented at Health Illness and Representation, The Association for Medical Humanities UK meeting (London 2006)
