Autism in France - Le Mur - a shocking documentary, with English subtitles

[Bonsoir]

Makes me wonder whether psychoanalysis is a patriarchal trick.

Pointythings
Not only does the French "treatment" of autism take years, it involves doing.....nothing.

Listen to the doc who says he has therapy session with children with autism where he does nothing, just parks his bum on a chair and waits for 45 minutes for the child to speak, which they often don't. He says this with no shame, but some kind of warped, self-righteous pride, explaining that these children might be contemplating a soap bubble and we can't prevent that.

Off topic, but I think the Freudian supremacy here has a lot to do with the low regard with which breastfeeding is held here. And definitely influences the very many negative reactions especially by medical professionals to breastfeeding into toddlerhood.

i got about half way though, and gave up.
What a crock!
So i am either too cold with my girls or too warm. I am a depressed mother (which im not) that wanted my child dead so therefore created their autism.
Okkkk

Ye gods! Crocodile woman is batshit crazy, and should be kept away from all children, neurotypical or other.

My children are not autistic because I'm a refrigerator mother (thought that theory was long dead and discredited)...they're autistic because they are missing vital bits of the brain used in sensory processing and communication. In my family's case, it's probably genetic. My father, brother and partner are all on the spectrum.

France is very big on Freudian crackpot theory. If it's the old mother as cause of autism theory I believe that was first mooted by Betelheim wasn't it? It's standard reading for philosophy and psychiatry courses despite being a very early study and very experimental and now largely discredited.

I only have 18 months experience of the French medical system but it leaves a lot to be desired. My impression so far is that no one speaks English (OK, a bit uneducated, but OK), AND no one bothers to find out about research in the english-speaking world or anywhere else in the world. I can't quite see how they can keep up to date without the exchange of ideas central to the scientific inquiry. They are terribly insular and proud as a nation so they collectively seem to believe that there is no point to looking outside of France for other viewpoints.

Doctors are also extremely paternalistic, e.g. I was told by a gyneacologist that my birth choices were her choice, and they collectively stick to national decisions about what is and is not possible, i.e. single doctors make no attempt to think for themselves and judge each case in relation to the patient they just tell you "This is France not the US" (anything they don't like is American).

They have a prevalence of stupid beliefs in medicine, e.g. homeopathy is everywhere and suggested by every doctor, MW, nurse, etc., amber beads, general energy manipulation voodoo, etc are all happily used as part of medicine.

Coming to the end of my rant now...the worst thing about this documentary is that social services can remove your child if you do not comply with this idiotic psychoanalytical 'treatment'. Second worst is the court's decision - disgraceful!

I have an autistic child in France and it's been a nightmare, get sent to a doctor with these archaic views and you're completely stuffed. Fortunately, my DS is being supported by a different team now and he's progressing well, but the early days were terrible and I often wanted to come home to the UK and I spent a lot of time in tears. It was all my fault as his mum, he didn't really have autism it was the way I'd brought him up (and that's me personally not his father).

Even today when I have meetings with his psychologist I have to make myself shut up and keep quiet because whilst I disagree with his opinions the social integration group that his staff run has worked wonders for my DS and he's come on really, really well. It's been hard here these last few years.

Its scary stuff.
I have in the past complained about services in the UK, but in the future I will remember that not so far away things are much, much worse.

I can also tell you that my son's twice weekly treatment costs 1,500 euros a month, plus another 1000 a month for the ambulance to take him to the sessions. This is all paid for by the State because autism is classed as a condition which has 100% cover.

I think my son is fine now, he mixes with the kids at school, he takes himself into situations where he doesn't know anyone and speaks to them, he's much braver than I am, but they keep on carrying on his treatment because (in my opinion) he's a money maker. There are six children in his group, two group sessions held a day, five days a week, look at how much money they are making out of that.

Place marking to watch later.

Place marking to watch later

I've lived in France for 20 years, albeit with one break, and I have to say that I am incredibly sceptical of any new HCP I need to consult and do my homework on them and on available treatments for the condition I or my family member has with utmost care before consulting/proceeding. Whacko psychoanalytic theories are highly prevalent throughout medicine (and, indeed, anything to do with child development eg school).

Recently we were looking for a SALT for DSS1, who has a slight stammer. We got recommendations from HCPs we trust and talked to each on on the telephone and discussed what they had said before proceeding. Some of the SALTs here believe all stammering is "in the mind" and needs psychoanalysis...

Bonsoir
I have come across that, too.
My DH's cousin is a French SALT and even she buys into all this utter tosh psychoanalysis is the solution for everything line.

One of her four children stammered and at age 6 they were reviewing her early childhood as a family to seek out the source of early childhhood trauma that led to it.

Likewise, I have a friend who has twin girls with autism. The "reason" for their autism which they firmly, firmly believe is that when their little sister was born and their mum was in to the maternité (hospital), the twins - at home with their Dad and Grandma for a few days - felt a profound sense of maternal rejection which flipped them into autism. They are under a top paediatrician at Necker, a world renowned children's hopsital and that's what they have been told by the staff there.

Yes Greythorne I was told that the reason my son has autism was because his father works away and that we moved to France when he was three. Even though they have seen videos of him stimming at home in the UK when he was 18 months old.

This was the Radio 4 programme I listened to last week about Freud's legacy and whether or not it passes modern medical scrutiny. Can't remember whereabouts in the programme this particular part comes, sorry.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bmn02

Greythorne - in the film Le Mur at minute 10.28, the psychoanalyst being interviewed is clearly identified as Professeur Bernard Golse, Psychanalyste SFP, Chef du service de pédopsychiatrie de l'Hôpital Necker

For non-French posters: Hôpital Necker is the French equivalent of Great Ormond Street children's hospital.

I heard a tiny item on France Info on Monday about how psychiatric treatment is no longer to be used for autism. Does this mean there will be no treatment available, then, in France?

Presumably the existing limited quantities of alternative treatment will continue to exist and, crucially, be allowed to grow within mainstream medicine, which can only be a good thing.

Oh, my mistake.
A UMP member of parliament has put forward a bill to ban the use of psychoanalysis in the treatment of autism, but is has yet to be voted. Probably won't be...

I've now watched the documentary, and it is utterly terrifying. So much self-satisfaction and condescension, so much blind following of their texts and masters.
That therapist who is content to plonk his arse on a chair and sit in silence waiting for an event, and who claims that all an autistic child can hope for from sessions is to experience pleasure watching a soap bubble (WTF does that mean, anyway?), is clearly in need of some form of therapy himself.
He calls babies lardons, FFS.

On another note, the subtitles are shockingly, shockingly badly translated. How hard could it be to find someone who knows how to spell "abandoned" or "speech" and who wouldn't translate "une mère figée" as "a clotted mother"?

AA - are you thinking of Daniel Fasquelle?

Anybody fluent in French, at least enough to understand this news item? It starts at 15 minutes 33 seconds into the video
jt.france3.fr/1920/

treatment of autism by antiboitics.
Some American scientists have the theory that it is an infection, just like ulcers are now found to be infections rather than psychosomatic.
The first boy's symptoms have almost disappeared. They found the cause was Lyme disease brought about by a tick bite.

Later a professor says that there is possibly an infection in the gut caused by bacteria, which through inflammation spreads to the blood and brain.

So treatemnt by antiobitics against these bacteria has been successful.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/839783.stm

However, there seem to be other theories that antibiotics may be partially responsible

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-199412/Antibiotics-link-MMR-autism.html

www.ageofautism.com/2008/11/antibiotics-and.html