Kanner's Cold Mother Theory and How It's Explored in Horror

TW: Mentions, citations, and a quote from the book NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman. Although I think this book provides a comprehensive history of psychology's interactions with autism, it fails to emphasize what information is considered outdated or outright offensive to autistics. (Also, Silberman talks about ABA positively? I wasn't quite sure when reading it.) Anyway, just thought I'd mention it in case you were thinking about picking it up.

By the time Leo Kanner, an Austrian-American psychiatrist known for spreading long-lasting misinformation about autism, had finished his book, Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact in 1943, there was already a general consensus, shared by other academic physicians and social scholars around the world, that was rooting itself in the lone, infertile garden of psychological discovery: A struggling child always has something to do with the mother. All manifestations of "psychosis" are direct and literal consequences of a mother's inability to be nurturing, yet encourage a healthy level of independence. To be soft, but to also make sure that the child is to be realistically prepared for life's unfairness. To be available at all hours, while not hovering with obsession. To go out, have hobbies. To be home, ready to cook. Get a babysitter, get a job. Don't leave them, stay longer. It goes on.

It wasn't helping that psychological demigod, Sigmund Freud, was already successful at convincing the public of what genders bring about hysterics since those ideas were already complimented by the raging cultural fears that panged Freud and his shivering colleagues in the past; shorter skirts and the loosening control over women's sexual freedoms. So naturally, Leo Kanner, an offspring of some of Freud's de-humanizing logics, sprung about them even further: when searching for the root cause of "early infantile autism", (his definition inferred a pre-budding "psychosis" or an acute form of schizophrenia only present in children), Kanner noticed a pattern. A describable coincidence, found in families where the parents were "too educated" or "too interested in the arts", thus environmentally stimulating their children with their negligence and obsession in poetic pursuits; "Refrigerator Moms", a name he had given to mother's who loved their children with routined coldness. (Silberman, 2015)

Kanner made the name out of disgust and mockery, for he un-empathized with working women, and it was obvious from the examination of his own notes when trying to help his own female co-workers (highly intelligent psychologists, equal to his status) who had their own evidence of their child's autism as well, by saying they "claimed" by psychiatrists. Dismissing their careful and personal research as means of hysterics. Ignoring their claims of commonality, leading Kanner to falsely label autism as "rare". An issue that is still seen today. (Silberman, 2015)

In the 2015 book NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman, Silberman exposes the real reason within Kanner's insistence that "cold", "distant", and "career-driven" mothers were the reason their child did not want to interact socially with the world. He states:

"Implicating parenting styles in the etiology of his syndrome, on the other hand, would place the child psychiatrists firmly at the center of family life, giving them a role arguably more powerful than that of parents themselves." (page 192)

In other words, if Kanner and the psychological institution financially benefitted from a clinically caused and "curable" understanding of autism, rather than admitting autism's natural and inheritable biological presence, then there understandably needed to be an environmental reason to blame; why not already use psychology's favorite claim to the downfall of society? Reuse, Renew, Recycle, right?

Though Friday the 13th (dir. Sean S. Cunningham) came out in 1980, almost three decades after Kanner published his theories surrounding early infantile autism (now just autism) it seems pretty obvious that cultural anxieties had not changed: horror movies have historically exposed and played with the psychological fears of the public. And normally, a story of a mother avenging her child would at least garner some understanding and sympathy from audience members who deem motherhood as "divine" or "saintly"; that is quite the opposite view people have about Pamela Voorhees. Though her intentions seem noble (trying to ensure others wouldn't die in the same way or place as Jason) they're overshadowed by her not just killing people, but something more: Jason's later supernatural monsterdom is subliminally seen as her doing. The audience, already suspicious of Pamela, is convinced by self-fulfilling prophecies and out-of-order timelines that indeed, Pamela must have enlisted Jason in some sort of daycare for killers; Of course, Jason would turn out to be a supernatural (hallucinated?) monster, we think, associatively. Look at his roots! Look at the way his mother shows her love!

Hereditary (dir. Ari Aster (2018)) I think pokes fun at the "cold mother" idea In an extremely interesting way; inheritance is not usually hoarded by one member of the family. The payment of inheritable secrets, family roles, and identities blurred and rebirthed to fulfill the void, but is felt, dealt with, and spelt in different ways by the whole group - Annie Graham simultaneously fills all the roles of grief for her family. Meaning, that in her own way of protecting them all, Annie stepped into the jaded, unsatisfied daughter of a deceased, secret cult leader, a bystander to her husband's death, a sorrowful grieving mother who lost her daughter to a tragic accident, a raging, unnerved woman who blames her son for the death, a reclusive, isolated person, leaving her marriage emotionally, and finally a sacrificial body for her son's inevitable ascension to royalty; the entering of king Paimon, a demon, taking over his body. Fulfilling what Annie's mother, a witch diagnosed with Dissociative Personality Disorder always wanted: a patriarchal prince. Technically, Annie is not the real "cold mother" of the movie, and more of a victim to her mother's own antics, but how the movie orbits Annie, how her behavior shifts and pulls the other characters in the room, still argues society's oldest fear: what mother does, others will do. Even though, given the amount of death Annie endures, Annie's spiraling is entirely and understandably appropriate. The unwanted inheritance is a part of that.