Please post further comments on Bettelheim's Worst Crime to the following discussion board:
http://www.quicktopic.com/27/H/vJvhV4fDnBgw7

I am child psychiatrist and psychotherapist (in Italy) with experience in working with people with autism and their families. I read only now your articol, quoted by wikipedia. I want congratulate with you and agree with most of your writings. Particularly where you put the question of parents, i.e. family enviroment, that became a taboo, forbidden to speak about, because of the movement against Bettelheim. Working with families and children with all kinds of behaviour ang development difficulties, we see that family disfunctioning (that is not a blame, a sin, because noone of us is perfect, not even as a parent) may product suffering and disorders in all members, and of course in growing children. When family can be helped to change some disfunctioning aspect of their organization and relationships, we often see things go better. I saw that often also with families with an autistic child. All parents may have problems towars a child (not all sons, maybe only one). Often the mothers are more entangled in that, often because fathers are absent or faraway: they may be entangled in labirinths with their son (do you remember Munchausen by proxy?). Family and relations with parents are most important for all people. Also for autistic children. Often we see disfunctions in theyr relationships and family organization. We have not to avoid to adress this topic, in order to help they going on, not in order to blame them.

I feel stupid posting. Damn it!!!
Things just get harder and harder. Everyone expects me to just deal with things. I really am at the end of my rope.
I'm disgusted with getting nowhere whil taking steps to
improve my life. I also have tinnitus. The screeching in my ear is so high pitched, I pull out my hair from the
sheer annoyance. I can't hold a conversation cause
everything is masked with the wailing shriek in my head. I go days without sleep. This flared up years ago and it
never gets easier. There's no cure for this either.
Be happy you don't suffer like me. I once told my sick mom
to count her f------ blessings cause she's dancing on
peanuts compared to me.
This is my last post. I hope to die before the lovely
menepause kicks in. Autism dosen't mix with hormone changes.
I fear the future. I know I'm just gonna rot and get worse.
We're left to rot. Please be happy for your health and
abilties. I envy all of you to death.
Thanks.

I typed too fast and made some mistakes. I mispelled
learning disabled, disturb and forgot to put in my folks tell me I can't do stuff. I believe I can and get mad
when I notice I can't.

i have autism all these aricles really sisturb me cause I know just how worhtless and awfull i am. I've been
unpopular and learing diabules in math all my life. I
want to be killed. I wish one of those brainaiacs would kill me. I tired to catch aids with strangers so I would die and give everyone a break.
I do not however grieve my parents. They roll off my misery. They egg me, tell me to hurt myself more and I do and that I can't do anything I can't learn, I'll never immigrate. I know I sound like a moron. Reading this stuff makes me more disgusted with myself. I don't expect or want the world to change and fall in love with me.
I can't stand being the butt of a joke and be the only one
not moving up on my homework. I can't handle adult ed with 3 people in a room. I just feel AWFULL with constant migranes from noise. I can't get used to noise.
Sorry Had to vent. I do want to be killed. I do. I know no one would care. No one will get busted. It's so easy.
Be happy you can commit a crime. I'm just waiting.
I egg people to do it. One gut wanted to break my arms first and I chickened out.

For anyone wondering about the preference of a dead child with measles versus a live child with autism, see the first letter here http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D41B.htm . Here is the text:

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Until further research is done, please may I let my children catch measles, mumps, and rubella, rather than risk developing autism. When my eldest child developed autism, maybe after the MMR jab, I felt that it would have been better if she had caught measles and died. The grief of living with a child with autism is worse than normal grief, because autism seems at times like a living death, with no hope offered, no cure, no sympathy offered to parents, and no understanding shown by GPs generally. If my child had been brain damaged after a measles infection, it would be easier to accept, than to think that I allowed a vaccination to damage my child.

Karen Angela Richardson, UK

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This parent's overwhelming concern for her own well-being speaks for itself.

And I think I said that I don't care who posts.... but I have a right to my opinion on who posts. In a nutshell.

It would have been interesting to see what mr bourgeois said. And how things developed.

I know what my experience of him is, and so does he.


Now... Bettelheim and his worst crime....

What is happening with this?

All I did was to reiterate that *all* people willing to make a *relevant* comment are welcome here. *That* is not taking up an argument, just a statement of policy, which I'm now repeating for the third time. Since I trust Ralph's judgment, I can safely assume that the comment which set this off was indeed "on the money", and *relevant*, and it is our loss that it was deleted.

I made a comment about someone who has been known to be nasty to an autistic, namely to me.

After that someone else took it up.

Might be up to you too.

Let's put this to bed now.

What is happening on the "Bettelheim" front?

David wrote: "Can we end this here, please, and get on with the autism stuff?"

Since you are the one who brought in non-autism stuff, that would be up to you.

Edited by author 09-11-2004 07:37 AM
>*Your* personal assessment of someone else's character is important, I'm sure, in some contexts, but I see no *relevance* to this context, that is this comment board.

*Actually, if I am to feel anything like comfortable reading and posting here, it may well have a lot of relevance in this context.

I'm not trying to assassinate someone's character. I made a point that someone I do not (for me, for good reason) trust had made a post here, and I know that in other situations this person has behaved in horrible ways towards many people. What people here do in regard to that person is up to them. I don't give a shit. If it were my board, I'd be in a position to ban him, as happened to him on another forum. It's not, and to be honest I don't advocate banning him.

But I don't have to like him, or trust him, based entirely onhis behaviour towards me and many others who encountered him elsewhere.

I have good reasons for how I react to him, and I'd like those respected. Just as I would be requested to respect other people's reasons for any interaction they wished to have with him. I'm not tearing his character down. I'm stating why I don't trust him.

Can we end this here, please, and get on with the autism stuff?

*Your* personal assessment of someone else's character is important, I'm sure, in some contexts, but I see no *relevance* to this context, that is this comment board. I don't think the discussion of an absent third party's personal life or assumed characteristics or character is what people come here to read. Again, relevance and respect for others, however difficult in some situations, have not often been a problem on these comment boards, and I suggest as I sometimes do that they not become one. There are I'm sure forums for working out personal problems among individuals, and perhaps even for tearing down an absent third party's character, but this is not one.

Edited by author 09-10-2004 05:45 PM
>I have been accused of many things myself, including being dangerous, and have been banished and censored, and discussed in my absence. Many people have been warned about me.

*Yes. Difference is, you're not but he is. If he feels offended by what I say he shouldn't have done what he did. Simple.

I have been accused of many things myself, including being dangerous, and have been banished and censored, and discussed in my absence. Many people have been warned about me.

The welcome mat (/m23) remains firmly in place, for those wishing to contribute relevant comments.