Psychoanalysis Helps Kids With Autism (WebMD)

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Psychoanalysis Helps Kids With Autism
Researchers Say Psychoanalysis Should Be Part of Treatment for Children With Autism
By Denise Mann
WebMD Medical News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
Jan. 25, 2008 -- From the strict dairy-free and wheat-free diet that actress Jenny McCarthy details in her best-selling book, Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism, to mercury detoxification and other types of speech and behavior therapies, there is little that parents of children with autistic spectrum disorders will not try to help reach their children.

And psychoanalysis may be a valuable addition to the mix, researchers said at the annual meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York City.

The CDC estimates that one in 150 individuals has autism, a disorder that begins in early childhood and is marked by developmental delays and lagging social and communication skills.

more...

I'd heard that psychoanalysis had been discredited and rejected by the scientific comnmunity.

Psychoanalysis is a bunch of BS that leads to parents (usually mothers) getting blamed for bad parenting. Such nonsense was the crap behind the "Refrigerator Mother" theory of Autism. It says more about Sigmund Freud's prudish, sexist, perverted, sex-obsessed mind then anything else.

From what the article says, it seems to be another form of getting the child at an early age to interact more with someone else and look at faces. The person pushing this thinks autism is reversible if it's caught early enough. They're trying to catch it by age 2. It will be interesting to see the results in 10 years. The brain prunes unused neurons around age 3 and in puberty. To make a real difference, I would think these programs can't stop until age 18-21 when the prefrontal cortex matures.

yup, indeed, but.....

all that does not mean the basic free associative language-based technique
devised by dear sigmund has been discredited, on the contrary, i believe that
can still be of tremendous value

what is bad or at least very dubious in psycho- or whatever-analyses, is their
various interpretational pre-occupations

before reading into what is stated, should follow agreement as to what is actually
being said: before interpreting: agree on what needs to be interpreted

you're in denial - no i'm not - see
is i think the worst interpretative mode in case of complaints at a psychiatric level -
problem is: i actually believe this denial logic is more often than not correct
in its assumptions, at psychological level...

It's interesting it came from New York City. I hear that wealthy people there keep psychoanalysis alive because they can blame their parents for more inheritance (at least that's what my shrink told me).

Psychoanalysis does not have a way of treating autism since there is no proof. if this were the case more kids with autism would have a chance to be treated with it.

I don't see the treatment for a lot of people.

1000 years ago air did not exist since there was no proof?

We have ways of making you talk topic

I think what worries me is that some or all of these therapies will be harmful to the child. I read about caution being urged for fad therapies on the same site as the one posted by MrMark. As for psychoanalysis, it woruld be good for understanding the person as an individual (like an IEP) but not to radically alter or destroy the personality of the person living on the Autism Spectrum, for the sake of manageability. I think this is what was happening at the Judge Rotenberg Centre, which ended up with torture "treatments".

Now torture does work, just not in the most humane way.

So have I, from numerous sources within the scientific community. However, it still has plenty of supporters, including some with scientific training, so one could argue that it is a matter of opinion. My opinion is that there are many reasons to doubt its efficacy and few reasons to trust it.

This is wrong I think these ideas does more harm for people on the autistic spectrum. People who have had this in the past has developed post traumatic stress disorder and have had their autistic like thinking suppressed. This is like the ABA for autism and when I was a kid my parents used the Lovaas method back there and it was really brutal and I don't think psychoanalysis is any much better, actually it is worse and may actually like ABA cause a psychiatric injury like a childhood trauma for example.

What kind of psychoanalysis?

My friend's boy said his first word in more than 5 years the other day. He said "mom". It's a big deal.

That level of verbal response would put a damper on most psychoanalytic methodologies.

This thread started in January 2008 soon after the article came out. I googled that phrase and there was a reference from 2012 about a movie in France: The Wall: Psychoanalysis Put to the Test for Autism. That article stated several paragraphs later "The film has had one immediate and probably irreversible effect: the demonisation of psychoanalysis in France. In particular, Lacanian psychoanalysts are now seen by many as cruel, pompous buffoons."

It would seem the thread title from the OP has in the years since been proven false.