Evidence against the refrigerator mother theory began in the late 1970s, with twin studies suggesting a genetic etiology, as well as various environmental factors.
In his 1943 paper that first identified autism, Leo Kanner called attention to what appeared to him as a lack of warmth among the fathers and mothers of autistic children.
[3] In a 1949 paper, Kanner suggested autism may be related to a "Maternal lack of genuine warmth", noted that fathers rarely stepped down to indulge in children's play, and observed that children were exposed from "the beginning to parental coldness, obsessiveness, and a mechanical type of attention to material needs only....
His book, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, attacked the refrigerator mother hypothesis directly.
In 1969, Kanner addressed the refrigerator mother issue at the first annual meeting of what is now the Autism Society of America, stating: From the very first publication until the last, I spoke of this condition in no uncertain terms as "innate."
"[9]According to the book In a Different Key: The Story of Autism (2016), Leo Kanner's original 1943 paper stated that "the child's aloneness" was evident "from the very beginning of life."
[10] Kanner engaged in lengthy conversation by mail with Louise Despert, who was a New York psychiatrist he held in high esteem.
For example, in a 1956 paper Kanner and a co-author wrote, "If one considers the personalities of the parents who have been described as successfully autistic, the possibility suggests itself that they may represent milder manifestations and that the children show the full emergence of the latent structure."
In addition, the early 1940s was still a period when eugenics was held in respect, and in the United States, sterilization of people with intellectual disability was legal.
[10] In the hardcover version of In a Different Key (2016), authors John Donvan and Caren Zucker state "Kanner, instead of sticking by his initial conviction about autism being inborn, had flinched."
However, in the 1979 edition of his textbook Child Psychiatry, he states that childhood schizophrenia (a phrase often used for autism until the 1970s) was more closely correlated with parental attitudes than with a person's genetic background.
[citation needed] Paleologic thought is a characteristic in both present-day people with schizophrenia and primitive men, a type of thinking that has its foundations in non-Aristotelian logic.
According to Peter Breggin's 1991 book Toxic Psychiatry, the psychogenic theory of autism was abandoned because of political pressure from parents' organizations, not for scientific reasons.
She wrote: One must note that autism is one of a number of children's neurological disorders of psychogenic nature, i.e., caused by abusive and traumatic treatment of infants.
When Miller visited several autism therapy centers in the United States, it became apparent to her that the stories of children "inspired fear in both doctors and mothers alike": I spent a day observing what happened to the group.
[19]Like Arieti and Tustin, Miller believes that only empathetic parental attitudes lead to the complete blossoming of the child's personality.
For the subset of autistic infants who display "disorganized attachment", this may be more readily explained by intellectual disability than by the behavior of the parents.
Some characteristics common in autistic people, some of which are necessary for the diagnosis, are inconsistent with being a warm parent who anticipates the needs of their infant.