If Part 1 of this series was about what was lost in autism history, Part 2 is about what replaced it — and the damage it caused. In this episode of the Empower Students Now podcast, host Amanda Warner continues her deep dive into Steve Silberman’s NeuroTribes, tracing how Bruno Bettelheim’s “refrigerator mother” theory blamed parents for their children’s autism, how institutionalization tore families apart, and how Ivar Lovaas’s Applied Behavior Analysis became the dominant — and deeply controversial — intervention for autistic children.

Amanda doesn’t just summarize history. As an AuDHD educator and parent of an autistic child, she connects every chapter to what’s still happening in schools and families today — from teachers who assume meltdowns are the result of bad parenting, to the compliance-first mindset that still drives how we approach autistic students in classrooms, to the fact that ABA remains the only intervention most insurance providers will cover.

Content warning: This episode discusses institutionalization, abusive therapeutic practices, and other emotionally difficult topics. Please listen when you feel ready.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Bruno Bettelheim and the Refrigerator Mother Theory: how one man’s ideology — not science — blamed mothers for their children’s autism and caused decades of shame, guilt, and family separation
• The Orthogenic School: Bettelheim’s controlling and abusive methods, and how he presented himself as a savior while doing harm
• Willowbrook and the era of institutionalization: how autistic people were warehoused in overcrowded, neglectful institutions — sometimes for their entire lives
• The origins of ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis): how Ivar Lovaas developed compliance-based conditioning at UCLA in the 1960s, including early methods involving electric shocks, shouting, and physical force
• Why ABA’s underlying philosophy — extinguish autistic behaviors to make children appear “normal” — conflicts with the strengths-based, humanizing approach Amanda advocates
• Amanda’s personal experience with ABA: the six months her family tried it, what she noticed immediately, and why she sees both its limitations and its potential benefits
• Bernard Rimland: the psychologist and father of an autistic son who debunked the refrigerator mother theory in 1964 — but also introduced controversial biomedical interventions that pulled families like the Rosas into expensive diet and supplement regimens
• ARFID (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake) and why sensory-based eating differences in autistic people are neurological, not behavioral
• Why Amanda connects the refrigerator mother theory to what she still hears from teachers today: the assumption that a child’s meltdown is the parent’s fault
• What’s still happening in 2026: “autistic classes” in public schools, the limitations of homeschooling laws internationally, and why ABA is still the only insurance-covered support for most autistic families

Book discussed:

• NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman

Also mentioned:

• Temple Grandin (film, starring Claire Danes)
• Infantile Autism by Bernard Rimland (1964)
• The Autism Society of America

This is Part 2 of a multi-part series. Listen to Part 1 first for the story of Asperger vs. Kanner and how the narrow deficit model won out. Coming in Part 3: the evidence that autistic people have always been here, the evolution of the DSM, and extraordinary minds throughout history who were almost certainly on the spectrum.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a teacher, parent, or anyone who wants to understand how we got here — so we can do better for autistic students today.

Transcript

Amanda Werner: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Empower Students Now podcast. I’m Amanda Warner, and today we are talking about a book called “NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity” by Steve Silberman. This book was published in 2015, and it’s an excellent book. It’s really, really long. It’s like 400 pages.

So I’m doing a series talking about what the main highlights of what I learned and trying to answer the question, how did we get here? Why are there so many misconceptions and, uh, misunderstandings about autism? What happened? So in the first part of the series, which if you haven’t listened to that, go back and listen to it, uh, I talked about Hans Asperger, I talked about, um, Leo Kanner, and how they both had very different…

They both researched [00:01:00] autism and had very different ideas of what autism was, and that Kanner’s narrow definition of it as a rare, severe childhood condition won out, and that the deficit approach, um, began in the world and in the US, and that, that this has caused a lot of damage, um, to autistic families and communities and, and just public education in the way that we interpret autistic behavior and how to approach that.

So that was episode one. Episode two, I want to go more into this theory of the refrigerator mother theory that Bruno Bettelheim perpetuated, and I’m gonna talk about ABA, [00:02:00] applied behavioral analysis, and how that began. And I’m going to talk about some… a, a parent who fought back against all of this, and also revisit the Rosa family, who they’re a modern…

They’re a family, I think they’re living in the Bay Area still today, and, um, this story of this family is woven throughout the book, which I really love because they really represent so many of the challenges that families face, um, when it comes to getting their kids the support that they need, including my family.

I do wanna tell you that I am autistic and ADHD, and I was d- diagnosed with both of those as an, as a adult. And so for me, this is really, it’s cathartic to talk about this and to research, you know, why, why do people not understand autism still to this day? Why are there still- [00:03:00] So many myths that are perpetuated in the media and when I say to someone I’m autistic and they look at me like I’m, you know, like I’m lying or like I am misinformed when really they’re the ones that are misinformed and don’t understand what autism is, it’s really, really frustrating.

So being able to talk openly about this on my podcast, it’s healing, but it’s also really sad, um, looking into the history of this and learning what happened and learning why we are where we are today. And I think that it’s really important for teachers to understand the history of autism and to understand autism and, and, and the full range of what autism is.

It’s so important for teachers, not because I want you going around labeling people autistic, but just because I want you to understand that there are many, many, many, many children out [00:04:00] there that are not diagnosed but are autistic. And just that understanding changes the way that you approach kids, the way that you interact with them.

You don’t have to go telling them like, “I think you’re autistic.” That’s not what I’m, that’s not what I’m trying to say here, but I’m saying that the approaches, the humanizing, kind, curious approaches that Hans Asperger and the people like the nun that I mentioned in episode one, the, the Sister Victoria and Zach, they’re unsung heroes.

They are, they developed individualized strength-based approaches, uh, for understanding autistic children, for supporting them, and these were lost to history, and I want them back. I think this is a fight to get that, that approach back and to fight against this idea that autism is somehow devastating to families.

[00:05:00] Yes, it’s challenging, but it’s not devastating. It doesn’t tear families apart, and it’s not refrigerator mothers. Cold mothers are not, are not to blame. Like, highly educated mothers who are very passionate and driven, um, they’re not to blame. So that, that’s … I’m giving sort of a very long introduction to this episode, and I do go on tangents, and that’s just

You’re gonna have to bear with me, um, when, when I do that because it’s, it’s how I work. Okay. Um, all right. Let’s get started. Welcome to the Empower Students Now Podcast, a podcast about equity, neurodiversity, mindfulness, and student engagement. There’s a lot that needs to change in our education system.

The good news is teachers have the power to make these changes now.[00:06:00]

All right, so if episode one of this series was about what was lost in history and because of Nazi occupation of Germany and Austria, this episode is about what replaced it. So that, that history, those approaches, the humanizing approaches I was talking about in the introduction, um, that were introduced by Hans Asperger and his staff at his clinic working with autistic kids, um, that was lost to history, so what replaced it?

Okay, so like that’s what we’re talking about today, which was Kanner’s theory that it was very rare and that it was very extreme and like that it was a deficits model. But also this guy, Bruno Bettelheim, he Silverman definitely paints him as a villain. Uh, he was a psychoanalyst at the University of Chicago.

I mean, [00:07:00] he was human, right? But like his ideas, they really… I mean, they’ve impacted us today, which I think it’s, you know, we’re in 2026 and I think this idea is still rampant. But he, he noticed that autistic kids had cold withhol- emotionally withholding mothers and he proposed this theory called the Refrigerator Mother Theory.

He ran a school called, um, the Orthogenic School and presented, presented himself as a savior of damaged children. But his methods were controlling and even abusive. He had enormous cultural influence during this time, I think the 1940s, 1950s. Let me just verify that real quick. [00:08:00] Um, s- and he was an Austrian-born psychologist, so he was…

But he worked in America. Yeah, so he was born in 1903 and died in 1990. Um, and so the Refrigerator Mother Theory, I think it was really popularized, it was popularized in the 1950s but then it was debunked in the ’60s so, uh, and ’70s, so it was disproved but it did damage, you know, a lot of damage. And mothers, you know, being told that their ch- the cause of their child’s autism Was insufficient love.

I mean, you can imagine that would cause so much shame, so much guilt, and that they were told to institutionalize their children. So they not only were like blamed [00:09:00] for what was, you know, quote unquote, “wrong” with their child, they were also like torn apart from their child, right? Like their chi- children were taken from them.

So the idea that parenting causes autism did not come from science. It came from one man’s ideology, and it really did stick for decades, and I feel like I’ve felt this myself , you know, a lot as a parent of an autistic child, people assuming that my kid … including teachers, especially teachers of my child, that somehow my kid is selfish and a brat and throwing tantrums because I give in too much or I spoil them.

It’s v- I mean, it’s very similar, and it’s disgusting, and it’s dehumanizing, and it’s, it’s simplifying something so much more complex [00:10:00] than this simplified idea of like what’s happening in a grocery store when a kid is having a meltdown. Not that all of those kids are autistic, they’re having meltdowns in grocery stores, but you know what I mean.

Any kid having a meltdown in a classroom, I think one of the first assumptions is it’s the parent’s fault. And so I think this refrigerator mother theory is the origin story, people. So can we just stop with that? Can we just stop? That’s, that’s what I’m asking everyone right now. Please, please stop it.

There’s d- things are way more complex than that simplified idea of what’s going on. Okay. So now what happened to all these autistic kids and their families during the 1950s and ’60s? Well, they were institutionalized, and there’s a place that Silberman talks about in the book NeuroTribes called Willowbrook, which was overcrowded, and there was neglect and abuse, and many [00:11:00] autistic people spent their entire lives in these institutions, and that was just what was done, and it was

It did more damage than help. It’s … This is sad. It’s really sad, and I’m sorry to have to like tell you all of this. It’s a dark history of autism, but I really think it’s important for us to understand, teachers especially, that this deficit model, this idea that somehow autistic kids and their families are broken and need to be institutionalized or need to be separated, it’s, it’s not just like hurtful emotionally.

It’s like actually dam- it damaged- lives. And it was wrong. And thankfully, these institutions, I don’t think exist anymore. But one thing that I’m gonna go on a [00:12:00] tangent here for a second before I go into ABA, but one thing that I’m learning as, um, my family is immigrating to Uruguay, Uruguay. Look at me, I’m doing better saying it.

Um, homeschooling is frowned upon in many countries, and some countries it’s, it’s illegal and parents could be arrested. Homeschooling is a really important, a, a way for families to adapt their education for their autistic child. And so just homeschooling and ha- having this negative view of it, it needs to change, and that’s going on today.

In many countries, homeschooling is illegal. And this is one thing that I love about California. It is very easy to homeschool, and it is not frowned upon. I mean, I think there are a lot of misconceptions about homeschooling [00:13:00] families, um, you know, that they’re weird or whatever, but weird is not necessarily bad, right?

Okay. So I just wanted to mention that because, you know, things are not great even today in 2026. So all of these terrible things that I’m talking about throughout history, like, I feel like there’s still terrible things going on today. Maybe not as bad, but maybe so. I don’t know. How informed am I? Like, I’m just one person doing research over here.

I could be leaving something out or not aware of something that’s happening today. I mean, I am aware of one thing, just because of talking to other teachers in other states, that there are these classes in public schools called the autistic class, and all these kids are disabled in some way. Maybe all of them have autism, I don’t know.

But my guess is there’s a lot more than just autism going on [00:14:00] in these classes, but they’re called the autistic classes, and these are the classes that are, like, smaller class size, and the kids misbehave. Not all of them, but you know, really extreme behaviors. And so other kids see these classes, and they’re, you know, all put together in this, ooh, I don’t know, 10, 15-kid classroom, and, and they’re labeled just…

All of them are labeled just, like, the autistic class. I mean, what? It just seems wrong, and that’s happening today. It is wrong. I think we could do better. I think we could do a lot better for these kids. I’ve left public education because I lost just a lot of sleep and emotional bandwidth like yeah it was hard and I I it’s hard to go to schools day in and day out trying to practice the approach of [00:15:00] the strengths-based approach and the humanizing and the and the curiosity about different kids experiences there’s quote unquote like defiant kids and that’s I talk a lot about that and on this podcast so definitely check out those episodes about different approaches to that and but being the only one you know and just being constantly bombarded with teachers opinions of students and what’s going on with them and it just hurts it’s painful because these assumptions these simplified assumptions of what’s going on that the kids you know are just lazy or that the parents don’t care like I it just got too much for me I couldn’t I couldn’t handle it anymore okay let’s go to ABA so there was a guy Ole Ivar Lovas and he developed applied behavioral analysis at UCLA and this [00:16:00] was very similar to classical conditioning theory where learning is associated with a reward and that you have to extinguish negative behavior so that autistic kids could become normal or appear normal so it was really trying to condition them to be normal and his methods his early methods included terrible terrible punishments electric shock shocks shouting physical force all as part of the conditioning process and underlying this philosophy was compliance extinguish autistic behaviors and rather than trying to understand or be curious about them or accommodate them we need to get rid of them [00:17:00] I did we did do ABI ABA sorry for about six months and I immediately noticed that this was the approach and I couldn’t stand it it felt like they were purposefully triggering my kid and my kid is very very very smart and so like it was they were trying to get my kid to play a board game you know and then they would get a reward and I realized that ABA can be very beneficial to some families such as the Rosas they had an ABA um Teacher, uh, that came to their house, and this, we had ABA, um, teachers come to our house, or practitioners.

And I mean, how helpful to have so- another adult in your house [00:18:00] helping you. You know? Like, there are definitely things about ABA today that I don’t want to diminish and, and there are th- you know, other adults supporting your family can be so, so helpful. But this compliance first mindset can be very, very harmful.

And I just don’t think it works. It’s, it’s really all about extrinsic motivation. And from my experience, I am very, very motivated to a high degree when I’m doing something that I’m passionate about, that I’m interested in. And if someone is forcing me to do something I don’t wanna do, I am really, really hard-headed, I guess is the term you would call it.

And I think a lot of autistic people can relate to this. I’m really [00:19:00] gonna dig my heels in and not do, and rebel against unfairness. And I think that that is like, that’s a … I think these are autistic traits, personality traits. And so to have ABA come in and like force compliance, I just don’t see how this, this method was popularized and how it was, it got to be what it is today, because it really is the only method for, uh, uh, that insurance providers pay for.

I mean, i- it’s like the only support system that exists for autistic kids with, or families with autistic kids, or families who are all autistic. I mean, what? When we demand kids make eye contact with us, when we demand that they sit still, when we demand that they stop fidgeting, we are [00:20:00] operating from this idea that was created

When was ABA created? When did this happen? I’m gonna look up the date for you right now. 1960s was when it was pioneered, and it’s still the main intervention that’s used today, and it’s problematic. Okay. So I now want to talk about Bernard Rimland, and this guy was- In the book, uh, he’s featured in Neuroti- Tribes as one of the first major figures to push back against parent blaming.

So he was a psychologist whose own son was autistic, and in 1964, he published a book called Infantile Autism, [00:21:00] systematically dismantling the refrigerator mother theory and arguing that autism had a biological neurological basis, not a parental one. So he is one of the people responsible for debunking this theory.

He helped found the Autism Society of America and organized parents into a political force. Um, but he is sort of a controversial figure, uh, in history because of his biomedical interventions, including the idea that certain diets and supplements could treat autism. And the Rosas, that family that lives in the Bay Area, they really got caught in this, spending lots and lots of money, uh, to figure out how to treat autism using diets and supplements.

And I’ve got sucked into this too, uh, as well. And, [00:22:00] um, there is this eating, um… I hate the word disorder. Um, but there’s, there’s this, it– I guess it is a disorder, but it’s called, um, ARFID, Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. Um, I would rather just call it avoidant restrictive food intake, but if you ever watch the Temple Grandin movie, uh, which, what was that called?

She only eats Jell-O. Uh, Claire Danes played Temple Grandin. I love that movie. If you’ve never seen it, you should see it. It is such a good movie. Is it just called Temple Grandin? It might just be called Temple Grandin. Um, but she, yeah, she, in the movie, she can only eat Jell-O, and I feel like that is sort of a sign of, [00:23:00] of…

I mean, I think she’s expanded her eating, but, and I do think that partly it’s because, um, of sensitivities in the mouth to te- to textures, um, not because, you know, like there’s something wrong. It’s just a different brain. And yes, I think supplements can help because if you’re not getting enough nutrients, you know, because you have ARFID, you need vitamins, you need supplements.

But like these, these- Ideas about vaccinations causing autism, these have been debunked, and yet we still have, you know, a secretary of health saying, you know, that these are possible causes, and it’s just, I just … It’s so infuriating. Um, and that somehow, like, our diet is what [00:24:00] caused it, or, you know, like, it’s

And Silberman is very clear in this book. It is genetic, people. It’s genetic. Okay, so this episode is a little longer than normal, so I’m gonna go ahead and end it here. We’ve spent two episodes looking at how autism was misunderstood, narrowed, weaponized against parents, um, and that the ideas about how to support autistic people, like ABA won out over Hans Asperger and the nun that worked at his clinic, Sister Victoria Moothan, their humanizing, open-ended, strengths-based approach was lost to history, and I’m trying to bring it back in this podcast.

That’s my goal. Um, so next time, next episode, we’re going to zoom way out and look at [00:25:00] the evidence that autistic people have always been here, that this is not an epidemic, and we’re gonna talk about the DSM-5, or, like, the different versions of the DSM and how it’s evolved over time, and, uh, and just talk about some of the extraordinary minds throughout history a- and, and these people who are almost certainly on the spectrum, and that Steve Silberman theorizes were on the spectrum.

It’s pretty amazing. The next few episodes are gonna be a lot better than these two. These wa- these two were dark and sad, and I’m sorry, but it’s the truth, and we need to know the truth. Um, but the next few episodes will be hopefully a little less heavy. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you, and, um, I can’t wait to come back and talk more about this amazing book, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity.

[00:26:00] Bye-bye.