Because of the interest generated by my earlier post on Bruno Bettelheim, I have decided to reprint, in full, an article I wrote in September 2003 (on "nature and nurture"), together with the accompanying editorial.
(
From: CLS Journal Volume 3 Number 9)
Editorial (23 September, 2003)
Today my amazing grandchildren turned one. “Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged”, wrote Rabindranath Tagore. “A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on”, wrote Carl Sandburg.
This month’s journal consists of a lengthy article on “nature and nurture”, the last time I intend to broach the subject. It is an amazing testament to human folly that we talk and write about such things.
But the birth, one year ago, of Hannah and Veronika – ten minutes apart – alerted me to the fact that, in our society, this issue is still alive – indeed, the idea of genetic inheritance has actually become an article of faith.
It is to the preservation of my grandchildren’s humanity that I dedicate the article. The environment they inhabit is – and will continue to be – an absolutely crucial influence on their growing personalities. I have no doubt that they inherited many characteristics from their parents and grandparents.
But the crucial factor that will determine whether their vitality and joy are preserved is the world in which they will grow up.
I sometimes wish I could protect them from this world, with its violence and vulgarity. But that is silly. Like the rest of us, they have no choice but to live in the world. And the fact that they were born is evidence, as Tagore said, “that God is not yet discouraged”. Who am I to hold a contrary view?
Andrew Reiner
Nature and nurture again: A question of values (written between 1 August and 23 September, 2003)I feel embarrassed that I ever raised this issue (
Conscious Living Seminars Journal for April 2003). I had completed less than two months of first year Psychology (towards the end of April, 1971) when I wrote my first ever essay on this subject. I concluded what I then thought was obvious: neither nature, nor nurture, but an “interaction” between the two. An “interaction” does not mean an “addition”. It does not mean that genes contribute a certain percentage while environment contributes the rest. It means that
no organism – including the human organism – is either conceived or born in a vacuum. It also means that “the environment” (including the physical, human, social and cultural environment) begins to influence whatever is genetically determined AND VICE VERSA from the very moment of conception. The human brain, for example, the
Central Nervous System (CNS) and the
Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) develop in the mother’s womb in accordance with both the genetic “code” and the physical environment provided by the mother. The latter is influenced by the environment the mother inhabits, her relationship with her partner (as well as with her own parents and others) and, indeed, by the entire culture in which she and her family are embedded. After the baby is born (after nine long months of heredity/environment interactions of a bewildering and unpredictable complexity) these processes continue. The baby’s innate (not merely genetic) characteristics act on the mother – as well as on the rest of “the environment” (the father, siblings and others) – to elicit certain kinds of behaviour. How the mother responds depends on a multitude of factors, including the baby’s “temperament”, her own “personality” and the opportunities and pressures provided by the economic, political and social structure that surrounds the family. While it is undoubtedly true – no, it is NECESSARILY true – that the young child’s developing “personality”, “intelligence” and behaviour are, at all stages, influenced by whatever genetic “code” she has inherited from her parents, it is also true that “the environment” is also doing so AND INFLUENCING AND ALTERING THE CHILD’S BRAIN, CNS AND ANS – AND EVEN HER GENES – IN THE PROCESS.
The brain is not a genetically pre-determined given, either at conception or at birth. It continues to develop and to change as the baby grows into a child and as the child develops to become an adult (the converse is also true; the “environment” is not a predetermined “given” either but responds to whatever it is that the baby brings with her into the world).
The question, “nature or nurture” (or the related question, “how much nature, how much nurture?”), is a nonsensical, meaningless one. The real question is “Why does anyone ask such questions?” And that is when we realise that it is, all of it, “a question of values”.
In my Psychology I essay in April, 1971 I concluded that “intelligence” (at least as measured by IQ tests) was the result of the interaction between heredity and environment. While the case for both sorts of influences seemed strong, the “genetic hypothesis” seemed almost unassailable owing to research on twins, especially monozygotic (MZ) or identical twins (that is, twins with identical genes – because they come from the same ovum). The evidence from correlations of IQs of MZ twins reared apart appeared to be so strong and came from such impeccable sources that the environmentalists were finding things difficult. Of particular significance was the research of the eminent British Psychologist, Sir Cyril Burt. The “heritability” of IQ was said to be 80%. Environmental factors accounted for 20% of the “variance”. His findings were used by Arthur Jensen and others to argue that racial differences in intelligence, for example between African Americans (“Negroes”) and other Americans, were largely genetically determined.
I’m horrified to recall that, in 1973, in my third year, I examined the so-called “evidence” and agreed with Jensen’s “hypothesis”. The following year (1974) the whole genetic edifice came crashing down with the publication of Leon J Kamin’s
“The science and politics of IQ” (Kamin, 1974; see also Kamin and Eysenck, 1981). Kamin spent a year examining the original research – including that conducted by Burt – supporting the genetic hypothesis. He re-did the statistical calculations to check them for accuracy. His findings should have ended the debate for all time. He found countless mathematical errors, as well as accidental and deliberate distortions and fabrications, to force the so-called data to fit the researchers’ conviction that intelligence was genetically determined.
He found that the studies were full of experimenter bias, “identical twins reared apart” often lived in the same neighbourhood, under similar circumstances, went to the same school and stayed in contact with one another. Sir Cyril Burt invented “data” supposedly gathered by phantom research assistants (that is, assistants who did not exist) and “corrected” data that had been legitimately gathered to fit the genetic hypothesis.
Kamin’s book was published in 1974. I read it in 1976 when I was preparing a “practical demonstration” tutorial on IQ tests for first year Psychology students and other Tutors at Macquarie University. How did the scientific world respond to Kamin’s findings? By abandoning the project? By committing funds to research the environmental (familial, social, cultural, legal, political, economic) factors affecting “intelligence”, or “mental health” or “personality”? No,
the effort to prove “the genetic hypothesis” – no longer a “hypothesis” today, I might add, but a “proven fact” (!!!) –
was redoubled. Today, “scientists” wanting money for research better make sure that it’s genetic research they’re interested in. “That’s where all the money is”, one said recently.
Nowhere is this value-laden and ideologically driven “scientific research” more destructive than in the area of “mental health”. Beginning with definitions of “schizophrenia” and other “diseases” or “illnesses” (or, more recently, “disorders”) which are subjective, ambiguous and untenable, funded by drug companies and others with a vested interest in the results, people calling themselves “scientists” have undertaken poorly conducted research to prove the genetic causes of these “brain diseases” (eg through twin studies). In 1990, Mary Boyle, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, did for “schizophrenia” what Kamin had done for “intelligence”
[“Schizophrenia: A scientific delusion?” (1990). In 2002 she brought out a second, revised edition, summarising research up to and including the year 2000].
When put under the microscope, she discovered, there is not one so-called “scientific” study of “schizophrenia” that establishes either that “it” actually exists as a physical illness or that “it” is a “hereditary illness”.
When Edward Shorter wrote his
“History of Psychiatry” in 1997 (Shorter, 1997; see July Journal) he simply cited the genetic studies uncritically, sarcastically denounced the environmentalist position
AND IGNORED MARY BOYLE’S SCHOLARLY BOOK ON THE SUBJECT (as he ignored Bruno Bettelheim’s work at the Orthogenic School). Earlier this year, Matt Ridley’s book,
“Nature via nurture” uncritically cited Shorter’s references – with clear indications that he had not even bothered to read the original papers – ignored Mary Boyle’s book, devoted one paragraph to Bruno Bettelheim in which he managed to get almost everything wrong, and sarcastically denounced those who claimed that “schizophrenia” and other forms of “mental illness” had anything to do with what he called “psychosocial factors” (Ridley, 2003: 102-105).
In spite of the seductive title of his book, he claimed that these “diseases” are genetic in origin with “psychosocial factors” (including the way children are treated by their parents) playing either a minimal role or NONE AT ALL (p105). Leon Kamin gets one sentence, but fails to get a mention in the index or the notes. The book (
The science and politics of IQ) is not even cited. This is extraordinary stuff, from a populariser of science who is widely read and quoted in the media (there is a very good, but far too lenient, review of
“Nature via nurture” in a recent – 14 August – issue of
The New York Review of Books).During the 1930s and 1940s Frieda Fromm-Reichmann worked with a number of people diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland, in the United States – with dramatic results. A recent biography describes her life and work in considerable detail (Gail Hornstein,
“To redeem one person is to redeem the world: The life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann”, 2000). One of her most famous cases was Joanne Greenberg, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 16 and spent four years at Chestnut Lodge. In 1964, under the pseudonym Hannah Green, she published an account of her stay at the Lodge, her work with “Dr Fried” and her recovery
(“I never promised you a rose garden”). The book has become a best-seller (it has sold almost six million copies) and is one of the reasons why Fromm-Reichmann is remembered today. Shorter and Ridley both mention Fromm-Reichmann and Chestnut Lodge, Shorter even referring to Hannah Green’s book
“I never promised you a rose garden”. They pour unrelenting scorn on Fromm-Reichmann’s concept of the “schizophrenogenic mother” (an unforgivable term she used in a 1948 article in the journal
Psychiatry), but totally ignore the fact that she successfully treated people so emotionally damaged that they were considered incurable (Fromm-Reichmann, 1948; Hornstein, 2000). Why do they do this? For the very simple reason that if “schizophrenia” and other severe “mental disorders” can be “cured” or healed by “psychotherapy” then the concept of a genetically caused disease of the brain requiring medication becomes untenable, while the concept of emotional damage resulting from early childhood (or later) experience of trauma gains credibility. Indeed, to anyone not totally brainwashed by the biobabble of the medical myth, the idea that people said to be suffering from “schizophrenia”, “bipolar disorder” or “depression” have a disease of the brain that has been inherited from the parents through their genes, sounds so incredible that one is justified in doubting the sanity of those doctors, psychiatrists and others who speak and write this way.
There is more. Shorter and Ridley both caricature Fromm-Reichmann for “blaming the mother” and for creating unnecessary pain and guilt for a whole generation of mothers by deliberately ignoring the “fact” that “schizophrenia” is a hereditary disease having little if anything to do with parenting. Ridley accepts the evidence cited by people like Fromm-Reichmann that the mothers of “schizophrenics” are, indeed, often cold and rejecting but explains it away as a natural reaction of mothers when confronted by their “sick” babies (Ridley, 2003: 103). His caricature of Bruno Bettelheim is even worse. Bettelheim is accused of ignoring the “fact” that autism is a genetically caused disease (“the heritability of autism is 90%”) and of inventing the ghastly term “refrigerator mother” to describe cold, rejecting mothers who are, supposedly, responsible for causing their children’s autism. There is not a single reference to Bettelheim’s voluminous writings to substantiate this claim. The sole reference is to a one-sided biography of Bettelheim published in 1997 by Richard Pollak. Ridley ignores other, more favourable biographies as well as Bettelheim’s voluminous writings spread over half a century! I had read a review of Pollak’s book in
The New York Review of Books where this awful term (“refrigerator mother”) was used and wondered how a person of Bettelheim’s humanity could possibly write about mothers using such language.
Now, reading
Nature via nurture, I was stunned to find the term attributed to Bettelheim again. So I searched the internet and found over 400 references to the term “refrigerator mother”, all but a handful attributing it to Bruno Bettelheim and virtually all angrily denouncing him for “blaming the mother” for a “disease” (autism) that has been “proven” to be hereditary.
I spent days on the net reading this material, looking in vain for a reference to one of Bettelheim’s numerous journal articles or books, so that I could find out where and when he used this phrase.
I searched in vain. There was not one, single reference. So I began to read through my Bettelheim library (I have most of his books), sent my poor nephew into the libraries of both the
University of Sydney and
UNSW to locate and photocopy Bettelheim’s articles on the subject of autism in various scientific journals which appeared during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s and eventually
satisfied myself that no such term was ever used by Bettelheim.
In addition, in many of the articles he wrote for scientific journals during the 1940s and ’50s, as well as his in-depth study of autism in a book published in 1967 (
The empty fortress), he went into considerable detail about the possible causes of “infantile autism” in the children who lived at
the Orthogenic School. He discussed, at great length, the genetic and environmental explanations common both then (1940s to the 1960s) and now and gave cogent reasons for REJECTING BOTH AS SIMPLISTIC. While he certainly described the parents (especially mothers) of the children at his school as cold and rejecting, he rejected outright the idea that this could be “the cause” of the children’s autism. He recognised that the mothers’ (and fathers’) behaviour was undoubtedly, at least in part, a reaction to the particular child. But he rejected the equally one-sided argument that autism was genetically determined and that the only reason for the parents’ rejecting behaviour was the strangeness of their baby. He cited the
example of two pairs of MZ twins, for example, where ONLY ONE MEMBER OF THE PAIR WAS AUTISTIC. This, in itself, rules the genetic hypothesis out, since MZ twins have the same genes. He also presented several in-depth studies (over a hundred pages for a boy he called “Joey”) of autistic children treated at
the Orthogenic School with intensive “psychotherapy” who were cured without resorting to medication (some were not cured and some were only partly cured).
He was unable to solve the puzzle of the precise mechanism at work and left it to others to study the subject further.
All of this is ignored by the hundreds of people who have put material on the internet. It is ignored by Ridley’s “scientific” (if popular) book. It was Leo Kanner and his co-worker, Leon Eisenberg who, while not using the term “refrigerator mother”, indicated that the parents – especially the mothers – of the dozens of autistic children they had studied between 1943 and 1955 were unusually cold and rejecting. The phrase can be traced back to the writings of Kanner and Eisenberg, even though they did not use these exact words.
Kanner (1949: 421), began by acknowledging that it was “a hazardous undertaking to try to present a composite characterisation” of the 55 couples he had observed. “Nevertheless”, he went on, “the vast majority of the parents of the autistic children have features in common which it would be impossible to disregard”. Kanner wrote that what struck him “again and again” was “a mechanisation of human relationships”, with the parents treating each other “with faultless respect”. He described the relationships as “rather cold and formal”. The parents mostly described themselves and each other as “undemonstrative” and “are, on the whole, polite and dignified people who are impressed by seriousness and disdainful of anything that smacks of frivolity”.
What really struck Kanner, however, was the relationship between parent and child:
“The parents’ behaviour toward the children must be seen to be fully appreciated. Maternal lack of genuine warmth is often conspicuous in the first visit to the clinic. As they come up the stairs, the child trails forlornly behind the mother, who does not bother to look back. The mother accepts the invitation to sit down in the waiting room, while the child sits, stands or wanders about at a distance. Neither makes a move toward the other. Later, in the office, when the mother is asked under some pretext to take the child on her lap, she usually does so in a dutiful stilted manner, holding the child upright and using the arms solely for the mechanical purpose of maintaining him in his position. I saw only one mother of an autistic child who proceeded to embrace him warmly and bring her face close to his” (Kanner, 1949: 422).
Kanner went on to say that the parents had themselves “been reared sternly in emotional refrigerators” (Kanner, 1949: 423). Kanner went into considerable detail in describing several cases, concluding that the parents “lacked the warmth which the babies needed” (Kanner, 1949: 424). Finally, the paragraph responsible for the “refrigerator mother” accusations:
“Most of the patients were exposed from the beginning to parental coldness, obsessiveness and a mechanical type of attention to material needs only … They were kept neatly in refrigerators which did not defrost. Their withdrawal seems to be an act of turning away from such a situation to seek comfort in solitude” (Kanner, 1949: 425).
By 1955 Kanner’s sample had increased to “more than 120 children”. Writing with Leon Eisenberg in 1956, Kanner wrote that in a control group of parents they did “not find the dramatically evident detachment, obsessiveness and coldness that is almost a universal feature of parents of autistic children” (Eisenberg and Kanner, 1956: 561). They acknowledged that “similarly frigid parents are seen who do not give rise to autistic progeny” and that “some 10 per cent of the parents do not fit the stereotype”. The term “emotional frigidity” was used in the next sentence, however, to describe “the typical autistic family” and followed by a ghastly story of a baby who was “raised ‘scientifically’ – that is, not to be picked up for crying, except on schedule”, who “was isolated from children and almost all adults until he was well over two” (Eisenberg and Kanner, 1956: 561). The authors felt that the case, although “extreme”, could “serve as a paradigm of the ‘emotional refrigeration’ that has been the common lot of autistic children” (Eisenberg and Kanner, 1956: 562).
In spite of the above, the authors then go on – over five paragraphs – to conclude that “this emotional configuration in the home … is not sufficient in itself to result in … (the) appearance (of autism)”. They continue: “There appears to be some way in which the children are different from the beginning of their extrauterine existence”. And, finally: “Present knowledge leads to the inference that innate as well as experiential factors conjoin to produce the clinical picture. It remains for future investigation to uncover the precise mode of operation of the pathogenic factors as a basis for rational treatment” (Eisenberg and Kanner, 1956: 564).
That is to say, they, too, like Bettelheim, rejected the idea that the causation was simply one-way, that is, that the parents had “caused” the autism in their children. The same parents sometimes had other, non-autistic children, for example. Other parents, known to the authors, who appeared to be similar to the parents of autistic children, did not produce autism in their children. And some of the autistic children they had studied did NOT have cold, or rejecting, parents.
They, too, acknowledged that they were unable to solve the puzzle and they, too, left it to future researchers to solve it.
In contrast to the measured tones evident in the works of Kanner, Eisenberg, Bettelheim, Boyle and Kamin, the hundreds of people who posted material on the internet (as well as Shorter and Ridley) are sarcastic; many are extremely angry, at times emotionally violent or even hysterical. Why is this? There were even some who reacted strongly to the reissue of Virginia Axline’s classic work
Dibs: In search of self (1964) in 1990 and accused Axline, of all people, of using the concept of a “refrigerator mother”. Last year there was even a film called
“Refrigerator mothers” which, unfortunately, I did not see. According to the producers and reviewers, however, the idea was, clearly, to show that there was nothing unusual – and certainly not blameworthy – about these mothers. As I wrote earlier (see March 2003 journal)
our society seems to have become obsessed with exonerating parents, teachers, schools and our society’s institutions: “Thou shalt not feel guilty” is the new motto.
But much of the debate about “mental illness”, including “schizophrenia”, “autism” and “depression” is conducted in such an emotionally-charged atmosphere that it is clear that “science” has nothing to do with any of it. On the one side are people – including myself – who have become aware, through personal experience, of the terrible emotional damage that can result from our experiences with our families, schools and the world-of-work, not to mention experiences with both government and non-government bureaucracies, wars, revolutions and so on. On the other are those who seem to feel unable to accept the damage caused by real life events and need ideologies in the form of beliefs and theories to protect them from pain and guilt. The genetic hypothesis serves this function, viz to protect and to comfort. Finally, there are vested interests keeping the whole issue alive to ensure the ongoing sale of their latest medical cures. In this environment, truth is bound to be the first casualty.
An interesting exception to these emotionally-charged writings is an article on autism I found on the net, written by Martha Herbert, Treasurer of the Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG) and Chloe Silverman (
www.gene-watch.org). They do not, so far as I can see, consider what happens within the family in early childhood as being linked to autism. They do, however, look at other “environmental” factors, in particular
a mercury-based vaccine preservative called thimerosal, added to the infant immunisation schedule in the early 1990s, COINCIDING WITH A STEEP RISE IN THE NUMBERS OF CHILDREN BEING DIAGNOSED AS AUTISTIC.
What seems to have happened is this. In 1943, Leo Kanner described eleven children with odd and disturbed language, poor connectedness and repetitive disturbed behaviour (Kanner, 1943). He coined the term “early infantile autism” to describe this (Kanner, 1944). Later (1949), he described several more cases, together with the observed characteristics of their parents. In the meantime, a small number of autistic children were treated at Bruno Bettelheim’s
Orthogenic School in Chicago and a small number continued to be treated by Bettelheim’s staff during the 1950s and ’60s. A grant enabled Bettelheim to study these children, their family backgrounds and the treatment the School provided and to report on them. He summarised his findings, as well as the then-available research, in 1967 (
The empty fortress). He considered the different theories, including that of Rimland, who took – and still takes – a biological approach to autism.
As I wrote above, he concluded that, at that point in time (1967) it was simply not possible to untangle the heredity-environment mix, though it was clear to him that both were important.
During the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, when people like Eisenberg, Kanner and Bettelheim were reporting on the family backgrounds of autistic children, only 3 in 10,000 were said to be “autistic” (Actually, we were taught, in 1973, that only two out of 10,000 children were autistic). This very small number of children was the authors’ subject matter. Then, as Herbert and Silverman (and several others) point out, something happened.
The numbers began to skyrocket. Depending on where one looks, there has been, during the past decade, a three-to-ten-fold increase and, according to Herbert and Silverman, the increase is REAL and not the result of more aggressive diagnosis (
According to recent estimates, there has been a 30-fold increase in the rate of autism during the last 30 years). Such an increase cannot possibly be due to the influence of genes, since “there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic” (and, we might add, it is unlikely to be accounted for by changing child-rearing techniques!).
The condition described by Kanner, Eisenberg and Bettelheim was RARE, affecting perhaps 3 children in 10,000 (and perhaps no more than one or two!).
Today, it is said to affect between 1 in 500 and 1 in 150, or even more! Furthermore, the diagnosis today is not identical with that of 50 years ago, so we cannot even be certain we are talking about identical phenomena. To make matters worse, many in the field consider other “disorders” such as “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)” and various “learning disabilities” to be on a spectrum with autism. “Considered in its broadest terms”, write Herbert and Silverman,
“this epidemic currently may affect from a few million to as many as 20 percent of U.S. children”.In other words, we could be talking about one child out of every five!This huge increase in autism rates coincides with the addition of two new thimerosal vaccines, as mentioned above (Sallie Bernard, “Thimerosal and autism: An emerging scandal”.
www.safeminds.org). In 1999 the (US) FDA acknowledged that the amount of mercury in vaccines exceeded EPA safety guidelines and asked manufacturers to remove thimerosal. It turns out that no safety testing of thimerosal has ever been conducted. Over a thousand autism-thimerosal cases are before the US courts, with parents of autistic children suing a small group of pharmaceutical companies for the harm they allege has been caused by the thimerosal in the vaccines given to their children.
Rather than assisting parents with funding, or providing funds for scientific research into the possible connection, Sallie Bernard writes that Congress passed special legislation – the
Homeland Security Act, signed into law by President Bush on 25 November, 2002 – containing a provision shielding the pharmaceutical companies from liability (
A similar law was passed very recently). This effectively ends the lawsuits! In addition, the Department of Justice asked the special vaccine injury court to seal the records relating to the cases now pending, blocking public scrutiny of the vaccine manufacturers’ documents. Fortunately, this record-sealing order was eventually rescinded (the above information comes from an article by Sallie Bernard, Executive Director of Safe Minds –
www.safeminds.org).
I have gone into so much detail to clarify what this ridiculous debate is about. It is certainly not about SCIENCE. Even less is it about an honest search for the truth. The parents of the millions of children whose lives have been ruined are devastated and angry. But our society has a way of deflecting the justified anger felt by people who have been so appallingly treated. In the autism debate the scapegoat is Bruno Bettelheim for blaming parents for causing their children’s autism (even though he did not do so) and, in particular, for “inventing” the term “refrigerator mother” to describe the mothers of autistic children (even though he did no such thing). Meanwhile the pharmaceutical companies are exonerated and millions of dollars are poured into genetic research.
So, what is really going on here? Why is so much time, energy and money being spent on proving that “schizophrenia”, “autism”, “depression”, “bipolar disorder”, “ADHD”, “dyslexia” and so on are genetically caused diseases/illnesses/disorders of the brain?
Why do we even have a debate about something that seems, on the face of it, to be so clear and obvious (that human beings are born with a genetic make-up and that human beings are born into and spend their lives in an environment of some sort)? Herbert and Silverman provide what seems to me to be a valid answer: “That human actions, rather than genes, might be responsible for compromising the health of a significant proportion of a whole generation is so painful as to be, for many, unthinkable”. What they say about “autism” can be generalised to “mental illness” in general – as well as to “disorders” like “ADHD”, or “dyslexia” or “learning disabilities”:
“To cling to a genetic explanation for autism … is a desperate attempt to maintain the illusion that one lives in a comfortable and rational world where all is basically well, new chemicals and technologies always mean progress, experts are always objective and thorough and authorities can be trusted”.
The alternative is to face the painful realisation that all may not be well; that the way we live (including the nuclear family) may be harmful to ourselves and our children; that (childcare arrangements), preschools and schools might damage those we love; that the corporate world in which we earn our living may be destructive to workers and toxic to our planet; that our institutions may be self-serving and corrupt rather than serving our interests; that the “experts” – doctors, teachers, economists, psychiatrists, lawyers, politicians and others – may not know what is good for us or even that they may deliberately deceive us for financial gain. To face such a prospect means becoming conscious. It also means becoming responsible for our own wellbeing and that of our fellow human beings. The essential restructuring of our society and its institutions can only take place once we have chosen consciousness. It may not be easy. We may not find permanent inner peace. But we will be alive.
References
Virginia Axline (1964).
Dibs: In search of self (Penguin Books, 1971, 1975).
Bruno Bettelheim (1949). “Harry – A study in rehabilitation”.
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1949, Volume 44: 231-265.
Bruno Bettelheim (1955).
Truants from life – The rehabilitation of emotionally disturbed children (New York: The Free Press, 1955).
Bruno Bettelheim (1956). “Childhood schizophrenia as a reaction to extreme situations”.
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1956, Volume 26: 507-518.
Bruno Bettelheim (1959). “Feral children and autistic children”.
American Journal of Sociology, 1959, Volume 64 (5): 455-467.
Bruno Bettelheim (1967).
The empty fortress: Infantile autism and the birth of the self (New York: The Free Press, 1967).
Mary Boyle (1990; 2002).
Schizophrenia: A scientific delusion? Second edition. London: Routledge.
Leon Eisenberg (1956). “The autistic child in adolescence”.
American Journal of Psychiatry, 1956, Volume 112: 607-612.
Leon Eisenberg and Leo Kanner (1956). “Early infantile autism, 1943-1955”.
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1956, Volume 26: 556-566.
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1948). “Notes on the development of treatment of schizophrenics by psychoanalytic psychotherapy”.
Psychiatry, 1948, Volume 11: 263-273.
Hannah Green (Joanne Greenberg) (1964).
I never promised you a rose garden (London: Pan Books, 1967; 1978).
Gail A Hornstein (2000).
To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (New York: The Free Press, 2000).
Leon J Kamin (1974).
The science and politics of IQ (Potomac, Maryland: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1974).
Leon J Kamin and H J Eysenck (1981).
Intelligence: The battle for the mind (London: Pan Books, 1981).
Leo Kanner (1943). “Autistic disturbances of affective contact”.
Nervous Child, 1943, Volume 2: 217-250.
Leo Kanner (1944). “Early infantile autism”.
Journal of Pediatrics, 1944, Volume 25: 211-217.
Leo Kanner (1949). “Problems of nosology and psychodynamics of early infantile autism”.
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1949, Volume 19: 416-426.
Matt Ridley (2003).
Nature via nurture: Genes, experience and what makes us human (London: Fourth Estate, 2003).
Edward Shorter (1997).
A history of psychiatry: From the era of the asylum to the age of prozac (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997).
Note: William Glasser’s (2003)
Warning: Psychiatry can be hazardous to your mental health (New York: Harper Collins, 2003) is also well worth the effort to read. The Appendix (pp229-237) lists several important books, published during the past decade, debunking the concept of “mental illness” and the dangers of medication to treat so-called “mental disorders”, together with alternative approaches to the problems of living.
