Dr. Bruno Bettelheim: Autism Authority and World Class Quack
If you have ever wondered why there were stereotypes of people with Autism being schizophrenic or an empty shell, you have Dr. Bruno Bettelheim to thank for that. Dr. Bruno Bettleheim headed a school (Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago) where he treated hundreds of children with psychiatric issues.
After he died (committed suicide) in 1990, there was a darker side about him that emerged. Among them that he lied about his academic credentials(which had nothing to do with clinical psychology), as well as lying about his record in the concentration camps in Germany during WW2.
Perhaps the most tragic that came to light were the allegations that he physically and sexually abused some of the children he "treated".
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9706/ ... /finn.html
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Some of the stereotypes about autism and schizophrenia can be traced back to the DSM-I (1952-1968). It specifically claimed that the primary manifestation of childhood schizophrenia was autism:
000-x28 Schizophrenic reaction, childhood type
Here will be classified those schizophrenic reactions occurring before puberty. The clinical picture may differ from schizophrenic reactions occurring in other age periods because of the immaturity and plasticity of the patient at the time of onset of the reaction. Psychotic reactions in children, manifesting primarily autism, will be classified here. Special symptomatology may be added to the diagnosis as manifestations.
http://www.psychiatryonline.com/DSMPDF/dsm-i.pdf
Like many older aspies, I was diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia using the DSM-I.
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000-x28 Schizophrenic reaction, childhood type
Here will be classified those schizophrenic reactions occurring before puberty. The clinical picture may differ from schizophrenic reactions occurring in other age periods because of the immaturity and plasticity of the patient at the time of onset of the reaction. Psychotic reactions in children, manifesting primarily autism, will be classified here. Special symptomatology may be added to the diagnosis as manifestations.
http://www.psychiatryonline.com/DSMPDF/dsm-i.pdf
Like many older aspies, I was diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia using the DSM-I.
Tell me about it. I was diagnosed with "Autism/Childhood Schizophrenia" back in the early 60s. After I was diagnosed by the pediatrician, my parents were compelled to see a psychiatrist who told thought they were responsible for me being Autistic and then took them to the cleaners(billing for his "services"). The worst thing about this is that there was a minority of doctors who knew autism had nothing to do with parenting. Unfortunately, the mindset was "Pro-Bettleheim" at that time and were afraid to speak up because they would get slammed.
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Interesting. As I recall, my parents were never blamed for my "childhood schizophrenia." If they were, they never told me about it.
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36 domains/24 books: http://www.markfoster.net
Emancipated Autism: http://www.neurelitism.com
Institute for Dialectical metaRealism: http://dmr.institute
Actually, Kanner came up with that, Bettelheim just ran with it.
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Way back in college (early seventies) I ran into his writings. I was so impressed as to invent a name for him.
Bruno Beetlemind
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It wasn't a particularly strange connection to make either, autism shares many symptoms and developmental delays with the effects of (emotional) neglect. Secondly, handling an autistic child frequently involves, as I've been told, a seemingly rigid and consistent approach that might seem 'cold' to the observer who's not aware of modern views on autism. And thirdly, autism runs in families, many relatives, including parents, of autistic children would have displayed some traits of autism, as Asperger already observed, and those could easily be interpreted as distant, detached or cold.
Yes, and Kanner eventually retracted it with an apology, whereas Bettelheim maintained it to his death.
In some countries it still exists. Even in the USA, there are still a few people who believe in it, and my family was devastated by some who still believed it in the nineties.
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"In my world it's a place of patterns and feel. In my world it's a haven for what is real. It's my world, nobody can steal it, but people like me, we live in the shadows." -Donna Williams
This is part of a paper I wrote on the earlier theories of autism. I focused on Kanner, Asperger, Bettelheim, and Tustin, although I'm just posting on Bettelheim:
Bruno Bettelheim was born in Austria in 1903. He was schooled in Austria, however was forced to postpone his education when his father died and he took over the family lumber business. Ten years later, he returned to school and received his doctorate of philosophy. He spent time in concentration camps prior to the outbreak of World War II but was able to purchase his way out, as was possible before the war, and made his way to the United States. Because the Nazis had been so thorough in destroying Jewish records, he was able to claim a degree in psychology (rather than philosophy) and set himself up as a professor. He spent the greatest part of his life as the director of the Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago (Jewish Virtual Library, 2007).
During his lifetime, he was a well-respected psychologist, a Freudian fundamentalist at heart. However, following his suicide, his work was re-examined and a darker side revealed: in particular, evidence of plagiarism and his lack of a true degree in psychology (Jewish Virtual Library).
Because Freudian psychosexual theory so heavily focused upon the interaction of child and parent and it was this relationship which determined normality or abnormality, Bettelheim focused his theory of autism on this relationship, particularly that between the child and its mother. Earlier, Kanner reported upon the refrigerator-like emotional coldness of the mothers in rearing their autistic children, as well as the professional, frequently absent fathers (Sanua, 1990). It was Bettelheim, however, who initially formed the full-fledged theory that the “refrigerator mother” was responsible for her child’s autism. And as Kanner’s work continued, despite that he originally believed the condition to be at least partly genetic (Kanner, 1943), throughout the 1950s and 1960s his ideas drew more and more in line with Bettelheim’s and the psychoanalysts (Wing, 2007).
At the University of Chicago’s Orthogenic School, Bettelheim applied psychoanalytic theory to the treatment of autism (Bettelheim, 1967). Despite that most credit Kanner with having inadvertently framed the theory, it was Bettelheim who was its greatest proponent and responsible for popularizing it.
In 1964, Bernard Rimland, a psychologist and father of an autistic boy, wrote Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior. In this book, as the title suggests, he refuted the psychoanalytic approach to autism of blaming the parents and instead made the first step in labeling autism a neurodevelopmental condition (Rimland, 1964). A year later, he began the Autism Society of America and it was this organization which Leo Kanner addressed in 1969, recanting the idea that autism is caused by emotional coldness of the parents: “Because I reported characteristics of some parents . . . I have been misquoted . . . Those of you who have come to me know . . . I never said ‘parents did it’. I hereby acquit you people as parents” (Schopler & Mesibov, Eds., 1984).
In 1967, Bettelheim followed suite and published his seminal work on autism, The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self. In his book, he discussed the autistic withdrawal as a defense mechanism that protects the child from either over- or under-stimulation from the parents, especially the mother. He felt that the mother-child relationship is established from the first day onwards and while many parents, according to Kanner, reported autistic-like behaviors since birth, he felt even just a few days in the presence of a frigid mother could trigger an autistic response in the child. He also noted that there was no observational research to back up the parents claims and that often the phrase “since birth” was used in a range of several weeks following birth up to several months.
In those children destined to become autistic their oversensitivity to the mother’s emotions may be such that they try, in defense, to blot out what is too destructive an experience for them. Little is known about the relation between the development of the child’s feelings and his cognition. But to blot out emotional experience probably impedes the development of cognition, and it may be that the two reinforce each other till autism results (Bettelheim, 1967, p. 398)
No matter his wavering beliefs, Kanner always felt that there was something innate which was an integral factor in the development of autism, even if he still felt that parents played an additional important role. Bettelheim, in contrast, believed that the only potential innate trait of the condition was a tendency towards overstimulation, being too sensitive to the mother’s emotional coldness. He felt that autism would not occur, whatever this innate tendency, if the mother was warm and attentive enough to create that necessary bond. To dispute the innate nature of the condition, he proffered monozygotic twin studies in evidence. He felt that no number of identical twins concordant for autism could ever prove the innate nature of the condition, yet a single case of discordance would prove the effects of the environment:
Identical twins . . . constitute a crucial test of the innateness of infantile autism. . . . Even where both twins are autistic, it does not invalidate a hypothesis of environmental origin since both may have been subject to an identical or very similar home influence. And if there were even one instance of identical twins in which one was autistic and the other not, it would throw serious doubts on any theory of inborn origin, while it would not weaken the environmental hypothesis since parents may react differently to each twin (Bettelheim, 1967, p. 394).
Unfortunately for Bettelheim, in the eve of genetics research, he did not consider that some other environmental effects might play a role beyond just the emotional and psychological environment. In addition, he assumes a classic mendelian mode of inheritance, which of course autism is not.
Ironically, Bernard Rimland, one of Bettelheim’s most outspoken opponents as mentioned earlier, later became an avid supporter of the thimerosal theory of autism, an environmental theory that posits that the heavy metal preservative in various infant vaccinations is the cause of autism (Autism Research Institute, 2004).
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