自闭的孩子(1948年TIME上的一篇文章)zz

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精神病专家 Leo Kanner 过去一直站在家长这边。支持家长们反对专家的意见，说每次当小孩子出什么过错的时候就责备妈妈或爸爸是不公平的。上周 Leo Kanner 在曼哈顿的美国精神病治疗协会谈到了没有他不为其辩护的家长。他首选研究了 Johns Hopkins 的儿童精神病诊所里的孩子们。

      孩子们看上去都很正常：Dr.Kanner 说他们都“发育的很好，成长的很好，身材相当苗条，还很吸引人”，许多孩子也很聪明。一个2岁的男孩可以分辨出姓氏百科全书上的所有图片；一个3岁的男孩可以说出所有美国总统和副总统的名字，背诵37首儿歌，快速回答出25个关于基督教长老会的问答题。

      婴儿期的精神分裂症患者。他们所有人都有些问题：他们对什么都漠不关心，内向孤僻，一个人的时候却很开心。他们逃避任何打扰他们独处的事物：噪音，活动的东西，人，通常甚至会是食物。他们都有 Dr. Kanner 说的“早期婴幼儿孤独症”；也就是，他认为的，精神分裂症（人格分裂），一种可形成于孩子一岁前的婴儿期的心理疾病。他们是怎么得病的呢？Dr.Kanner 仔细研究了他们的父母。

      一眼看上去家长们都很正常；他们都是些本该会有更多孩子的善良人，节育人员说。除了一种情况，在他们的家庭中有不为人知的精神失常问题。这些父亲中有科学家，大学教授，画家，牧师，生意场上的主管，心理学家，精神病学家。差不多5个母亲上过大学；婚前或婚后，差不多有一个母亲是科学家，实验室技术员，医生，护士，图书管理员，画家。

      冷漠的完美主义者。他们所有人又都有些不对劲。他们描述自己表现出一种“人际关系机械化，”而且他们的配偶都很含蓄。Dr. Kanner 发现，“婚前恋爱时不浪漫，婚后性生活没有激情。”他只看到一位母亲和蔼的抱着她的孩子把脸转向他；许多生活工作忙碌的父亲几乎不认识他们的孩子。

      家长们本身也想做到最好；但他们自认为正确的事就像“一个过分尽职的加油站服务员所提供的一种和蔼的机械化的服务”一样。Dr. Kanner 说，孩子们如同被完好的保存在不会化冻的冰箱里。

      是这些冷淡的家长们使孩子患上精神分裂症的吗？Dr. Kanner 并没有给出一个肯定的答案；但他已经发现在这些“不懂世故的”父母的孩子中没有婴儿期的孤独症。他那些可怜的病人：“他们的孤僻看上去是一种转移的行为……在孤独中寻找安慰。”他说。

* 正牙医矫正牙齿使其整齐；精神卫生学家尝试治疗不正常的精神状态，尤其是婴幼儿的行为问题。

http://www.yeeyan.com/articles/view/36798/10561

原文引自:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,798484,00.html

Psychiatrist Leo Kanner used to stand up for parents. He championed them against the experts, said that it was unfair to blame the mother or father every time something went wrong with the child. Last week he told the American Ortho-psychiatric* Association in Manhattan about no parents whom he could not defend. He had examined their offspring at the children's psychiatric clinic which he heads at Johns Hopkins.

The children looked all right: Dr. Kanner called them "well-formed, well-developed, rather slender, and attractive." Many were bright, too. A two-year-old boy could identify all the pictures in Compton's Encyclopedia; a three-year-old boy could name all the Presidents and Vice Presidents of the U.S., recite 37 nursery rhymes, rattle off 25 questions & answers in the Presbyterian catechism.

Diaper-Age Schizoids. But there was something wrong with all of them: they were apathetic, withdrawn, happiest when left alone. They shrank from anything that disturbed their isolation: noises, moving objects, people, often even food. They had what Dr. Kanner calls "early infantile autism"; it is, he thinks, a diaper-age form of the mental disease called schizophrenia (split personality), which may develop before a child is a year old. How did they get that way? Dr. Kanner took a hard look at their parents.

At first glance, the parents, too, seemed fine; they were just the kind of people who, birth-controllers say, ought to have more children. Except in one case, there was no known insanity in their families. The fathers were scientists, college professors, artists, clergymen, business executives, psychologists, psychiatrists. All but five of the mothers had gone to college; all but one had been active, before or after marriage, as scientists, laboratory technicians, physicians, nurses, librarians, artists.

Cold Perfectionists. But there was something wrong with all of them. They showed a "mechanization of human relationships," described themselves and their spouses as undemonstrative. There was, Dr. Kanner found, "no glamor of romance in premarital courtship, no impetuousness in postnuptial mating." He saw only one mother hug her child warmly and bring her face close to his; many of the busy fathers hardly knew their children.

The parents wanted to do the right thing by them; but their idea of the right thing was "the mechanized service of the kind which is rendered by an over-conscientious gasoline station attendant." The children, says Dr. Kanner, were "kept neatly in a refrigerator which didn't defrost."

Were the cold parents freezing their children into schizophrenia? Dr. Kanner did not say yes or no; but he has found no case of infantile autism among children of "unsophisticated" parents. Said he of his pathetic patients: "Their withdrawal seems to be an act of turning away . . . to seek comfort in solitude."


* Orthodontists straighten crooked teeth; ortho-psychiatrists try to straighten warped minds, specialize in children's behavior problems.