William J. Ryan, Jr. (c. 1924 – June 7, 2002) was a psychologist and author best known for his criticism of "

blaming the victim Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as t ...

" first published in his 1971 book of the same title. Ryan's work is considered a major structuralist rebuttal to the

Moynihan Report ''The Negro Family: The Case For National Action'', commonly known as the Moynihan Report, was a 1965 report on black poverty in the United States written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an American scholar serving as Assistant Secretary of Labor u ...

. Moynihan's report had placed most of the blame for African-American poverty rates on the rise of single-parent households rather than on racism and discrimination, while Ryan's response was that Moynihan was blaming victims for their victimhood. Ryan spent the majority of his career at

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...

Life and career

Ryan was raised in

Everett, Massachusetts Everett is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, directly north of Boston, bordering the neighborhood of Charlestown. The population was 49,075 at the time of the 2020 United States Census. Everett was the last city in the Un ...

. After joining the Army Air Corps during WWII, he received a PhD from Boston University in 1958. Ryan worked at the

Yale School of Medicine The Yale School of Medicine is the graduate medical school at Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 1810 as the Medical Institution of Yale College and formally opened in 1813. The primary te ...

and

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

before arriving at

, where he was Professor of Psychology from 1969 to 1998. Ryan married Phyllis Milgroom in 1951 and lived in

Newton, Massachusetts Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Boston. Newton resembles a patchwork of thirteen villages, without a city center. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of Ne ...

. He died in a Boston hospital on June 7, 2002.

Publications

* *, reissued in 1976 *

References

Boston College faculty 20th-century American psychologists 1920s births 2002 deaths {{US-psychologist-stub

Life and career

Publications

Further reading

References