William Ryan (psychologist) explained

William Ryan
Birth Date:20 September 1923
Death Place:Boston, Massachusetts
Known For:Idea of "Victim blaming"
Education:Boston University
Discipline:Psychologist
Workplaces:Boston College
Notable Works:Blaming the Victim

William J. Ryan, Jr. (September 20, 1923 – June 7, 2002) was a psychologist, civil rights activist and author. He is best known for his exposure of the sociological phenomenon of "blaming the victim", which was first published in his 1971 book of the same name. Ryan's work is considered a major structuralist rebuttal to the Moynihan Report.[1] Moynihan's report placed most of the blame for African-American poverty rates on the rise of single-parent households, which Ryan rejected as an example of blaming the victim.

Early life

Ryan was born in Everett, Massachusetts on September 20 1923, the son of William J. Ryan and Marion C. Ryan (Evans). He was subsequently raised in Everett.[2] He joined the United States Army Air Corps during World War II, in which he served as a non-combatant, in the specialist role of a cryptographer in the Caribbean, ‘doing coding and decoding’.[3] On leaving the army, around the age of twenty-four or twenty-five, he was able to enter college thanks to the 1944 GI Bill of Rights, which paid full tuition for veterans in the educational institutions of their choice. In 1951 Ryan married Phyllis Milgroom (Phyllis M. Ryan), a political activist who was a graduate of Northeastern University and a psychiatric social worker in the local state mental health system. In 1958, he obtained a PhD from Boston University in clinical psychology.[4]

Career

Despite having obtained a PhD in clinical psychology, Ryan lost interest in the subject. Subsequently he became interested in social psychology and community psychology. He then became interested in sociological phenomena such as social issues, social problems and equality.[5]

By 1965, Ryan had become an academic in the faculty of Harvard Medical School Laboratory of Community Psychiatry.[6] In 1969, he became an academic in Boston College, in which he became Professor of Psychology.[7] In 1993 he received an award for his distinguished contribution to theory & research in community psychology from the Society for Community Research and Action: Division 27 of the American Psychological Association.[8] He died in a Boston hospital on June 7, 2002.[2] [4]

Publications

Articles

Chapters

Books

Further reading

Notes and References

  1. Sanneh . Kelefa . Don't Be Like That . The New Yorker . 9 February 2015 . 9 April 2017.
  2. News: Long . Tom . William J. Ryan; Fought Bias Against the Poor, 78 . 11 June 2002 . Boston Globe.
  3. Book: Lykes . M. Brinton . Lykes . M. Brinton . Banuazizi . Ali . Liem . Ramsay . Morris . Michael . Myths about the powerless: contesting social inequalities . 1996 . Temple University Press . Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . 1-56639--422-8 . 353 . A conversation between William Ryan and M. Brinton Lykes.
  4. News: William J. Ryan, 78, Sociologist; Explored the Blaming of Victims . The New York Times . 13 June 2002 . 9 April 2017.
  5. Book: Lykes . M. Brinton . Banuazizi . Ali . Liem . Ramsay . Morris . Michael . Myths about the Powerless Contesting Social Inequalities . Temple University Press . Philadelphia . A conversation between William Ryan and M. Brinton Lykes. p. 354.
  6. Broskowski . Anthony . Khajavi . Farrokh . Alumni of the Harvard Laboratory of Community Psychiatry . American Journal of Community Psychology . 1973 . 1 . 1 . 62-75 . 10.1007/BF00881247 . 18 March 2024.
  7. News: Obituary; William Ryan, 78, of Boston, author, BC professor . Boston Herald . 9 June 2002.
  8. Page 127 in APA Policies and procedures Manual 2010, see the article by Albee (1994) under 'Further reading'.
  9. Reprinted in Rainwater and Yancey, 1967, see below.
  10. A revised version of this article was published in Denner and Price, 1973, see below.