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THE ENDURING FORTRESS: THE INFLUENCE OF BRUNO BETTELHEIM IN THE POLITICS OF AUTISM IN FRANCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2019

JONATHYNE BRIGGS
JONATHYNE BRIGGS*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religious Studies, Indiana University Northwest E-mail: jwbriggs@iun.edu
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Abstract

This article examines how the work of Bruno Bettelheim remained influential in debates concerning the meaning of autism as well as its treatment in France well after it was marginalized in the United States. The persistence of Bettelheim's work among French audiences speaks to how the French understanding of autism diverged from its conception in the United States thanks to the social and cultural interest in psychoanalysis in French society and the perceived effectiveness of his form of treatment. The conflation between Bettelheim and the psychoanalytic approach to autism meant that advocates for other approaches needed to rebut his influences well into the 1980s and 1990s, which further reinforced his position as a prime representative for the problems of psychoanalysis for parents. The durability of Bettelheim's presence in these debates also underscores the perceived relationship between disability and motherhood in the case of autism and how Bettelheim buttressed that assumption for the French rooted in anxieties about the dangers of bad mothering. Bettelheim's ideas solidified the intersection of intellectual ascendance and social acceptance of psychoanalysis in France and anxieties about motherhood during the emergence of autism within the public discourse.

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Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 1163 - 1191
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank the editors of Modern Intellectual History (especially Sophia Rosenfeld and Darrin McMahon) and the external readers for their efforts to improve this piece. He would also like to thank Richard Bates, Sarah Fishman, Richard Keller, and the audience at the 2016 Society for French Historical Studies in Nashville, where an early version of this article was presented, for their input and feedback. Some of the research was supported by an Indiana University New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities grant. All translations from the French, unless otherwise noted, are the author's.

References

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93 The psychoanalysts in the film claimed that Roberts unfairly represented their viewpoints and moved to have the film's distribution suppressed, something very difficult to accomplish for videos that freely circulate on the Internet. Laurent pointed to questions concerning ABA, the DSM, and the accepted science of autism, throwing into relief the value of psychoanalysis’ more humanistic and open-ended approach. The legal battle between the École freudienne de France and the director led to a ruling in favor of the latter to have the film censored, which both sides touted as evidence of their cause. As happened with Karlin's documentary, however, Le mur was released at a precipitous moment in the history of autism in France, as autism was named the Grande cause nationale of the French Republic in 2012 and political momentum swung more towards the more behaviorist approaches of the anglophone medical world. See Laurent, Bataille, 181–5.