Vom Schwachsinn zur Intelligenzminderung

Description

Dieter Seifert traces how German psychiatry and criminal law renamed intellectual disability across a century, in a 2026 German-language article. Words carry attitudes, and the terms used between lawyers and psychiatrists shape real legal outcomes. The old word Schwachsinn was once a diagnosis, but it hardened into an insult. Yet it survived inside the criminal code's insanity paragraph until the end of 2020. Another outdated phrase, for deep personality deviation, survived with it.

Seifert walks through how diagnostic labels for people with reduced intelligence shifted across classification editions and why each generation renegotiates the line between normal and disordered. He notes stubborn public prejudice, including surveys where many people reject neighbors with schizophrenia. His plea is for careful, current wording in statutes and diagnoses alike, so that law keeps pace with psychiatric knowledge and language stops branding the people it describes.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13550023