“The “refrigerator mother” theory of causation was so thoroughly condemned that no researcher wanted to risk their reputation on studying the influence of mother-child bonding, or lack thereof.”
The public attacked all psychogenic theories including being gay or lesbian.
Here is the wiki post on this:
According to Peter Breggin’s 1991 book Toxic Psychiatry, the psychogenic theory of autism was abandoned for political pressure from parents’ organizations, not for scientific reasons. For example, some case reports have shown that profound institutional privation can result in quasi-autistic symptoms.[24] Clinician Frances Tustin devoted her life to the theory. She wrote:
One must note that autism is one of a number of children’s neurological disorders of psychogenic nature, i.e., caused by abusive and traumatic treatment of infants. ...There is persistent denial by American society of the causes of damage to millions of children who are thus traumatized and brain damaged as a consequence of cruel treatment by parents who are otherwise too busy to love and care for their babies.[25]
Alice Miller, one of the best-known authors of the consequences of child abuse, has maintained that autism is psychogenic, and that fear of the truth about child abuse is the leitmotif of nearly all forms of autistic therapy known to her. When Miller visited several autism therapy centers in the United States, it became apparent to her that the stories of children “inspired fear in both doctors and mothers alike”:
I spent a day observing what happened to the group. I also studied close-ups of children on video. What became clearer and clearer as the day went on was that all these children had a serious history of suffering behind them. This, however, was never referred to....In my conversations with the therapists and mothers, I inquired about the life stories of individual children. The facts confirmed my hunch. No one, however, was willing to take these facts seriously.[26]
Like Arieti and Tustin, Miller believes that only empathetic parental attitudes lead to the complete blossoming of the child’s personality.
The refrigerator mother theory, widely discarded in the United States, still has some support in France[27] and Europe and is largely believed in South Korea to be the cause of autism.[28] The academic psychologist Tony Humphreys of University College Cork is a leading Irish proponent of the theory of frigid parenting, despite censure by the Psychological Society of Ireland.[29]
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I differ significantly from these theorists in that in my humble opinion, the greatest impact upon the psychological development of a child is the events of the mother while the child is in the mother’s womb. I’ve demonstrated this many times when working with total strangers.
The detailed information available is much greater than researchers realize. Several times I have been able to identify temporary abandonment memories while the child was in the womb, due to the father being away on military duty.
Even anxiety in the mother due to the career impact of becoming pregnant carries to the child. All events during pregnancy are influential upon the child in the womb. This has happened many times when doing testing with total strangers during demonstrations with volunteers from a group.
I found Alice Miller's books a great revelation concerning the effects of negative maternal behaviors on children, especially highly intelligent children, but to ascrible all cases of autism to psychogenic causes is overreach. In fact, since the statement above was not authored by Miller, I wonder if she actually believed it went that far.