Medical Arguments against My Theory of Autism

On this page, the one word "autism" takes the place of the more complex "autism spectrum disorder" and its short form "ASD."

Arguments against my theory of autism come from two bodies of knowledge: religion and medical science. I take up the arguments from religion on another page. You may go to the page about religion and autism by using this connection. The arguments from medical science are presented below as twelve questions with my "No" answers coming after every question.

• Question 1: Aren't your ideas obsolete, the remnants of old-fashioned, psychoanalytic thinking?

  Answer 1: No. Because of the time-period in which I was trained (1967-1970), I slipped through the "crack" between two world-views. Those world-views were the old psychoanalytic-psychodynamic one and the current geno-bio-behavioral one. When I was in training, the psychoanalytic-psychodynamic world-view was dying and the geno-bio-behavioral world-view was just being born. Neither world-view dealt very well with emotions but the former was able to include them in its broad, bio-psycho-social approach to mental illness.

  Whatever you may think of the old analysts' theoretical stance, you must concede that they were impeccable observers of human nature and psychopathology. Their theories may have distorted their observations but those observations are nonetheless valid.

  Even the idea of "refrigerator parents" deserves our attention. Nowadays, no one would say they are the cause of autism in their child. But, nowadays, does anyone ask if they are the result of autism in their child? Back in 1956, Eisenberg and Kanner (1956) gave their answer to this question. (The yellow highlighting of their words is mine.)

  The case histories of autistic children reveal that in almost all instances they were raised by their own parents. Obvious mistreatment, overt rejection, or abandonment, usual in the life experience of the children who are classified as emotionally deprived, is the exception. But the formal provision of food and shelter and the absence of neglect as defined by statutory law are insufficient criteria for the adequacy of family care. The role of "parent" is not defined merely by the biological task of giving rise to progeny. In the typical autistic family it is as if the Israeli experiment [the kibbutz culture] had been repeated in reverse: in having parents, but not a warm, flexible, growth-promoting emotional atmosphere. These children were, in general, conceived less out of a positive desire than out of an acceptance of childbearing as part of the marital contract. Physical needs were attended to mechanically and on schedule according to the rigid precepts of naïve behaviorism applied with a vengeance. One can discern relatively few instances of warmth and affection. The usual parental attitude is cold and formal; less commonly, it is laden with great anxiety. The child's worth seemed to lie in the extent to which he conformed to predetermined parental expectations: "perfect" behavior, cleverness, "self-sufficiency," and so on. Their parents, who were themselves preoccupied with careers and intellectual pursuits to the exclusion of interest in other people, had little more feeling for their own children. It may be a measure of the intellectual aptitude of some of these children that they were able to parrot long and resonant lists of meaningless words, but it even more clearly bespeaks the emphasis placed at home on such useless activities which were a source of pride to the parents.

  It is difficult to escape the conclusion that this emotional configuration in the home plays a dynamic role in the genesis of autism. But it seems to us equally clear that this factor, while important in the development of the syndrome, is not sufficient in itself to result in its appearance. There appears to be some way in which the children are different from the beginning of their extrauterine existence. Indeed, it has been postulated that the aberrant behavior of the children is chiefly responsible for the personality difficulties of their parents who are pictured as reacting to the undoubtedly trying situation of having an unresponsive child.³⁹ While we would agree that this is an important consideration, it cannot explain the social and psychological characteristics of the parents which have a history long anteceding the child.

  The wording of this 1956 paper lets a key question about autistic babies come up: Is "the beginning of their extrauterine existence" a narrow point in time or a wider stretch of time? In his earlier paper, Kanner (1943 p 250) clearly said that the beginning of extrauterine existence was a narrow point in time:

  We must, then, assume that these children have come into the world with innate inability to form the usual, biologically provided affective contact with people, just as other children come into the world with innate physical or intellectual handicaps. If this assumption is correct, a further study of our children may help to furnish concrete criteria regarding the still diffuse notions about the constitutional components of emotional reactivity. For here we seem to have pure-culture examples of inborn autistic disturbances of affective contact. [Kanner's emphasis]

  In these pages, I make the argument that the beginning of extrauterine existence is a stretch of time which has its start at birth and comes to an end when a baby gets to be six weeks old. In the natural order of things, at about six weeks after its birth, a baby's condition as a communicator or noncommunicator becomes fixed forever.

  So deep-feeling contact with a baby who is more than six weeks old is not a normal event. Certainly, any person at any time may be changed from a noncommunicator into a communicator through deep-feeling contact with an adult. But deep-feeling contact with persons who are older than six weeks is a forced event which comes from the art and science of helping with deep feelings.

• Question 2: Do you think that more modern theories and practices have superseded your ideas and methods?

  Answer 2: No. Modern approaches to autism, including drugs, offer no clear theories of the disorder and no precise procedures for making it better. Lovaas's methods offer some good results in exchange for a huge expenditure of time and effort. The same is true of both Barry Kaufman's Sonrise Program and Temple Grandin's grandmother's work. A recent news story described yet another intense (and tiring) method for helping autistic children. Here is the gist of the story:

  But Soma's [the mother's] method requires tenacity. For the past 11 years, this tireless taskmaster has spent every waking moment talking and teaching, constantly prodding, to keep Tito [the autistic son] stimulated, and his mind on track.

  But with any mental illness, monumental quantities of attention often produce a measure of success no matter what theoretical framework is in use.

• Question 3: Is your "deep-feeling contact" completely safe?

  Answer 3: No. And here are some of the dangers:

  • 1. Deep-feeling contact is permanent. So if deep-feeling contact causes problems, then those problems are likely to be ongoing.
  • 2. After deep-feeling contact and because of the strong connection between autism and epilepsy, the autistic person may suffer new seizures, changed seizures, more seizures or even continuous seizures, that is, status epilepticus.
  • 3. After deep-feeling contact, the usually passive autistic child may display tantrums, aggression or self-injury. On the other hand, he or she may withdraw further into his or her autistic shell. Suicide is a possibility. So is psychosis. With psychosis, I believe that a good outcome is inevitable if the child is properly managed in a protective environment such as a psychiatric hospital. Such a hospitalization could last six months or more and would cost a lot of money.
  
  

• Question 4: Do you accept the fact that about 75 percent of autistic persons are mentally retarded?

  Answer 4: No. I believe that the diagnosis of mental retardation is an artefact which comes from our flawed tests of intelligence rather than from our true assessments of autistics' mental ability. But we cling to our "numb and dumb" view of autism for good reason--a reason made clear by this bit of dialog from the film Awakenings. In the film, Robin Williams plays Dr. Malcolm Sayer, who is really Dr. Oliver W. Sacks. And Max von Sydow plays Dr. Peter Ingham.

THE UNTHINKABLE ALTERNATIVE
Most autistic persons are fully aware and highly intelligent.
They are far from normal and still completely human.
But they are lost and living
in their relentless terror
and their unspeakable horror.

• Question 5: Is Learning Deep Feelings free of physical touching?

  Answer 5: No. The autistic person's mother or father may have to make use of physical touching to get in the way of the person's trances. In any event, the helper with deep feelings never has to touch the autistic person.

  Pushing physical touching onto autistic persons is no small event. It is an act of war against their autism.

DANGER!
If, by physical touching, you make war on autism before the autistic person becomes a communicator, then you are putting him or her through cruel and unnecessary PUNISHMENT. The war on autism has to come after deep-feeling contact with the autistic person.

• Question 6: Is Learning Deep Feelings free of physical restraint?

  Answer 6: No. Physical restraint may be needed to make deep-feeling contact or to get in the way of the autistic person's trances. In any event, the person's mother or father does the restraining. And the helper with deep feelings never has to restrain the autistic person.

  Using physical restraint with autistic persons is no small event. It is an act of war against their autism.

DANGER!
If, by physical restraint, you make war on autism before the autistic person becomes a communicator, then you are putting him or her through cruel and unnecessary PUNISHMENT. The war on autism has to come after deep-feeling contact with the autistic person.

• Question 7: Are sex acts a part of your "deep-feeling contact" or "acknowledging deep feelings"?

  Answer 7: No. Sex acts are never a part of Learning Deep Feelings.

• Question 8: Are you crazy?

  Answer 8: No.

• Question 9: Do you have any hard data that come from cutting-edge, replicated, multisite, high-subject-number, randomized, prospectively defined, placebo-controlled, crossover, double-blind, evidence-based, empirically supported, effectiveness-oriented, consensus-driven, peer-reviewed studies which show that Learning Deep Feelings is a best practice for autism?

  Answer 9: No. Such studies require a community effort. I am alone. And one person can never have the time and resources necessary to undertake and complete the sort of studies you describe.

  With respect to "hard data," the phrase usually means "numerical data." As a rule, only mature sciences produce numerical data. The science of autism is quite young. By asking the science of autism for numerical data, you are asking it to win foot races when it has not yet learned to run, walk, stand or even crawl.

• Question 10: Are you aware that we have been using ideas and methods very much like yours for many years now?

  Answer 10: No. And I would love to meet with you. Such a meeting might lessen the professional aloneness that I have felt for the past 25 years.

• Question 11: Do you make mothers and fathers responsible (that is, do you blame them) for the autism of their sons and daughters?

  Answer 11: No. But what would give you more pain and shame: (1) being a "refrigerator parent" and acting coldly in relation to your autistic offspring or (2) being a monster and producing the "bad seed" (that is, the bad ovum or bad sperm) which made him or her autistic from the start?

  It is my belief that almost no mothers or fathers would say (1) that they are cold-hearted or (2) that they are handing down their bad biology to their autistic son or daughter. So what is causing autism? To me, (1) the behavior of mothers and fathers and (2) their biology are not causes of autism. Autism comes from the simple fact that no one made deep-feeling contact with a very bright person when he or she was less than six weeks old.

  The need for acting without error and making deep-feeling contact in such a narrow time-frame as the first six weeks after birth has made autism a disease that is hard to take a good look at and hard to get a grip on. At birth, babies may seem all right or not so good. Six weeks later they may seem about the same but a serious and unseen change has taken place: the babies' natural chance to be made safe from autism has gone away forever because no one made deep-feeling contact with them before those first six weeks came to an end.

  Now don't give up on your son's or daughter's autism because no one made deep-feeling contact with him or her in the first six weeks after birth. A trained adult is able to make deep-feeling contact with any person at any time. But deep-feeling contact with an autistic person who is more than six weeks old is not a normal event. It is an experiment. And the outcomes of that experiment are outside the range of my knowledge as a helper with deep feelings. Even top experts in autism have no knowledge of what the outcomes of that experiment might be.

• Question 12: After they undergo deep-feeling contact, do autistic persons become normal?

  Answer 12: No. They are still far from normal for two reasons: (1) They have been inside their private point of view for a long time. That is, they have been in a trance. (2) They have quick and able minds. For example, I went to school with a number of very bright young men. The brighter they were, the stranger they were.

  The purpose of deep-feeling contact is different from making persons normal. The purpose of deep-feeling contact is to have autistic persons living as free and happy human beings in the middle of society. Right now, most autistic persons are living as dependent and pained human beings at the edges of society.

List of Pages
	Contacting Jason			Medical Arguments Against My Theory of Autism
	A Feeling-Based Theory of Autism			Autism's Axioms: Less Is More
	Key Questions & Answers about Autism			Three Overviews of Learning Deep Feelings
	Sayings & Stories			Frequently Asked Questions
	Disclaimer & A Way to Make Autism Better			References & Citations
	The Genetics of Autism: Heredity or Heresy?			Curriculum Vitae