I saw only part of the film but what is clear here is not that the diagnosis refrigerator mothers is correct but that it is incorrect and based on a psychiatric diagnosis that was not only wrong but destructive to the family unit. This is precisely why many of us in the medical community have no respect, none, for psychiatry as medical discipline because quite simply it is not. Many of the people that go into psychiatry are themselves mentally unstable from past experiences just like Bettleheim. They are people trying to ameliorate their own problems so they go into psychiatry to try and figure out what is wrong with themselves so they can be made “normal”. This is clearly the case with Bettleheim who was improsoned at a Nazi concentration camp. The depth of his mental and physical abuse which could range from beatings to being sodomized in a Nazi prison camp are incalcuable and should have disqualified him from entering into this field until it was determined that he himself was mentally stable. That Kanner, who proposed this absurd and bizarre deduction and called it a medical diagnosis and then popularized it among his colleagues, is mentioned in any positive context by anyone is an enigma to me and an indictment of their judgment.
Larry you need proffesional help unforunatley all of these psychiatrist have abandoned psychotherapy whic itself is controve4sial in favor of psychotropic drugs whih you may actually need from what I am reading in your comments as it appears that you are quite delusional. Do you also have auditory or visual hallucinations? Were you abused? Clearly you are not seeing what the rest of us are and your experiences have distorted and thwarted your ability even to recognize that the intent of the film is to point out the absurdity of the assingment of the cause of autism to the mothers and their being cold or unloving. Therefore you could not have met any refigerator mothers as there are none. Many mothers and fathers are exhausted, depressed concerned, hurt,and fearful for their child but cold calloused and unloving? No as it has been well established that autism is in this context is a failed diagnosis.

beautiful documentary. I was engaged for the full hour, and it absolutely gave me strength as a mother with an autistic child. I had this vision of my sons future that was quite scary, but these adults with autism are abosolutely BEAUTIFUL. They have an innocence that cannot be mimicked. I feel absolutely sadened that the mothers of these beautiful people could be blamed for their children’s autism. I felt guilty myself, and if I had a professional telling me that was so, I could not look myself in the mirror nor sleep at night. I will keep these mothers and their children in my prayers, and hopefully they will keep me in theirs.

Very touching. Thank you for posting this. One gift that history can give us, if we listen, is to not repeat the mistakes of the past. It is hard to believe that anyone could possibly blame the mothers for their children’s disability but, sadly, it was done. This film is a lesson in love. As a person who dealt (sometimes badly) with a mother who suffered from Parkinsons for 25 years, the guilt sometimes experienced by those who are NOT disabled is a terrible burden. I have great admiration for these women.