According to Peter Breggin’s Toxic Psychiatry, the psychogenic theory of autism was abandoned for political pressure from parents organizations; not for scientific reasons. For example, some case reports have shown that profound institutional privation can result in quasi-autistic symptoms.[3]
Clinician Frances Tustin devoted her life to the theory. She wrote:
“One must note that autism is one of a number of children’s neurological disorders of psychogenic nature, i.e., caused by abusive and traumatic treatment of infants [...]. There is persistent denial by American society of the causes of damage to millions of children who are thus traumatized and brain damaged as a consequence of cruel treatment by parents who are otherwise too busy to love and care for their babies”.[4]
Alice Miller, one of the best-known authors of the consequences of child abuse, has maintained that autism is psychogenic, and that it is fear of the truth about child abuse the leitmotif of nearly all forms of autistic therapy known to her. When Miller visited several therapy centers for autism in the United States, it became apparent to her that the stories of children “inspired fear in both doctors and mothers alike”:
I spent a day observing what happened to the group. I also studied close-ups of children on video. What became clearer and clearer as the day went on was that all these children had a serious history of suffering behind them. This, however, was never referred to […]. In my conversations with the therapists and mothers, I inquired about the life stories of individual children. The facts confirmed my hunch. No one, however, was willing to take these facts seriously.[5]
Like Arieti and Tustin, Miller believes that only empathetic parental attitudes lead to the complete blossoming of the child’s personality.
A book of Jay Joseph released in 2006 challenges the current genetic theory of autism:
“Looking specifically at autism, despite the near-unanimous opinion that it has an important genetic component, the evidence cited in support of this position is stunningly weak. It consists mainly of family studies, which cannot disentangle the potential influences of genes and environment, and four small methodologically flawed twin studies whose results can be explained by non-genetic factors. Not surprisingly, then, years of efforts to find ‘autism genes’ have come up empty.” [6]
Despite the current genetic research on autism and autism-related conditions, the “refrigerator mother” theory, widely discarded in the United States, still has some support in Europe and is largely believed to be the cause of autism in South Korea.[7]
i think asd has many diffrent combanitions of causes and in some cases this is a very strong factor and genetics are not but in some cases it is genetics
However, the general [n]consensus[/b] among scientists is that, generally, these children are not actually autistic;
Maha Rushy once said (Rush Limbaugh to those not familiar with his program) 'there can be no consensus in science, if there is, it's not science.' That was in regards to global warming but the substance is the same.
I'm pretty much like twists and turns when it comes to my family also. In fact I was nurtered to the best of their knowledge it seems. Only traumatic experience would be when my grandmother's dog attack me and left a scar on my face, I was around 3 when this happened.
D1 - In your post, does Allice Miller mention which autistic symptoms were found? And was any research done between autistic children and those who went through such abuse?
I also find that the generalization itself that autism is caused by abusive parents to be wrong. If this fact is true then parents all over the world are becoming more and more abusive since those reported to have autism is growing.
On a slight different note, i'd like to see who funds Allice Miller's research. She's got to live somehow. Same with Frances Tustin.
I think this is utter bull doody. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!
My parents did not abuse or neglect me, and were very loving and affectionate. At least back as far as I can remember... 2 1/2. (I remember my mother being pregnant with my only younger sibling who is only 2 1/2 years younger than me and many other things from a very young age.)
I did not and do not abuse or neglect my son, who also has AS, and I was and am very loving and affectionate with him. He slept in bed snuggled up with me almost every single night until he was a year and a half old and my husband said MY TURN.
I held and played, read to and sang with him every single day for hours and hours until I had to go back to work, when that time was reduced to after work until dinner and bed time. I took no end of criticism from my family for coddling him too much: For being head over heels in love with my new baby. Tonight, this "cold" and "neglectful" mother, who played cars on the livingroom floor with her sons for two hours tonight before dinner, will be playing said son's game of choice with him before bed, Three Dragon Ante, as we do every Friday and Saturday night, just because he wants to.
Perhaps my excessive nurturing of and emotional bonding with him instead caused his autism? Such a horror story. It couldn't possibly be genetic. AS mom, AS kid? Nah-way!
This woman can shove her theories up her butt, right beside those idiots who think homosexuality is a lifestyle choice.
I thought this was going to be about mothers who feed you a lot
My sister and I were raised in the same house. She is NT and we are quite different from each other. We have different genetic fathers.
That's bull. But thank you for sharing.
Actually, it reminds me of all of the other counter-intuitive "liberal" theories that I'm forced to endure on a daily basis.
Sorry, that's just how I see it.
it reminds me of all of the other counter-intuitive "liberal" theories that I'm forced to endure on a daily basis.
In what way is the Refrigerator Mother theory "liberal"?
I thought this was going to be about mothers who feed you a lot
And like-wise I thought there would be an involved story about a child who called his/her mother "refrigerator". Or perhaps some wierd scientific way of saying that "the refrigerator gives us food so it is our mother."
Either way it peaked my curiosity long enough to read the article and find it ridiculous... dumb.
Hmmmmm, I am somewhat confused by this refrigerator mother theory. I have Borderline (Emotionally Immature) Personality Disorder which CAN be caused by cold mothering. I may also have AS. In many ways BPD and AS can appear similar, and sometimes occur together. I don't think that cold mothering causes autism (I think that's genetic), but I am willing to consider the possibility that it might affect the way an autistic child develops.
My mother was and is emotionally cold. Not a BAD mother you understand. She never abused me or neglected me. She played with me, interacted with me and nurtured me and is generally a good mum and a kind friendly woman. She just never really showed emotion towards me or my sister. She isn't AS and she does have normal emotions, she just hides them. I think it is because she had an old-fashioned, emotionless upbringing herself.
In many ways I am thankful that my mother is emotionally cold, as I have problems dealing with people displaying emotion. On the rare occasions she does show emotion, I find it very difficult to cope with. Then again if she hadn't been so cold when I was younger, maybe I would have less problems understanding emotions, or possibly it would have lead to me being even more confused by emotions.
Whatever the result would have been I am sure it would have affected me in some way, positively or negatively.
Personally I believe that a mother's parenting style can hugely affect the way a child's personality develops. It can't CAUSE autism, but it wouldn't surprise me if it changes how the autism affects the child in later life.
I realise that this may be a little controversial.
It's true that people who have been through profound trauma will demonstrate "autistic sumptoms" but that doesn't make them autistic. It just means that you've got group A and group B that show some similar characteristics. Basically one thing trauma victims and autistics have in common is a high prevelence of PTSD traits, incuding a propensity for sensory overload. For example, you hear stories of soldiers back from war who are traumatized and overloaded by the simplest stimuli. Does that mean they are autistic? No, it just means that they exhibit a low threshold for sensory stimuli, like autistics.
It's just so foolish to blame it on the mothers, especially if you consider that autistics might be more vulnerable to abuse across the board. In other words some children might be abused because their autistic traits enrage the parents (and not the other way around-- the parental rage does not cause the autistic traits, though they likely render the autist more socially inept, and thus make him "worse"). My autistics traits enraged my parents, and I was moderately but not severely abused. I was severely mentally abused and traumatized by school bullying. I think both happened because of my autistic traits, they didn't cause my autistic traits.
My son has never been abused and I've barely raised my voice to him over the whole of his life. He is HFA. However, if he had been abused and traumatized, I doubt he would be very high functioning... we are just trying to raise him in an environment of total acceptance and gentleness.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that an abusive home environment could make an autistic unrecognizably worse than they would be otherwise, and in that sense, abuse does have a causal effect on autism.
I have an NT mother that can be called a 'refrigerator mom' and I am an Aspergian. Towards my NT siblings, she behaves relatively 'normal' in terms of affection and attention. But she (my mother) was neglected by her mother in her childhood as well. I believe that my mother tries to master her childhood experiences by giving them to her child (me). Like those (child) molesters who were molested as a child as well.
Unlike my siblings, I was an applicable target for her refrigerator quality, because I on the other hand did not wanted to sit on anybodies arm and being caressed as a baby, did not react to callings while playing and had very own ideas on a lot of subjects she felt she had to decide (dress code, having friends etc). I guess that made her feel being rejected and it recalled her own childhood, and so she needed to find an outlet for her own repressed feelings and supposed to find it in her behavior towards me.
For an outsider, though, she may appear as a refrigerator, and because she was first on this world (and thus must be the cause, while I must be the effect) such a platitudinous theory as of the 'refrigerator mom' may seem to be plausible.
I thought that nowadays the generally accepted opinion is that the "refrigerator mother" theory is outdated, unfounded -- not to mention insulting to families.
This is what I meant to say. Well put, nyanchan.
It reeks of psycho-babble.
Back in the days of Mom Caused Every Disorder theory, according to their nonsense the sort of mother who created autism in her children was about 180degrees opposite of the sort of mother who created gay kids. So how do we explain gay Aspies?
(personally, i don't explain them -- I'm just glad I found one.)
It's very true that trauma and deprivation can trigger autistic-like behavior, but that does not necessarily mean it's autism. It is also true that autistics can be hyper-sensitive and fragile so that a moderate amount of abuse could have far worse consequences for him or her than it would for an NT. I can guarantee you that my son would be unrecognizably worse if he had not been raised in the loving and accepting household my husband and I have strived to create for him.
I also think that some of these so-called refrigerator mothers might have been autistic themselves, so because they didn't emote a lot or were not demonstrative they were termed inept or emotionally deficient. I know I can APPEAR emotionless and very quiet when in fact my emotion and attachments are intense, and I am quiet not because I have nothing to say but because I just cannot say it.