Offensive Autism Books

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I very much doubt that the maligned "refrigerator mothers" generation of mothers read those hateful and false claims made by Bettelheim and his acolytes. Nevertheless, they and their AS children were very negatively impacted by the falsehoods. There is plenty of evidence for this.

Saying "just ignore it" ignores the much bigger picture of impact on a maligned group; and again, contributes to enabling the dehumanisers to peddle their stuff unchallenged.

I wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's until I was in my late 20's in 2001, so my parent's didn't have any books on the subject. It's probably just as well since back when I was a kid books about autism in general would have probably been full of nonsense about "refrigerator mothers" and frequent use of the "R" word.

Not really an autism book but my mom had a book called The Difficult Child and it made me feel bad. The title was off putting for me. When you read it, you see many characteristics in it that are common in autism and sensory processing disorders and ADHD except all these kids are "normal" and their impairment is people not accepting them and not understanding them so they are having issues as a result of it. But I only read the title and judged the book by its cover.

He faked his psychoanalytic qualifications. He was a pretty mixed up man,and eventually killed himself. Perhaps guilt played a part in that as well as impacts of his wartime experiences and deprivations.

People took these self-proclaimed "experts" very seriously, as they represented authority in a culture and time that was more authoritarian than decades after their heyday prior to the 1970s. Women who questioned these male authoritarian "experts" were treated in very harsh/dismissive and insulting ways. The misuse of power was very widespread, particularly by experts boosting and protecting their own career and self-interest.

The sad truth of it all is that the people who wrote these books did not have the actual feelings of autistic people in mind when writing them. Yet they tell us that we lack empathy. The authors just wanted to exploit the parents and make a quick buck from them. Overcoming Autism, from what I read so far, seems cure-supportive based on the tone. In the book, one line suggests that autism is essentially a form of brain damage equivalent to stroke or gunshot wounds to the brain. The book also suggests that the so-called brain-damaged autistic children can be cured with intensive therapy (probably including ABA) because this kind of treatment repairs faulty synapses and brain connections. What BS the authors were talking about! At least it does say that autistic children should not receive treatment that is not well-backed with scientific evidence.