Autism Vox

21 opinions for What I Found in the Bookstore

• Regan
  Mar 29, 2008 at 9:12 pm

  Or they could move it from Psychology to Fiction.

  Just something you probably already know, but I thought it was interesting.

  “…It was characteristic of Bettelheim to write that he knew of no follow-up studies of autistic children, and claim that it was his work that provided the basis for Edith Sterba’s 1933 report on “Ein abnormes Kind” in the Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalytische Padagogik. There had been no such work, any more than there had been a psychology degree from the University of Vienna nor training at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute (p. 226); Bettelheim was amply occupied running the family lumber company. Nor had he worked with Patsy Lyne, the child who lived for 6 years with him and (his wife) Gina; Patsy (who was not autistic; she is now in her 70s, and Pollak quotes from her letters to him) was taught and cared for by Gina and treated by Sterba. Nevertheless, he would claim her as his entry into autism, and over time the single child would become two, then several (pp. 129, 403).
  The results he claimed for the Orthogenic School’s work with the children he chose to call autistic were likewise testimony to the uses of enchantment.
  Pollak cites the study of D. Patrick Zimmerman, the school’s research coordinator. In the years of the Foundation’s grant, only 6 children entered the school with a diagnosis of autism; of the 220 admitted in Bettelheim’s years as director, only 13.
  …
  Such hypotheses and diagnoses, aided by a creative imagination, were what enabled Bettelheim to write in The Empty Fortress that he had worked with 46 autistic children, “all of whom showed marked improvement” (pp. 266-267). They were also what enabled Leo Kanner in 1969, in the hearing of this reviewer and of many others, to refer to the enchanted, and enchanting, Fortress as “the empty
  book” (p. 282)…”

  From Book Review by Clara Claiborne Park of “The Creation of Dr. B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim. By Richard Pollak. New York: Simon and Shuster,
  1997, 478 pp., illustrations, $28.00.
  Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 28, pp265-266. 1998

  See also:
  http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/01/26/reviews/970126.boxer.html

  This reminds me of what happened with Dr. Cyril Burt, where his twin data turned out to expand beyond any real observation, the statistics were fudged and the collaborators fictional. Must have been easier to do this in the past.

• Liz D.
  Mar 29, 2008 at 11:54 pm

  I’d like *FICTION!!!!* stickers on the cover of Evidence of Harm too.

  And for more on Bettleheim’s iniquities, see Martin Gardner’s 2000 article in Skeptical Inquirer,

  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_6_24/ai_66496160/pg_1

  The Brutality of Dr. Bettelheim

• dkmnow
  Mar 30, 2008 at 12:20 am

  When I was at College of the Redwoods, The Empty Fortress was the ONLY book on autism in their library. And that was only a five years ago. Needless to say, I gave them a long list of recommendations before I left. I have no idea if they followed up. Considering their otherwise “progressive” character, Humboldt County (CA) in general had a strange vacuum of both information and interest in the subject of autism. Personally, I found CR’s Disabled Students’ Programs and Services department to be almost totally clueless and all too enthusiastically unhelpful, despite their “top-notch” reputation.

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Mar 30, 2008 at 1:08 am

  @Regan,

  I hadn’t seen Park’s review—thanks! Also this one by Robert Gottlieb in the New York Review of Books:

  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16083

• Marla
  Mar 30, 2008 at 1:10 am

  I am often fascinated with the books I find in book stores and at the library. The library can be the worst. Look up books on mental retardation and/or autism at the library and some of the books you find are terrifyingly outdated and harmful information. Not that I am for banning books but at least have several newer books to balance out the terrible outdated ones.

  What about all the books on Vaccines causing Autism in the book stores? Whever I am looking in the parenting sections or special needs sections those far outweigh any books with fact based information.

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Mar 30, 2008 at 1:31 am

  The selection of autism books at our library is rather random—-it includes Evidence of Harm, the book about Raun Kaufman and Son-Rise, some of Stanley Greenspan’s books, some from Jessica Kingsley. Many of these, I think, are based on the suggestions of library patrons—I am thinking it would be good to do a search of the catalog and see what is on it!

  I’m also not sure of the “outdated” policy—-Liz’s suggestion about putting a “fiction” sticker on the front appeals.

• Casdok
  Mar 30, 2008 at 3:01 am

  The Empty Fortress was one of the first books i read when my son was diagnosd!

• Regan
  Mar 30, 2008 at 5:40 am

  Kristina said,
  “I am thinking it would be good to do a search of the catalog and see what is on it!”
  ——————
  What a good idea. When Eleanor was diagnosed, the selection was pretty lousy–less than 10 books, all there for a long time, including 2 of complete pseudoscience and 2 copies of The Empty Fortress.

  Tonight,150+. Not as many really good titles on FCT, visual systems, or the practical as I would like, but all in all, much improved…and The Empty Fortress apparently went out with the annual library sale. Quite a few of the very new titles and DVDs that this blog mentions (Savarese, Grinker, the video on Sabine, etc.) are in the catalog.

• RAJ
  Mar 30, 2008 at 8:40 am

  Bruno Bettleheim’s theory of the refrigerator mother is making a strong comback. A number of reports published in peer reviewed medical journals have now suggested that severe emotional neglect in infancy can ’cause’ autism:

  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16167089?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

  Psychological theory has suggested that the parents and other family members of autistic children are autistic themselves and happened to have defrosted just long enough to have produced a genetically defective child.

  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9259376?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA

  It should not be surprising since the vast majority of leading ‘authorities’ in the autism research community are either child psychiatrists (Rutter, Piven) or have doctorates in psychological theory (eg Geraldine Dawson). ASD’s are biological disorders not psychological disorders and the deeply held beliefs in the research community suggests a bias that leads them to interpret everything related to autism through a ‘psychology’ prism

• AR
  Mar 30, 2008 at 2:41 pm

  I am a student at Ithaca College. There are fourteen books by Bettelheim in our relatively small library. Very disturbing.

• Karen
  Mar 30, 2008 at 6:08 pm

  What an interesting discussion and one I hadn’t thought much about wrt to libraries. I have read many books but sought out specific ones from the library and have not spent any time just browsing…will def do that next time I’m at the library and make some suggestions if necessary.

• Liz D.
  Mar 30, 2008 at 6:11 pm

  Here’s the current American Psychoanalytic Association’s view on autism:

  Q. Autism
  I am doing an essay comparing behaviorist and psychoanalytic approaches to autism. I am having problems finding how psychoanalysts treat autism and what they think the cause is.
  A. Classical Infantile Autism is a result of organic pathology in the brain. The major treatment, based on our current knowledge, involves behavioral approaches, special education, and education and supportive psychotherapy with parents. A psychoanalyst might approach the situation differently than someone who follows a “pure” behaviorist approach by considering the individuality of the situation more. However, autism is not a condition that can be approached with either classical or modified psychoanalysis.

  Lies and Legacy of Bruno Bettelheim at neurodiversity.com

  Autism Watch on the refrigerator mother theory.

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Mar 30, 2008 at 7:06 pm

  Found all of Bettelheim’s books in our library system, including a version in Spanish, La fortaleza vacía : autismo infantil y el nacimiento del yo.

  On psychoanalysis and autism, here’s an earlier post on therapy moms and psychoanalysis:

  New York city psychoanalyst Susan P. Sherkow, MD, says that psychoanalysis can help parents understand the “‘meaning of what these children are trying to convey.’”

  And Martha R. Herbert, M.D., Ph.D., of the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital:

  “Moms are running themselves into the ground and yet they are not really present, so they become part of the process and not part of [sic] solution.”

  Parents of children with autism need to relate to the child in whatever state they are in - and this is where psychoanalysis may be helpful, she says.

  Psychoanalysts can be sensitive to the inner world of the child. “It’s a skill you can’t package, but it’s wonderful,” Herbert says.

• Daisy
  Mar 30, 2008 at 8:32 pm

  Sigh. The dark ages still exist — in a corner of an unsuspecting bookstore.

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Mar 30, 2008 at 10:53 pm

  I’m thinking it might be a good project to go through all the books and speak to the library—-an interesting autism awareness month project.

• mikawendy
  Mar 31, 2008 at 12:33 am

  If not a disclaimer on the cover, then maybe a surreptitiously planted copy of a journal article(s) or other literature from the autism field showing how discredited Bettelheim’s theories are….

• anonymous
  Mar 31, 2008 at 2:35 pm

  Seems wrong for you to censor the library.

  Realistically no one that is looking for a current book on autism is going to check out a book from 1960 or 1970 or 1980. Why change history? If someone wants to read Bettleheim\’s book for a perspective of the times, they should be able to.

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Mar 31, 2008 at 3:12 pm

  And when one reads books about autism from the 1960s and 1970s in conjunction with books today, a very interesting story about the changes in views of children’s mental health and about psychiatric diagnoses emerge.

• Chuck
  Mar 31, 2008 at 4:11 pm

  Revisionist history is neither historically accurate nor historically correct. It is only politically correct at that time.

• Kristina Chew, PhD
  Mar 31, 2008 at 4:30 pm

  It’ll be very interesting to see how the current controversies about autism and vaccines are included in accounts of the history of autism.

• Bonnie Sayers
  May 10, 2008 at 12:01 pm

  Nick and I went to a new outdoor mall yesterday in Glendale, CA that opened up a week ago. They moved the Barnes & Noble we used to go to this location and many more book on the topic of autism and AS. Glad to report not one book by Bruno was on their shelves.

  I bought the second edition of the toilet training book, an everything guide to adolescent boys and Dr. Thompson’s Straight talk on autism. Never heard of this Dr but the book is newly published and I thought would be good to read eventually.

  While waiting for Matt at school yesterday I skimmed the book and found two inacuracies:

  “A small percentage of children with ASDs are found to have food allergies similar to those of other young children, the most common are cow’s milk followed by eggs and peanuts.” (p.146)

  I need to read more to find out where he obtained his info. The other point I read that did not seem correct, “Of daily living skills, mealtime activities are usually the first and easiest to teach because there is a built-in reward.” (p.183)

  My son has had feeding therapy for over six years and I was active in several feeding groups and this does not seem correct, plus many have sensory difficulties in the area of feeding.

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