Wolf Peregrin Joachim 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 spoke about the Nazi death camps and their targeting of disabled people, and contemporary practices which contribute to deathmaking.

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 US 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 institutions for people with intellectual disabilities) and interned at the E.R. Johnstone Training Center, Bordentown, 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 PhDs, "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.

Works by Wolf Wolfensberger

Secondary Sources

David Race (editor) (2003) Leadership and Change in Human Services: Selected Reading from Wolf Wolfensberger. New York: Routledge. David Race (2006) Social Role Valorization and the English Experience. London: Whiting and Birch.