The Principle of Normalization and Its Implications to Psychiatric Services
WOLF WOLFENSBERGER PH.D.1
1 Associate professor, Nebraska Psychiatric Institute, University of Nebraska College of Medicine, 602 S. 44th Ave., Omaha, Neb. 68105
The "normalization principle" formulated by Scandinavian workers in mental retardation aims at eliciting and maintaining culturally normative behavior and using culturally normative means to this end. The principle is simultaneously simple and comprehensive, and it can constitute a unifying ideology for all human management areas. It provides guidance for decisions from the lowest clinical to the highest systems levels. Some specific implications for psychiatry are discussed.
