Tag Archives: refrigerator mother
Refrigerator Mother
Beginning of a Personal Symbology
The suffix ‘-ology’ means, ‘the study of’. For example ‘cosmology’ means ‘study of the cosmos’, ‘biology’ means ‘study of biological phenomena’, and so on. Today I begin studying the symbols that were and are important in my life. I want to identify the symbols from my early years that have, and continue to affect my psyche. My […]
Broken
I seem to be surrounded by broken things, things that are incomplete. Mom died just over a month ago, not more than two weeks after her 90th birthday. Many cousins I hadn’t seen in a while came to her party. We all had a great time. I traveled from California to New Jersey to be […]
The Dog Ate My Blog
Ok, not as bad as that, but I left my computer at my Mom’s apartment. Mom died last week and my brother Dave and I were there today trying to get it together enough to move out by the end of the month. We had planned for the computer to be the repository for an organized (photographic) […]
1950s and Autism Treatment
As I mentioned previously, Mom remembered that Michael, my older autistic brother was at the Bronx Developmental Center for a little while in the mid to late 1950s. She would schlep there twice a day, once to drop him off and then to pick him up. The ‘state of the art’ thinking of the medical […]
New Project
Current project Those of you who follow my blog know that my older brother is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. On his 40th birthday I started a long-term photography project to try to figure out my relationship with him. It may be hard to believe, but I was never sure if my brother knew who […]
Different Reactions
Different children have different reactions. My younger brother doesn’t remember much about our older brother, Michael. Michael is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. Mom and Dad both said that they tried shielding us kids from the brunt of Mike’s influence. I suppose it worked, for one of us. Maybe there was a little magic thrown […]
Fruitful Approach to Autism?
Diagnosis of autism I discussed the history of autism diagnosis a previous post. As the science matured, the psychogenic origin (blame for autism on the ‘refrigerator mother’) was replaced by consideration of the premise that autism could arise from biological origins. Both versions of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) use behavior as […]
Book Review: Autism, The Invisible Cord
Autism, The Invisible Cord A Sibling’s Diary, by Barbara Cain Published by the American Psychological Association http://www.apa.org/pubs/magination I came across the author of this book while browsing through Twitter profiles. I compulsively look for tweeters with ‘autism’ in their profile description and hit the jackpot when I came upon Barbara Cain’s. Not only did she […]
