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Sunday, July 12, 2015

UCLA History: Scream Therapy

Hard to know what to say about this 1965 Life Magazine article about a form of therapy for autism developed at UCLA: [excerpt]

Enraged bellows at the boy, then a sharp slap in the face. This deliberate, calculated harshness is part of an extraordinary new treatment for mentally crippled children. It is based on the old-fashioned idea that the way to bring up children is to reward them when they're good, punish them when they're bad. At the University of California in Los Angeles, a team of researchers is applying this precept to extreme cases. They have taken on three boys and a girl with a special form of schizophrenia called autism — utterly withdrawn children whose minds are sealed against all human contact and whose uncontrolled madness had turned their homes into hells...

Full story from the magazine reproduced at http://neurodiversity.com/library_screams_1965.pdf

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