The psychologist stood menacingly over me.
"You know," he warned, "Tony is not going to grow up - or talk - until you do something!"
I knew what he meant by "do something". Psychology books described how feelings of hostility and incestuous thoughts about one's parents dominate most people's lives. Dr. Zircon was apparently furious because I refused to confess any such feelings. One way to win an argument is to declare all dissent to be pathological. Freud was the discoverer of "denial". Patients who refused to admit to one of his imaginative diagnoses were accused of being "in denial". Faced with such a scientific accusation, who could win an argument with an analyst?
The Freudian view seemed to be that people consist of Ids, ego's and superego's. People are supposedly also inhabited by something called a subconscious, a mysterious entity with a tendency to think naughty thoughts and keep them a secret from one's conscious self. When this naughty subconscious takes over and controls one's actions - without permission - people become neurotic. If the patient lies on a couch and talks, and a psychiatrist listens, the subconscious might be tricked into revealing itself. Once enticed out into the open by a therapist, the subconscious supposedly looses its power to cause neurosis.
I suppose Dr. Zircon was trying to intimidate my subconscious into revealing why it was causing me to reject my autistic child. What three therapists, during two and a half years, caused me to reject was Freudianism and the materialistic philosophy upon which it was based. Instead of confessing that I rejected Tony, I wrote a book about my therapy and invited the psychologists to read it. It was my way of hanging on to my sense of humor and feeling "normal".
When Freud first published case histories, the medical profession was horrified, accusing him of violating the confidential doctor-patient relationship. Freud insisted that revelation of skeletons in his patients' closets was quite acceptable, as long as he didn't use real names. Psychiatrists had been publishing case histories ever since. The psychiatric profession apparently wasn't prepared for the possibility of patients writing "case histories" about them. I didn't use real names of any therapists in my story, but their reaction to my story was very strange indeed.
A Few Impertinent Questions
About Autism, Freudianism and Materialism
This story is true. I started writing it in 1961, shortly after my first interview with a psychologist, and continued writing it as it happened. The names of the professionals involved have been changed to protect the guilty. What we were all guilty of is not asking the right questions.
Question 1
Is any segment of society immune from silly ideas?
"Tell me about yourself," the young paediatrician said.
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. It sounded like something a psychiatrist might say, not a paediatrician! The silence became uncomfortable. The partitions of the Army clinic were flimsy, and I could hear a buzz of activity out in the crowded waiting room.
I always dreaded talking to doctors, those intimidating authority figures with mysterious powers to cure obscure, life-threatening illnesses. Army clinics were busy, and in those days we didn't consult a doctor for colds and minor problems. I often felt the obligation to convince them my 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'd brought my three-year-old son to the clinic, not because I thought something was wrong with him, but merely because a neighbour had suggested it. I would have felt foolish admitting I'd brought my child to a doctor because of a neighbour, so I explained Tony didn't talk much, was still in diapers, and maybe he should have a check-up. But 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 our most magnificent accomplishments have been achieved, collectively, through government action. The abolition of slavery and the end of segregation were bitterly contested, but most of us are proud of such triumphs today. Establishment of an education system and social security were less controversial, but nostalgia for a more primitive society ensures that creation of new institutions always faces opposition. So I admired Kennedy, our new young president. But I also realized other people have a different outlook. Some people seem to worship "private enterprise", and believe government should not interfere with the "survival of the fittest". (And the elimination of the unfit, I assume.) Apparently this doctor and I would disagree on politics, I decided, but this didn't seem an appropriate place for such a discussion. I sat silently waiting for him to begin examining Tony.
"So, tell me about yourself," the doctor said again.
Tony was busy examining the contents of the wastebasket. "Tony sometimes has a rather violent temper," I finally said, hoping to return the doctor's attention to his patient. Maybe one of Tony's glands needed adjusting or something.
"Does he understand what you say to him?"
"I'm never sure. He rarely does what I tell him, but he's very 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 guess. 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. Suffering from shyness, I was rarely rude or impudent. Perhaps the doctor was making an effort to be friendly. Army doctors were not known for a bedside manner, but I'd never before encountered one with either time or inclination for such personal conversation.
"Tell me about your husband," he suggested after a moment.
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 comment for an Army doctor to make. There was nothing unusual about overseas duty in military families. I eyed the doctor silently, and he 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.
"Ever since you came, your little boy has been running around the office examining the equipment. He's paid no attention to me." The doctor watched as Tony left the bookcase to crawl under the desk.
"Why he's hardly aware I'm in the room!" the doctor exclaimed.
You haven't done anything but talk, I thought, and Tony doesn't understand much of that. However I wasn't accustomed to arguing with doctors, and I nodded.
"Your child is not normal," he 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.
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 paediatrician's questions didn't alarm me. Whatever a psyche, an Id or a superego consisted of, I was confident there was nothing wrong with mine.
At that time, psychiatry claimed that virtually all mental illness was caused by
bad parenting. Schizophrenia, alcoholism and even homosexuality were attributed to a faulty mother-child relationship. Bruno Bettelheim, a well-known psychologist, had written extensively on child psychiatry, and had convinced the medical profession that a childhood disorder, autism, was caused by "maternal rejection". However in 1961, few of us had even heard the word "autism". Nor were we aware of the treatment, which consisted of therapists (generally men) conducting an investigation to determine why mother was rejecting her child. Such an accusation would have outraged many mothers, so psychiatrists were trying to speak in terms that disguised the offensive nature of their diagnosis. Maternal rejection is a rather unpleasant, straight forward concept, but some doctors were desperately seeking ways to make it sound like a benign, treatable infection.
My ignorance of psychiatry would soon be remedied. I'm sure the psychologists and psychiatrists involved in the treatment of autism in those days were altruistic, caring, well-intentioned men. We were all victims of flawed science. Convincing society that an idea is too complex for ordinary people to understand is one way faulty ideas prevail. However, collective human judgment is our best means of sorting out bad ideas from valid ones. Once the public became aware of some of Freud's bizarre assertions such as, "masturbation, condoms and suppressed sexual fantasies cause impotence, consumption, paralysis, seizures and even insanity," common sense would eventually prevail. Today much of Freud's obsession with the ailments caused by faulty mothering has been forgotten.
In the mean time, our family underwent "therapy". My therapy would change me, all right, but not in ways the therapists anticipated. Instead of persuading me that I rejected my child, the psychologists would convince me that there is nothing infallible about science, and that doctors are as susceptible to silly ideas as anyone else.
