Speaking of websites, after you’ve finished viewing “Inside Job” I have another recommendation for you; a documentary that will leave you with profound sympathy and disgust. It’s called Refrigerator Mothers. You can access it at a site sponsored by Goldman Sachs. Yes, knowing the real Goldman Sachs, you will suffer through several self-serving commercials interlaced within the presentation but it’s a small price to pay to see that society was almost as nuts in the 50’s and 60’s as it is now.
Go to www.snagfilms.com/films/title/refrigerator_mothers/ or just go to Snag Films, click on A-Z on the upper task bar and find Refrigerator Mothers under ‘R’.
Refrigerator Mothers traces a period in our history where mothers of children with autism were blamed for that tragic condition in their little boy or girl. An émigré from Austria, Dr. Bruno Bettelheis persuaded most of the academic, medical and psychologist communities that in his theory, this obvious neurological disorder was to be defined in the Freudian terms of “a genuine lack of maternal warmth” by the mother from infancy forward.
He wrote a book on the subject and the real tragedy is that this quack’s theory captured the hearts and minds of those who mattered…the doctors and psychologists charged with treating this mysterious and frustrating condition. Refrigerator Mothers tracks several mothers and their children with autism from the dark ages of Bettelheis to the present day adulthood of the child. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the South Carolina governor and the legislature are going after funding for autism with a vengeance.
It should also be noted that in July of 2008, Michael Savage, the greatest fool in the history of talk radio (and that’s saying something) made the following assertion on his show; “autism is "[a] fraud, a racket. ... I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' " Dr. Bettelheis, who died in 1990, would have been proud!
Needless to say, Savage’s perception doesn’t quite square with the real world of autism. Autism is a disorder that can range from high-functioning relative normalcy to the inability to perform even the simplest tasks, lack of control of body movements, a lifetime of expressionless faces, total silence punctuated by little or no emotion, seizures and even death from instant respiratory shutdown.
Watch Refrigerator Mothers especially you well-meaning folks who have been cynically brainwashed by the likes of Savage not to look past the horrific problems of millionaires and billionaires unable to buy a third $10 million dollar house because of repressive taxes.
Hopefully, this compelling documentary will open some eyes, and maybe for the Tea-Party talk show fans, some ears as well.
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