Paul Lutus, "Psychology's Fashion Pendulum"
Modern-day psychology plays a central role in cultivating professional victims. Because psychology is not a science (for reasons explained here), it has instead become a sort of opinion pendulum, swinging in step with popular fashions and beliefs.
During psychology's relatively short history, the majority of beliefs and practices that have held sway over clinicians' thinking have been abandoned for cause, replaced by new, equally dubious notions. For example, in the 1960s, psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim declared that autistic children were produced by "refrigerator moms", mothers who, according to Bettelheim, were not competent to bond emotionally with their children, eventually resulting in a complete incapacity for emotional attachment in the children. It need hardly be added that Bettelheim's position had no supporting evidence whatsoever, a fact which didn't hinder its acceptance at all, more the rule than the exception in psychology.
Apart from a lack of evidence, the "refrigerator moms" idea had some serious, practical defects. By seeming to demonizing motherhood, this idea had the effect of driving a lot of perfectly good clients away from the services offered by psychologists. In the final analysis, psychology is a business, and businesses don't thrive by driving customers away (more on this below). Also, no amount of talk therapy, behavioral modification or drugs, applied to either the mothers or the children, seemed to improve the condition of autism sufferers. Obviously if autism were the result of specific parental behavior, changing parental behavior should have changed the condition, but this isn't what was observed. For these and other reasons, in recent times psychology's fashion pendulum has swung away from Bettelheim's harsh indictment of motherhood and apple pie.
But of all the factors working to change psychology's outlook, none is more important than some widespread changes in society outside the clinic doors. From a baseline attitude that individuals must accept individual responsibility for their actions, an idea that has been gradually eroding away in modern times, we are on the cusp of declaring everyone a victim of something — parents, society, genes, acts of God — and any throwbacks presuming to hold individuals responsible for their own fates and actions are accused of "blaming the victim," an inspired phrase and one perfectly in tune with modern times.
Before judging Bruno Bettelheim's error too harshly, one should realize that Bettleheim was a NAZI death camp survivor... and sought to draw parallel's between the behaviour of autistic children with the psychology induced in Death Camp survivors, such as himself.
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I would not judge this other than to point out that with too much knowledge comes sorrow and complacency. Our society still frowns on mental health despite the fact they claim the contrary. I just love when I am anxious and literally on the verge of a 'panic attack' I am told to "snap out of it." I thank God my trust is in Him not man.
I posted this story largely because it was autism related, but what had originally drawn me to it was the author, Paul Lutus' blog post about the role of psychology in cultivating the "victim psychology" so prevalent in America today. When you couple stories like this to with the adoption of Freud's tenets as propagated by his nephew, Edward Bernays, and his effects on advertising and consumer culture, you begin to realize how damaging this trend has been, especially since psychology was sold as a "science" and not, as it should have been, as a mythology, that in the Modern Era, has become the secular psychology of our day. The whole turn away from "accept personal responsibility" into a "don't blame the victim" mentality originates here. And today, it's everywhere. I sometimes fall 'victim' to it myself.
Now the video blames Bettelheim for this gross error, but given what little I know of the psychology of Nazi Death Camp survivors, I can see "why" he made the misdiagnosis. I searched earlier for my personal references to Holocaust survivors from Zizek, for he had a word that described it that eludes me presently, and couldn't find it. But I will. I really want to more deeply examine the linkage in a future blog post.
Ah, muselmann... that's the word.
Did you understand the meaning behind the use of "muselmann" used by Jews to describe emaciated death camp survivors?
Sorry... I posted these as a series... they really don't stand alone. Here is a better explanation.
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They had lost all will to live, ceased being their subjective selves, and acted apathetically as the mere "objects" that the Nazi's had reduced them to. The other Jews rejected them because they could not be trusted to empathize as fellow Jews.
They had become like their former enemies... Moslems.
Bettelheim, a camp survivor, likened the symptoms of "autism" to the Muselmann, as they presented "similarly". Hence he blamed the mothers (like Nazi's/ Refrigerator Moms). Children of "neglect".
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