Bernard Rimland, “Freud Is Dead: New Directions in the Treatment of Mentally Ill Children,” USC Distinguished Lecture in Special Education, Los Angeles, CA, 1970. Carton 10, Folder 8, William Bronston Papers, [BANC MSS 2002/227 c]. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Complete original source available here.
Bernard Rimland, a research psychologist and father of a son with autism, was perhaps the single most important figure in the transition from psychogenesis to biogenesis. He was a founding member of the Autism Society of America in 1965 and the Autism Research Institute in 1967. His 1964 book, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, helped to close the door on theories that defined autism as an emotional disturbance to be blamed on parents. Instead, Rimland championed the case for biological causation. In this speech at the University of Southern California on July 7, 1970, part of a series of Distinguished Lectures in Special Education, Rimland denounced psychogenesis as both unscientific and mean-spirited.
Bernard Rimland and his son Mark (courtesy of Autism Research Institute)
There are two major competing theories relating to the treatment of children with severe behavior disorder. These theories are in sharp conflict, and their implications are very pervasive, since they relate not only to how to remedy the problem, but to what originally caused the disorder, how it could be prevented, and what the outcome will be….
What are these competing views? I think you are already familiar with them. One view goes under such titles as “psychological,” “psychiatric,” “psychogenic,” and “psychoanalytic.” This is the view still held by the majority of the educational, psychiatric and psychological establishments, although in the past few years, it has begun to lose ground rather rapidly. It maintains that most, if not all, children with severe behavior problems are physiologically normal and that any problem must therefore stem from the child’s early experiences in his family, especially with his mother. Those who subscribe to this view call the children “emotionally disturbed,” implying that they believe the child’s problem is not of organic origin. As you’ll see shortly, this view is without scientific merit. In fact, to be perfectly frank, my opinion is that it is probably nonsense.
The other view is that most, if not all, disorders of learning and behavior are the result of physiological impairment, and that the more severe the disorder, the more certain is the organicity….
Most people to whom I have said that the psychogenic position is probably nonsense are openly incredulous. I don’t blame them. The belief in the great potency of the psychological environment as a cause of mental disorder is very prevalent in our culture, and in fact in most cultures….
It is amazing how many people have accepted, quite uncritically, the belief that psychological factors not only can but do cause mental illness…. When hundreds of studies fail to supply the missing evidence you can’t help but wonder why people still believe such theories….
A few years ago my phone rang at 7:00 a.m. On the line, calling from New York City, was the mother of a young autistic boy. She was crying. She had just read in the New York Times (March 10, 1967) a review of Bruno Bettelheim’s book The Empty Fortress, which purports to be about infantile autism…. What caused this mother’s anguish? The book reviewer (well known in literary circles as an ardent Freudian) had presented Bettelheim’s ideas on the causation of autism as though they were gospel truth rather than as the mere unsupported, disconfirmed—not unconfirmed—disconfirmed, self-serving speculations they really are…. The hatred and longing that supposedly cause autism stem, this mother read, from extreme frustrations in the mother-child relationship. Bettelheim claims to have seen the same “dehumanization under extreme situations” in the German concentration campus, where he was temporarily detained while his family was negotiating to purchase his release.
What arrogance! What gall! What dishonesty! What unprovoked cruelty! How could anyone with a conscience and any semblance of scientific integrity write or repeat such heartless and unsubstantiated nonsense!….
Since, as we have seen, there is no scientific evidence that maternal mistreatment causes mental illness in children, why do so many believe so persistently that it does? One major reason is that so many autistic-type children look normal, and most medical tests, including EEGs, usually turn out “normal.” But that is deceptive, because the medical tests are so very imperfect. No one—I repeat no one—knows how the brain works. The brain is composed of about nine billion nerve cells. That is about three times as many nerve cells as there are people on the Earth! And no one, no one—knows how even one of those nine billion cells works….
Another important reason for the belief in psychogenic causation of mental illness is that people believe that if a problem is psychological rather than biological it is more readily treated. They think organic problems are rather hopeless. This just isn’t so…..
[T]hese theories have been widely subscribed to by most professionals who deal with the children and the result has been DISASTER for tens of thousands of children, and for their families. The psychogenic theory has cast blame on parents, and thus immobilized the child’s strongest ally in what should be his struggle to recover. It has caused stagnation in research… It has caused educators to shrug their shoulders and leave the problem in the hands of the psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. It has cost families untold fortunes in money, time, convenience and human dignity. And, worst of all, it has cost far too many children their lives. Such children are not medically dead—just psychologically dead, existing like human vegetables in institution after institution….
I feel that before very many years have passed we will have a pretty good grasp on what does go on biomedically in the nervous system…. At my own Institute for Child Behavior Research in San Diego, we have recently completed the first phase in a series of studies designed to evaluate the effects of massive doses of certain vitamins on autism and similar disorders in children. It is known that genetic defects often express themselves in the need for enormous quantities of certain vitamins….
So there is much hope and much progress on the biochemical front….