William Ryan (psychologist)

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. 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. 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’. 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.

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.

By 1965, Ryan had become an academic in the faculty of Harvard Medical School Laboratory of Community Psychiatry. In 1969, he became an academic in Boston College, in which he became Professor of Psychology. 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. He died in a Boston hospital on June 7, 2002.

Chapters

 * Ryan, William. (1969). "Distress in the city: A summary report of the Boston Mental Health Survey, 1960-1962". In Ryan, William (ed.). Distress in the city: Essays on the design and administration of urban mental health services. Cleveland, Ohio: The Press of Case Western Reserve University.
 * —— (1969). "A New Mental Health Agenda". In Ryan, William (ed.). Distress in the city: Essays on the design and administration of urban mental health services. Cleveland, Ohio: The Press of Case Western Reserve University.
 * —— (1971). "The social welfare client: Blaming the victim". In Kalz, Arthur J. (ed.). The social welfare forum Official Proceedings, 98th Annual Forum National Conference on Social Welfare Dallas, Texas, May 16-May 21. New York: Columbia University Press.
 * —— (1973). "Emotional disorder as a social problem: Implications for mental health programs". In Denner, Bruce; Price, Richard H. (eds.). Community Mental Health Social Action and Inaction. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.