“In France it is the psychiatrists – heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis – who remain in charge. And they have shut themselves off from all the changes in our knowledge of autism.”… Read the rest

So someone has finally told France – psst, Freud kind of got things wrong. Tiens! Sans blague?

A war of words has erupted among French psychiatrists after the publication of a “black book” that lambasts the teaching of Sigmund Freud and blames his followers for setting back mental health care in France by decades. In a country that is one of the last redoubts of pure Freudian psychoanalysis, the book has been like shock treatment for many in the white-coat establishment who accuse the authors of grovelling to the “Anglo-Saxon” trend towards behaviour-based mental therapy. The news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, which published extracts of the 800-page work last month, was bombarded with letters charging it with “fascist rhetoric”

… Read the rest

The French approach to autism was discussed a couple of months ago, too. A controversial new film by French documentary filmmaker Sophie Robert, screened  last week at an autism  conference here in Philadelphia, reminds the world that in France these  thoroughly discredited and dangerous ideas still hold considerable sway. The film, Le  Mur or The [...]...

In France people are still medically treated on the basis of the four humors. No they’re not, that’s a bitter joke, because the truth is almost as horrifying – children with autism are treated with psychoanalysis. In many countries, the standard way of treating autistic children is with behavioural therapy – stimulating and rewarding them to [...]...