

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "NeuroTribes" by Steve Silberman. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Who was Bernard Rimland? How did his autism research change how some saw the disorder? What were some of the problems with his theories?
Bernard Rimland was an American psychologist in the mid-1900s. It was thanks to Rimland that parents were no longer blamed for causing autism, however, Rimland also promoted the idea that vaccines caused autism.
Continue reading to learn about Bernard Rimland’s research and its impacts.
The Work of Bernard Rimland
According to Steve Silberman in NeuroTribes, the theory that poor parenting causes autism prevailed in the medical field until the 1960s, when Navy psychologist Bernard Rimland (who had an autistic son) published a book arguing that autism wasn’t caused by childhood trauma but was instead a genetic disorder.
Rimland’s book took the blame for autism off of the parents, Silberman explains. It also took the experiences of autistic children into account in a way that had rarely been done before: Rimland theorized about what it was like to exist in a world not built for them and sympathized with the frustration that must come from meeting all the seemingly arbitrary demands of adults whose brains worked differently. However, not all of his work holds up to modern scrutiny, as we’ll see next.
(Shortform note: As Silberman asserts, parents don’t cause autism. However, experts explain that with the right training, they can help improve their children’s lives. Research suggests that training parents in how to communicate with their autistic children can help reduce symptoms like anxiety and aggression. Additionally, participating in cognitive behavioral therapy with their autistic children can improve parents’ mental and emotional well-being.)
The Interplay Between Autism and Trauma The attribution of autism to childhood trauma—a myth Rimland helped dispel—is further complicated by the fact that autism and trauma are often hard to distinguish. For one thing, the symptoms of trauma-related conditions like PTSD often mirror some of the symptoms and traits of autism—for example, increased sensory sensitivity and difficulty regulating emotions. Additionally, autistic people are more likely than allistic people to experience trauma, and trauma survivors are more likely to experience further trauma, making both groups especially vulnerable. Autistic people’s sensitivities can also cause them to be traumatized by events that allistic people wouldn’t find traumatizing. All of these factors can lead to misdiagnoses of PTSD and autism (mistaking one condition for another) and missed diagnoses (correctly diagnosing one condition while overlooking a co-occurring one). |
Rimland’s Problematic Theories
While much of Rimland’s work helped progress the field of autism research, he also promoted other, ultimately harmful theories, Silberman explains. For instance, Rimland agreed with Kanner’s strict definition of what constituted autism and believed it wasn’t a spectrum. He also posited that while autism was genetic, environmental factors such as diet and metabolism could exacerbate it. This began a movement known as the biomedical movement (or BioMed for short). This movement was devoted to “curing” autism through dietary changes (like gluten-free or ketogenic diets), supplements, medication, and chelation (the use of drugs that bind to toxic metals in the blood, allowing the body to then flush out the toxic metals).

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- The truth behind the common misconceptions about autism
- How society’s perception of autism has evolved since the 1930s
- The most effective treatments for autism spectrum disorder