The outdated approach to autism in France discussed in this NYT article offers a good example of how intellectual stagnation can have serious real-world consequences.
Unfortunately, French autistic children are not getting the treatment they deserve because of overly conservative and rigid thinking on the part of psychoanalysts.
Yet in comparing the US vs. France on the issue of autism, David Jolly and Stephanie Novak make two mistakes. First, they neglect to separate the inappropriateness of psychoanalytic treatment for autistic children from its general appropriateness for higher-functioning groups of patients. Even so, the French psychoanalytic establishment is rigidly and unhealthily attached to one man’s theories over all others. Lacanian psychoanalysis dominates France more like a church than a school of thought.
Second, the two journalists conflate the autism issue with the ADHD issue. We know that in the US, ADHD is shamefully overdiagnosed, despite the cheerful example used in the article. Too many American children are needlessly medicated, thanks in large part to marketing, as a way of controlling their behavior, shifting responsibility away from parents and teachers, and maximizing Big Pharma’s profits. The caution shown in France in not diagnosing ADHD and in not making unruly kids swallow a daily dose of psychostimulants is totally warranted. In fact, French regulations require a hospital-initiated prescription for Ritalin. This caution is especially commendable considering that France has one of the highest per capita pharmaceutical consumption rates in the world, along with one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical markets. It’s clearly makes sense to protect children from pharmaceuticals that are unnecessary, especially since research is unclear on the long-term health effects of chronic stimulant use.
Conservatism, pride, and dogmatic authority are important traits of French culture. From an outsider’s perspective, traditional ways of thinking and doing things in France easily get fixated on as the only possible way. Similarly, the French intellectual community has a tendency to close itself off to progressive ideas emanating from the outside.
UPDATE: Incredibly, a French court has ruled that the film discussed in the article above should be censored and suppressed, removed from the internet, and the director fined at least 40,000EUR. Aside from what anyone thinks of the merits of the documentary (available here for now), or of psychoanalysis, or of Jacques Lacan, or of employing Lacanian psychoanalysis to treat autism, this is a shameful legal judgment. Censorship has no place in democratic society…unless you’re in France, which has a history over recent decades of imposing strict, arbitrary limits to freedom of expression—and punishing offenders.
UPDATE II: This op-ed in today’s NYT by L. Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, comparing treatments for ADD/ADHD and the problems with prescribing amphetamines for children is worth reading. In it, Sroufe elaborates on the big problem: “To date, no study has found any long-term benefit of attention-deficit medication on academic performance, peer relationships or behavior problems, the very things we would most want to improve.”
-
murphytii0 liked this
-
fergusonicd890 liked this
-
brodypost posted this
