Autism-World

(??Aug. 28, 1903-March 13, 1990)Austrian-U.S. psychologist. Trained in Vienna, he was arrested by the Nazis and interned in concentration camps (1938 ??¡°1939). He immigrated to the U.S., where from 1944 he directed the University of Chicago’s Orthogenic School, a laboratory school for disturbed children, and became known especially for his work with autistic children. He applied psychoanalytic principles to social problems, especially in child rearing. His works include an influential paper on adaptation to extreme stress (1943), “Love Is Not Enough” (1950), as well as The Informed Heart (1960), The Empty Fortress (1967), Children of the Dream (1967),and The Uses of Enchantment (1976). Depressed after the death of his wife and after suffering a stroke, he took his own life. His reputation was later clouded by revelations that he had invented his academic credentials and had abused and misdiagnosed children at his school.
Unfortunately, understandings of autism took a turn for the worse under the leadership of Bruno Bettelheim. Dr. Bettelheim an Austrian-born art historian eventually became the director of the Orthogenic School, a home for disturbed children associated with the University of Chicago. Richard Pollack???s 1997 biography of Bettelheim, The Creation of Dr. B, seriously calls into question Bettelheim???s credibility. While we haven???t included this book in our recommended reading list, it is a very well written and a meticulously researched biography. It was Bettelheim???s theory that children became autistic because of cold and emotionally distant mothers, women he referred to as ???refrigerator mothers???. Rather than seeing autism as the neurological condition it is, Bettelheim blamed emotionally distant mothers as the cause of autism, a stigma that hasn???t totally disappeared. We have heard many parents blame themselves for doing or not doing something at some critical stage in their own child???s development. Fortunately, the effect of Bettelheim???s parent blaming encountered a serious setback beginning in the mid 1960???s.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 5:02 pm and is filed under History of Autism.