Bettelheim’s theories on autism under scrutiny

Bruno Bettelheim may have been famous in his day for his theories on child development, but since he committed suicide at age 86 in 1990, his theories have come under great scrutiny. Some aspects of Bruno Bettelheim’s theory of child development deal with autistic children; however, he supported the theory first put forward by Leo Kanner, who was the first psychiatrist to document autism that blamed mothers for the condition. Kanner and Bettelheim supported the coined concept of “refrigerator mothers” as the culprits for their children showing signs of autism. They claimed that the seemingly indifferent and cold behavior of these mothers caused the children to not bond with them, leading to their autistic behaviors. These theories were popular in the 1940s and 1950s, but came into question in the 1960s.

Bruno Bettelheim’s theory of child development is also credited with helping hundreds of severely disturbed children lead normal lives. He founded the Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago, where these children lived and were treated by Bettelheim. However, after his death, former students at the school told horror stories about the terrors they were forced to live with while at the school. Bettelheim was even accused of plagiarism and journalistic misconduct by his colleagues.

Some of the things he was accused of post-mortem included the following:

1. Hating the parents of the children he was dealing with. There is evidence that she called the students’ parents names like ‘rude schlemeil’ and ‘Jewish mother’.
2. Exhibiting extreme anger, giving truth to the many complaints the parents had about his behavior.
3. Secrecy and cover-up, deployed when he obtained promises from family members never to discuss the sessions with each other or with other patients.
4. Antisemitism and lies about their findings, blaming the child’s problems on Jewish heritage.

A haunting account of Bruno Bettelheim’s theory of child development can be found in his book The Empty Fortress, which was published in 1967. In this book, he compares parents of autistic children to SS guards in a concentration camp. . Bettelheim was a survivor of both Buchenwald and Dachau. He stated in the book that “the trigger for childhood autism is the parent’s wish that their child does not exist.” This statement has caused parents of autistic children around the world to recognize that he was a charlatan and that his theories on autism were totally incorrect. This book describes Betteleim’s ‘successes’ in treating autistic children, but it is clear that those children were not autistic as none of them seemed to exhibit the easily identifiable features of autism.

Those features, identified by Kanner in 1943, included:

1. distancing
2. lack of reciprocity
3. lack of eye contact
4. an inability to use language to communicate effectively

The children Bettelheim described used metaphorical language in a way that autistic children simply cannot. They did not display any of the classic signs of autism, nor did they allow any observers into the school during the study. In effect, he was a fake.