The researcher Simon Baron-Cohen's declaration that "[i]t has never been a better time to have autism" (The Independent, Jan. 21, 2007) strikes many of us as ironic. But then we know what it means: it is a promising and exciting moment in the field. Who can predict what wonders will emerge from brain, drug, developmental and educational research? Will we find the causes of autism and promise for prevention? Will we discover precise genetic or molecular lesions and repair them? While these strides are exciting and promise better outcomes for the child with autism, I would argue that the field continues to neglect a key aspect of these children: their internal, emotional lives.
When I began graduate school in the 1980s, child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim's belief that emotionally cold and unavailable mothers caused their children's autism (The Empty Fortress, 1967) had already been shown to be a tragic falsehood. While the biological basis of Asperger's was a given at most universities and medical centers, the developmental facts were especially prominent at the University of North Carolina, where I attended graduate school. When I encountered my first case of Asperger's, I met a 6-year-old boy as disabled as my education had trained me to expect. He spun, flapped, referred to himself in the third person and echoed what he said. In addition to odd speech and motorisms, he insisted on sameness and had no tolerance for frustration. He made no eye contact, had severe social difficulties, rejected his mother's affection and was tested in the Borderline range of intellectual functioning. Clinicians at Boston's best hospitals had diagnosed him as having Infantile Autism.
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