As recently as a decade ago there would have been no need to or interest in presenting a special topical issue of a learning disabilities journal on severe learning disabilities. The educational field of learning disabilities was just emerging in the late 1960s and 70s. Thus, educators were primarily concerned with generating information on the general topic of learning disabilities. Numerous educational, psychological, and medical variables were studied with largely undifferentiated samples of identified learning disabled As a result a body of information was established that served as a foundation for the development of services and appropriate education of the learning disabled. Not surprisingly, it was discovered during this period that groups of persons with learning disabilities performed poorly in all areas of academics and demonstrated numerous behavioral and social difficulties. As a group, almost any problem could be documented with this heterogeneous population of disabled persons. Prior to the proliferation of special education services that characterized the 1970s, it also would not have been necessary to focus specifically on the learning disabled, although for a different reason. At that time, students selected for learning disability services were predominantly the more handicapped. Services included halfto full-day special education classes utilizing the label minimally brain dysfunctioned or neurologically impaired. These programs provided an educational setting for the not as is often the case today-a setting for remedial education. As a result of the current proliferation of popular literature and resource room services for the handicapped, specifically the learning disabled, LD services have become inundated with mildly disabled pupils of all types. In addition to the truly learning disabled person, we find the learning disability specialist serving students with behavior problems, students from different cultural backgrounds, slow learners, the poorly taught, and remedial education students. This extension of learning disability services makes it necessary for all of us to stop for a moment and reflect on what is happening to the learning disabled, the truly individual for whom our services were originally intended. In addition to these broad and inclusive LD services, the problems of the learning disabled have been exacerbated by some members of our profession, scholars and practitioners alike, who insist that all instances of learning disabilities represent mild disorders. The special education literature is replete with examples of professionals equating all learning disabilities with mild disorders (Ysseldyke & Algozzine, 1979; Blackhurst, 1981; Idol-Maestas, Lloyd, & Lilly, 1981). By responding only to the mildly underachieving students in resource rooms, these professionals fail to recognize the aphasic child or the stroke victim, the nonreader who is at every juncture by an inability to decipher the printed message, the hyperactive child, or the brain-injured adult who cannot function in educational settings without a high degree of structure and instructional intervention. Finally, the creation of separate categories and professional organizations for the severely handicapped which exclude by definition whole categories of persons, i.e., learning disabled, is yet another example of how special educators perceive learning disabilities to be a mild handicapping condition. This rather shallow orientation to learning disabilities is not only evident in the literature. It is also promoted by the schools and other social institutions; for example, it is evidenced in states where guidelines recommend that learning disabled students only receive resource room services for the mildly handicapped. Today, self-contained and partially self-contained settings for