# 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), and 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, as a cryptographer in the Caribbean, ‘doing coding and decoding’. On leaving the army, at the age of twenty-five, he was able to enter college (possibly Boston University) because of the 1944 GI Bill of Rights, which paid full tuition for veterans in the educational institutions of their choice. At the end of the course, he had become interested in psychology, in which he obtained a degree. Subsequently, he obtained staff positions in Boston Psychopathic Hospital, the South Shore Guidance Center and Mount Aubum Hospital. In 1951, Ryan married Phyllis Milgroom (Phyllis M. Ryan), a daughter of Russian immigrants. She was a graduate of Northeastern University, a psychiatric social worker in the local state mental health system and, like him, a civil rights activist. In 1958, he obtained a PhD from Boston University in clinical psychology.

## Career

Shortly after having obtained his PhD, Ryan realized that he really wasn't interested in clinical psychology. Subsequently, he became interested in social psychology and community psychology. Then he also became interested in 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 and in which he served as an employee for 25 years.
In 1993, Ryan 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. However, in 1996, he concluded that 'unfortunately psychology has become the science of understanding internal individual differences, which leads to kinds of ideological distortions that support inequality.'
He died in a Boston hospital on June 7, 2002.

## Publications
### Articles

* (With Saul Cooper and Bellenden R. Hutcheson) Ryan, William (1959). "Classroom screening for emotional disturbance". American Psychologist. 14: 341.
* Ryan, William (1965). "Savage discovery: The Moynihan Report". The Nation. 201 (22 November): 380-384.Reprinted in Rainwater and Yancey (1967: 457-466), see below under 'Further reading'.
* —— (1965). "The new genteel racism". The Crisis. 72 (10): 623-631, 644.
* —— (1966). "Citizens in mental health--what are they for?". Mental Hygiene. 50 (4): 597-600. An extract entitled "Citizen" and Mental Health' is available at Rehabilitation Record. 1967. 8 (March-April): 6. Accessed 8 December 2024.
* Ryan, William; et al. (1967). "Feedback from our readers". Trans-action. 4 (3): 62-64. Retrieved 6 December 2024.
* Ryan, William (1969). "Community care in historical perspective: Implications for mental health services and professionals". Canada's Mental Health. Supplement (60): March-April.
* —— (1971). "Blaming the victim: The folklore of cultural deprivation". This Magazine is About Schools. 5 (Spring) (2): 97-117. (See Connexions. Accessed 8 December 2024.)
* —— (1971). "Emotional disorder as a social problem: Implications for mental health programs". American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. 41 (4): 638–645. PMID 5558616.Reprinted in Denner, Bruce; Price, Richard H., eds. (1973). Community Mental Health Social Action and Inaction. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Windton. p. 22-30. ISBN 0-03-085651-5. Retrieved 8 December 2024.
* —— (1971). "Unsocialized medicine". Contemporary Psychology. XVI (4): 256-258.
* —— (1994). "Many cooks, brave men, apples, and oranges: How people think about equality". American Journal of Community Psychology. 22 (1): 25-35.

### Chapters

* Ryan, William (1967). "Preventive Services in Mental Health Programs". In Bloom, Bernard L.; Buck, Dorothy P. (eds.). Preventive services in Mental Health Programs: Proceedings of the Mental Health Institute at Salt Lake City, Utah, May 31- June 2, 1967. Boulder, Colorado: Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
* —— (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. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
* —— (1969). "Distress in the city: A summary report of the Boston Mental Health Survey". 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. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
* —— (1971). "The social welfare client: Blaming the victim". In Kalz, A.J. (ed.). The Social Welfare Forum 1971 Official Proceedings, 98th Annual Forum, National Conference on Social Welfare, Dallas, Texas, May 16-May 21, 1971. New York: Columbia University Press.

### Monographs

* Ryan, William; Morris, Laura B. (1967). Child welfare problems and potentials: A study of intake of child welfare agencies in metropolitan Boston. Monograph III. Boston, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Committee on Children and Youth.
* (With Ali Banuazizi) Ryan, William (1972). Mental health planning in metropolitan areas Community Psychology Monograph No. 1. Boston: Boston College.
* (With Allan Sloan, Mania Seferi and Elaine Werby) Ryan, William (1974). All in together: An evaluation of mixed-income multi-family housing. Boston: Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency.

### Books

* Ryan, William, ed. (1969). Distress in the city. Cleveland, Ohio: The Press of Case Western Reserve University. Retrieved 27 January 2025.
* Ryan, William (1971). Blaming the Victim. New York: Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-85514-010-6.
* —— (1976). Blaming the victim (Revised, updated ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-394-72226-9.
* —— (1982). Equality. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-394-71185-0.