I prefer to think of myself as an active participant in an imperfectly creative universe, rather than an impotent observer of a mechanical reality.

bertvan@aol.com 

Revised as of May, 2012

Suddenly, maybe about two thirty on the afternoon of April 3rd 1961, I was plunged into a controversy that would turn my life upside-down. My son was diagnosed autistic, a childhood condition believed at the time to be caused by “maternal rejection”.  Psychotherapy for mother was the treatment.  I also suspect we were involved in a "scientific study".  Today it would be  illegal to involve people in research without their knowledge, but at that time just about anything done in the name of science was considered ethical.   Kennedy, with a mentally disabled sister, was our new President, and money was available for research on defective children.  A generation of enthusiastic, young therapists had just completed training, and were eager to display their wondrous, new, scientific power to cure. There was one problem. Most therapists were men in those days (as were most doctors), and those nice young men were reluctant to be explicit. Maternal rejection is a pretty offensive concept, and how could they convince women it was nothing more serious than a mild, easily cured infection? How could they slip Mother a dose of psychotherapy without explaining exactly what they were doing? Like many people, I was easily intimidated by doctors. Psychotherapy would cure me of my unassertiveness, although that was obviously not their intention, and I suppose I should be grateful to them for that. It took several decades, but eventually it was the therapists who were cured of their bizarre thinking, rather than mothers of autistic children. Psychotherapy was finally abandoned as a treatment for most mental illness.

.

A Few  Autistic Questions

About Freud, Marx and Darwin

(and other pseudo-scientists)

Question 1

Is any segment of society immune from silly ideas?

"Tell me about yourself."

What a strange thing for a paediatrician to request!  Especially a paediatrician at a busy Army clinic, where no one had time for idle social chatter. Wearing a starched white coat over his Army uniform, the doctor sat behind his desk regarding me gravely through horn-rimmed glasses. I stared back, baffled. What did he expect me to respond? That I was an Army wife? But that was obvious, wasn’t it, since this was Army hospital? Such a request sounded like something a psychiatrist might say, not a paediatrician. Having never even met a mentally ill person, I had only vague ideas about psychiatry. But while uncertain about what psychiatrists actually did, I was pretty sure I had no need for one. The silence became uncomfortable. The partitions of the clinic were flimsy, and I could hear a buzz of activity out in the crowded waiting room.

In those days we didn't consult a doctor for colds and minor problems. I often felt the obligation to convince them my medical problem was sufficiently grave. However on this particular occasion no one was sick, and I hadn't arrived at the paediatrician's office in my usual state of anxiety. I did feel a little self-conscious about my reason for consulting a doctor. I'd brought Tony to the clinic, not because I thought something was wrong with him. I was actually proud of my handsome, independent little three-year-old. I was here because a neighbour had suggested it. I would have felt foolish admitting I'd consulted a doctor just because a neighbour disapproved of my child, so I explained Tony didn't talk much, was still in diapers, and maybe he should have a check-up. But to my bewilderment, instead of examining Tony, the doctor kept trying to initiate personal conversation.

“How do you like the new administration in Washington?” he asked.

“It's exciting, isn't it?”

“Society will be in trouble unless people start taking responsibility for their own lives,” the doctor said disapprovingly. “People expect the government to do everything for them.”

I was a political liberal who believed some of mankind's most magnificent accomplishments were achieved collectively, through government action. The abolition of slavery and the end of segregation were bitterly contested at the time, but most of us are proud of such achievements today. Establishment of an education system and social security were less controversial, but nostalgia for a more primitive society always seems to ensure that all innovation faces some opposition. So I admired Kennedy, our new, liberal, young president, but I also realized other people have different attitudes. Some people appear to feel a near religious reverence for "private enterprise" and believe government should never interfere with the "survival of the fittest". (And the eradication of the less fit, I presume.) Apparently this doctor and I would disagree on politics, I decided, but a doctor's office didn't seem an appropriate place for such a discussion. I sat silently waiting for him to begin examining Tony.

“So now, why don’t you tell me about yourself,” the doctor again suggested.

I looked at Tony, busy examining the contents of the wastebasket. "Tony sometimes has a rather violent temper," I finally managed to offer, hoping to return the doctor's attention to his patient. Maybe one of Tony's glands needed adjusting or something.  (My understanding of biology was obviously limited.)

“Does he understand what you say to him?” the doctor asked

“I'm never sure. He rarely does what I tell him but he's independent and stubborn.”

Tony was on his knees, his little blue-jean-clad rear-end up in the air and his head on the floor, trying to see under a partition into the next office. If anyone were on the other side of that partition, they'd probably feel uncomfortable to see his bright, inquisitive little face peering up at them. I picked him up and held him on my lap.

“How does he get along with other children?”

I thought a moment. “I don't think I've noticed him play with other children.”

“Does he have opportunities to be around them?”

“Off and on, I suppose. Actually, he doesn't play with his brother and sister very much.” I admitted.

“Where do you live?”

“In a big old house on a hill behind San Rafael.”

“You own your home?” I nodded. “You are lucky to own property in such a valuable area,” he continued.

He seemed to expect a response, so I tried to think of one. “The house is a hundred years old and has termites,” I said. “In the coming depression it probably won't be worth what we paid for it.”

“We don't have depressions any more,” the doctor scoffed.

Many of us who grew up during the thirties, sometimes accused of having depression mentalities, didn't really trust prosperity, but the doctor's comment seemed condescending. “You are probably too young to know what a depression is,” I said.

The doctor frowned. I was startled by my own impertinence. I didn’t usually come out with such retorts. Suffering from shyness, I was rarely rude or impudent. Perhaps the doctor was just making an effort to be friendly. Army doctors were not known for a bedside manner though, and I'd never encountered one with time or inclination for such personal conversation.

"Tell me about your husband," the paediatrician suggested, ignoring my comment.

Tony slid off my lap to examine the scales. Again, I was baffled. I couldn't imagine why our personal lives might be of concern to this paediatrician. Surely he wasn't interested in Ike's vital statistics, such as height, weight or eye-colour.

“He's stationed in Greenland at the moment,” I said.

“Uh-oh! That's bad.” Another strange reaction for an Army doctor. There was nothing unusual about overseas duty for military families. I couldn't think of a response, and the doctor continued. “How do you feel about your husband's absence?”

"Well he'll be home in a couple of months."

The doctor glanced at Tony. After trying to turn the valves under the sink, Tony had crawled onto a bookcase. With a self-satisfied smile, he crouched on the bottom shelf like a life-sized bookend. We talked some more, and the doctor continued to try to discuss everything except Tony.

"Ever since you came your little boy has been running around the office examining the equipment," he finally said, as he watched Tony leave the bookcase and crawl under the desk. "He's paid no attention to me. Why he's hardly aware I'm in the room!"

Why should Tony pay attention to you, I wondered. You haven't done anything but talk, and Tony doesn't understand much of that. However I wasn't accustomed to challenging doctors, and I nodded.

"Your child is not normal," the doctor said.

"You really think so?" I murmured.

His words seemed to have no impact upon me. After all, he hadn't even examined Tony. He acted as though his purpose was to cross-examine me, Tony's mother. I listened to the doctor make another appointment for us, but I was busy puzzling over what on earth this peculiar paediatrician had been up to for the past half-hour. I had always dreaded talking to doctors. Like many people, I felt intimidated by the medical profession. Perhaps some doctors have become accustomed to such an attitude, and expect patients to exhibit proper respect for their authority, maybe with the assumption that such diffidence is an aspect of the healing process. And it probably is. I suppose faith in the infallibility of doctors could have a placebo effect. In any case, it never occurred to me to challenge this paediatrician.

In 1961 many of us had only a vague understanding of psychiatry, this new technology for repairing malfunctioning psyches. If we laymen didn't understand the scientific details - well, we didn't understand how the atom bomb or penicillin worked either. The doctor's questions didn't really alarm me. His attempts at personal conversation suggested a psychological interest.  Not having much practice at psychiatric examinations, the paediatrician's efforts had been a little clumsy, but whatever a psyche, an Id or a superego consisted of, I was confident there was nothing wrong with mine.

My ignorance of psychiatry would soon be remedied, as our family underwent psychiatric treatment. I'm sure the psychologists and psychiatrists involved were altruistic, caring, well-intentioned men. We were all victims of a fantasy science. However, instead of persuading me that there was something wrong with my psyche, therapy would convince me there was something wrong with science - that even the medical profession can occasionally be swept up by ridiculous ideas.

Bruno Bettelheim, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, had convinced the medical profession that autism, a mysterious childhood disability, was a mental illness caused by "maternal rejection". In 1961 few of us had heard the word, 'autism'. Nor were we aware of the treatment, which consisted of a therapist (generally men) conducting an investigation into why mother was rejecting her child. The theory being, that once she understood the reason (usually some convoluted, psychoanalytic tale about an unhappy childhood of her own), mother would cease to reject and become a loving parent. Maternal rejection is a rather unflattering, easy to understand concept, and most mothers would have felt outraged by such a suggestion. Psychiatrists were trying to find terms to disguise the offensive nature of their diagnosis. They were seeking ways to make it sound like a benign, treatable infection. 

***

At about the same time, in 1961, another controversy was developing – one over evolution. Neo-Darwinism proposes that biological innovations result from “natural selection” (generally, premature death) doing something (Heaven knows what!) to a fortuitous collection of genetic accidents? Originally a reaction against the prevailing religious beliefs of the 19th Century, RM&NS was eagerly accepted by people searching for a mechanical explanation of life. A hundred and fifty years later, it is still the only mechanistic explanation anyone has been able to devise, the only explanation that excludes any hint of purposeful intelligence. RM&NS has itself become a religion. Anyone expressing scepticism of the formula is scornfully denounced as an "ignorant creationist". However one does not have be religious to view volition and intelligent organization as natural aspects of reality. The truth is, any form of purposeful organization suggests intelligent design, and such purposeful organization need not be any more "supernatural" than our own purposeful, conscious, human intelligence. Whatever the organizing force in living systems is labelled, evo-devo, biocentrism, self-organization, epigenetics, intelligent design, quantum biology, or James A Shapiro’s genetic engineering, the participation of some deity can be neither confirmed nor denied. Evangelical atheists will eventually have to learn to live with the unwelcome possibility that no religion, no view about the ultimate nature of reality, can be scientifically proved - and that includes the religion of atheistic materialism.

Question 33

Could some of children's developmental disabilities merely be nature's tentative, incomplete, imperfect adaptations to a changing environment?

Autism is merely a personality trait, a less than average social talent, an ability that varies for all of us. The retardation of children labelled autistic probably has many causes. Only those retarded children with weak social skills are labelled autistic. Some of us learn to compensate for any lack of the intuition involved in social skills. Some autistic children, like Tony, never manage to develop sufficient strategies to make up for their lack of such abilities.

Our environment has undergone profound changes in the past few centuries. Neo-Darwinists insist that our DNA hasn't changed, and consequently people have remained basically the same through out history. I doubt that. I can even see changes that have occurred during my lifetime. How we treat each other and even how we treat animals, for instance. Cruelties toward people who are different from us, and trivial research once done upon primates now make us physically cringe at hearing about them.  I suspect neoteny may be  on the increase for many children.   I have a granddaughter who is a college graduate, but everyone takes her for a fifteen-year-old.  It may  be impossible to verify some of the subtle changes people have undergone.  Some humans now spend more of their formative years exercising their brains than they do exercising their bodies. Our childhood consists of learning to translate symbols on a piece of paper into abstract concepts. How could such a change in lifestyle not bring about some dramatic change in our natures? In the past few centuries, we do know people have been growing taller, living longer and losing space for their wisdom teeth. Changes in our personalities must surely have been also occurring. Occasionally defective children are described as uniquely gifted in some respect. They sometimes exhibit exceptional mental talents for numbers or music, for example. Perhaps some of these conditions are merely nature's tentative, incomplete, experimental attempts to organize new adaptations in response to a changing environment. For sure, if people are becoming less intuitive, "natural selection" played very little role in such a change. No one ever met a premature death or had fewer children just because of good social skills.

Bruno Bettelheim was  responsible for the theory that autism is caused by "maternal rejection". He was a psychologist at the University of Chicago and a columnist for Ladies Home Journal. He ran a treatment program for autistic children and wrote books describing the cures he achieved. His best known work, The Empty Fortress, was widely read by the general public. Bettelheim theorized that a "real person" was hiding inside the body of each autistic child, afraid to come out. According to Bettelheim, in the first weeks of life, during bonding, a baby might decide mother was rejecting it. "Ah-ha," the tiny infant might cleverly reason, "Mother is out to exterminate me! But if I don't exist Mother will be unable to destroy me." Bettelheim speculated this was the moment when an infant　chooses　to become autistic. A survivor of the Holocaust, he reached his conclusion by remembering that inmates of concentration camps sometimes exhibited autistic behaviour. He suggested mothers might affect their autistic children like Nazi prison guards. Bettelhiem regarded mothers of autistic children as cold, and I’m sure those mothers felt the same way about Bettelheim. After World War II he searched for emotionally superior children raised on　kibbutzim　in Israel, children he assumed might be less contaminated by mothers. He was able to convince a lot of people, including the medical profession,  that his speculations were "scientific".

Bettelheim was not the first charismatic writer to lead us down a fanciful path of bizarre words and concepts. I'm sure he won't be the last. Flamboyant gurus are a human susceptibility. Although psychotherapy is no longer prescribed as a treatment for autism, I understand women who can afford it can still find a therapist to reprogram their thoughts and listen to complaints about their traumatic childhoods. (For some reason men seem less eager to submit to such brain-manipulation.) Such women usually lead privileged, middle class childhoods, but they resent something about their mother's attitude. Some feel their mothers were too controlling; others felt she didn't pay enough attention to them. Or she paid more attention to their brother. Or, as Freud theorized, they might have witnessed the human sex act as an infant. Or maybe they were forced to have sex with a horse. Psychoanalytic theories have so permeated our culture that women no longer even need a therapist to help them dream up a traumatic childhood. Most of us are already familiar with all the scenarios upon which one might blame their imperfections. The truth is, people were not meant to be perfect. Even those with the most idealistic childhoods are capable of further growth, and besides, complete absence of problems might itself be an handicap. Dealing with problems is what life is all about.

 ***

I recently read, The Big Short, by Michael Lewis. It is a true story about the sub-prime, mortgage collapse. In the book, Michael Burry, a neurologist, decides he lacks people skills and doesn't want to be a doctor any more. So he takes a job on Wall Street, where he is astonished that everyone doesn't recognize the housing bubble that is about to burst. He can't believe other people don't see the coming financial collapse. In the midst of it all, his son is diagnosed as Asperger's Syndrome, sometimes said to be a mild form of autism. Although he was never so diagnosed, Michael Burry decides Asperger's also describes him - which explains his lack of people skills and his aversion to being a doctor. His non-conformity would also seem to explain his ability to recognize financial bubbles to which other people seem blind. He bets heavily against Wall Street and becomes a multi-millionaire.

Some people seem to regard their lack of ability to intuitively absorb the thoughts and attitudes of the people around them a severe handicap, and appear willing to assume the label of Asperger's. I would never accept that diagnosis, or any other label the psychiatric profession might invent. I have always considered myself perfectly normal. However I do empathize with many Asperger's traits, and I have an autistic son. Like Michael Burry's son, some of the traits defining Tony's autism are also shared by his relatives. Many of us are a bit non conforming. I wonder that anyone would regret possessing such a trait. I recognize the obvious value of intuitive abilities, and have struggled to improve mine. However I would never willingly exchange my ability to think independently for greater social skills.

***

We each entertain a personal view of reality, often not fully articulated. Our vague thoughts about the nature of the universe may include unknowns, and some concepts may be regarded as more likely than others. In this sense Atheism is as much a religion as Theism. Materialists speculate about "multiple universes", the notion that an infinite number of universes might exist, somewhere out there where we can't detect them, and by coincidence, we just happen to live in the one universe that appears designed for life. Such speculations seem no less fanciful to me than religious myths and parables. The past few decades have seen a debate over materialism versus non-materialism, often conducted over the internet. During Man's history, people have slaughtered each other over religious disputes, but maybe because it would be difficult to do physical damage over the internet, this religious debate has been more benign. However the words have been passionate. The non-materialist position argues that the universe is a creative, living entity, rather than an inert mechanical device subject to mathematical representation. Following are some of the details being debated:

"New science revises four fundamental beliefs that shape civilization. These flawed assumptions include: 1) The Newtonian vision of the primacy of a physical, mechanical Universe; 2) Genes control biology; 3) Evolution resulted from random genetic mutations; and 4) Evolution is driven by a struggle for the survival-of-the-fittest. These failed beliefs represent the "Four Assumptions of the Apocalypse," http://ervinlaszlo.com/forum/

A well-known saying claims, "Love makes the world go around." I suspect it might be more accurate to say, "Love holds the world together." Our scientific speculations are what keeps the universe on the move. And pondering such matters should not require a license - a scientific degree. Anyone should be free to speculate about the nature of reality. Freud and Darwin (and, yes, even Marx) contributed to scientific thought. So long as philosophical concepts are freely disputed, they remain a creative force. Ideas only become malignant when someone tries to turn them into an orthodoxy and declare them immune from criticism. The most society can do is ensure that questions are always permissible, and insist that scepticism be as honoured as certitudes.

Item 8 (grandchildren)

Item 10 (Guy and me today with some of his Russian ladies)

THE END