Handle with Care: Romanian Orphanages, Extreme Situations, and Autism
In a study recently presented at the Society for Research in Child Development in Atlanta, “peculiar behaviors reminiscent of autism” were observed in 50 month old children who “had endured untold misery in Romanian orphanages — institutions notorious for their cruel conditions.” As reported in the January 24th Ped Med installment on autism, Brain studies yield autism clues, Dr. Helen Egger, a child psychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center, notes that, in the case of the children in Romanian orphanages, it was not “parental neglect” that was being studied but the “extreme situation” of a child severely deprived due to being left in a crib for hours without contact.
The Ped Med article further notes:
“We are not looking at autism per se but at the effects of severe neglect and deprivation,” Egger said in an interview. “Are there mechanisms that are similar in these children that will help us understand what happens in autism?”
Or are they poles apart?
“(In autism) flapping and spinning may result because children are so bombarded with stimuli, it’s a way to block some of it out,” Egger speculated. “But kids in a neglected environment may be rocking to provide themselves with desperately needed stimulation. The symptoms may look similar but have different mechanisms.”
Comparing the behavior children in Romanian orphanages where they are under “extreme conditions” to that of children with autism is somewhat clouded by the history of autism aetiology. Before he became a self-styled autism and child development expert, Bruno Bettelheim wrote “Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations” (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 38: 417-452, 1943) in which he describes how prisoners in concentration camps—-the “extreme situation” of his title—experience feelings of detachment, withdraw into themselves, and even come to identify with their prison guards. Bettelheim’s psychodynamic understanding of autism is based on his own experience in Nazi concentration camps, an “extreme situation,” as he termed it: In an analogical sleight of hand, Bettelheim equates an autistic child with a concentration camp prisoner on the basis that both are in an inescapable “extreme situation” in which “one’s very life was in jeopardy at every moment and that one could do nothing about it” ( The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self 1967, p. 64).
Egger and her colleagues are looking specifically for biological abnormalities in the brains of the children they are studying, as well as taking blood tests to measure levels of stress. I am curious as to the results of her research, and hope that these will be handled with care—-the notion of parents causing their children to become autistic still exists in other countries (in Korea, as an article in the January 23rd Guardian Unlimited notes) and even in the not-too-recent past in the US (see pages 100-101 of Unstrange Minds).
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POSTED IN: Adoption, Health, Korea, Psychiatry, Psychology
4 opinions for Handle with Care: Romanian Orphanages, Extreme Situations, and Autism
Autism Vox » Autism Mythology
Feb 10, 2007 at 3:26 am
[…] In response, I noted that “GTP” had indeed mentioned an actual urban myth, namely the notion of “refrigerator mothers”—the theory that poor parenting skills (especially on the part of emotionally “frigid” mothers) is the cause of autism. Self-proclaimed child development expert Bruno Bettelheim was the main proponent of this theory according to which “autism is caused not just by bad parenting but by parents who wish their child did not exist” (see the Unstrange website page on Bettelheim). Echoes of this theory still exist (see Handle with Care: Romanian Orphanages, Extreme Situations, and Autism) and another commenter has commented on what happened in his own family because of the refrigerator mother theory. From what Derrick Jeffries wrote on February 2nd: I am also a parent of a child with Autism, and the brother of a sister with Autism. I have Asperger’s Syndrome myself. I have many personal perspectives about Autism. Been living with it since 1961. My mother was one of the original “refrigerator mothers.” Do you think you have it bad today? Have you ever had a nurse come out to your house to observe you, and to see if you LOVED your child? […]
Larry
Aug 28, 2007 at 11:17 pm
I say never mind whether parents are offended or upset by theories. Let’s find out whether autism can be caused by neglect. The article states that there is a difference between true autism and autism caused by neglect.
The difference is in the motivation for “stimming.” True autistics are trying to drown out external reality, whereas neglect-induced autistics are trying to create stimulus.
Oh really? That’s begging the question. It presumes to know something that is not only unknown, but unknowable.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Aug 29, 2007 at 12:40 am
Thanks, Larry. I do think that, because of the history of autism and the history of blaming parents, that it is important to be careful with how one brings up a subject like autism and neglect.
Larry
Aug 30, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Hi Christina. Medical research has to be objective. Surgeons never operate on people they love, because they must avoid distractions. Since we demand that medical researchers concern themselves with the feelings of parents, all autsim research has become suspect. It’s no wonder they have found no cure for autism. This situation is not so bad for researchers (Tony Attwood has made so much money he can’t count that high), and it sure hasn’t been disastrous for the self-esteem of mothers. The only people who have truly suffered are the poor little autistic kids.
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