--- Perla <northernstar7112@...> wrote:

> Well Larry in that case I will have to spread the
> word that the
> reason a woman can turn into a 'cold' mother is the
> emotional
> neglect she suffered from her father, her
> autistic/Asperger father
> maybe???!!!
>
> You see according to my personal experience and some
> research I have
> done, if a woman is emotioanlly withdrawn it is
> because of the
> trauma she experienced becaused of her relationship
> with her father,
> her refregerator father.

Freud had no opinions about the aetiology of autism.
That was for later psychoanalysts. Freud didn't blame
mothers for anything. He blamed fathers. It was
Melanie Klein, and to some extent Otto Rank, as well
as the object-relations people who broke with Freud in
this.

Even so, it wasn't a serious break. Freud believed in
the "primacy of the Oedipus complex." This just meant
that issues with the mother were always secondary. It
did not mean, however, that such issues didn't exist.
It was, in fact, Freud who first deduced the mental
state of a newborn.

To the newborn, there is no difference between the
self and outer reality. He thinks that all he has to
do is open his mouth and delicious food flows in. He
thinks the breast is part of his own body.
Eventually, though, the mother must take her breast
away while the baby is still hungry. That is the
baby's first introduction to the "other." It is
traumatic, to say the least, discovering that the
prototype of all goodness is also the prototype of all
evil!

So, Freud may be responsible for blaming mothers, but
not in the conventional concept. Melanie Klein gets
the big award for that.

>
> You see Freud knew very well how fundamental are the
> opposite sex
> relationships and emotional interactions within a
> family not ony for
> the male child and the mother = Oedipus complex, but
> also for the
> female child and her father = Antigone complex
> (correct?).


I'm sorry to be pedantic, but since you asked; it's
called the "Electra Complex." :)


> So if you feel compelled to persue and defend the
> early childhood
> trauma and the refregerator mother issue, then I am
> sure you will
> also feel as much compelled to pursue the
> refregerator father issue
> as it is all in the very same picture.


Sure. However, you may recall that I am not too
dogmatic in thinking that either parents' coldness
caused the autism. Come to think of it, I don't accept
that hypothesis at all. OK?



And it is
> about time men take
> their due responsibility in this whole issue, don't
> yoy think???


Sure.


>
> So what came first, the refregerator mother, or the
> autistic child?

That was Bettelheim's big question. He said he didn't
know. He was just suspicious because he met so many
truly heartless mothers! The Orthogenic School was a
place to send a child when the parents have given up
all hope. It was invariably the mother who made the
decision in such cases in those days of gender roles
in American families. Also, he was armed with
Klein's recent studies on the subject--as well as
Piaget's.


> And what came first, the refregerator father or the
> female child who
> then used the "cold father" role model when she had
> children of her
> own? Because that is what many do not understand: we
> learn to love
> from our relationship with the opposite sex parent.
> It is the
> opposite sex parent that teaches a child how to
> connect emotionaly
> with another person and most importantly with their
> own opposite sex
> child. If boys seem to have more often autism than
> girls them I am
> sorry to teel you but the source of the problem is
> the mother's
> father who was too busy and neglected the emotional
> needs of his
> daughter. He thought as many men do that the wife,
> will take care of
> all that and that he, doesn't have to bother. Well,
> see what his
> attitude did??? Caused AUTISM!

I never thought of that. You may be right. If you
present that hypothesis to Yahoo Answers, though, they
will cream you, because once you open that particular
door a crack, you allow the *refrigerator mother
theory* to barge in!

Yours,
Larry



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