Refrigerator Mothers

Imagine watching as your seemingly perfect baby slips slowly into a world of it’s own. At first the doctors reassure you that nothing is wrong. Then when it’s all too apparent that something is terribly, terribly wrong they tell you it is your fault. For decades after autism was finally named, doctors presumed the bizarre behaviors”?rigid rituals, nonexistent or strange speech, extreme isolation”?stemmed from the mothers’ emotional frigidity. They even developed a name, “Refrigerator Mothers.”