Bernard Rimland's Dyslogic Syndrome (2008): His Final Book

When I met Dr. Rimland for the first and only time in the summer of 2006, I was immediately taken by his kind spirit and earnest ambition. For 50 years, since the birth of his autistic son Mark in 1955, he had been conducting what often seemed like a one-man crusade against the powers that be in the autism world, trying to change, and eventually succeeding in changing, how the world thinks about autism. His initial effort, memorialized in the now classic Infantile Autism (1964), was directed against the 'psychogenic' school of autism researchers, led by the enormously influential Bruno Bettelheim in Chicago. Bettelheim wanted to lay the fault for autistic children at the doorstep of parents, especially mothers. Rather than blaming parents, Rimland argued for a much more complex biological and genetic component to autism. For much of the rest of his storied career he was, among other things, committed to developing and testing nutritional therapies for children with autism, especially how high doses of vitamin B6 and magnesium frequently cause dramatic improvement in autistic children.

Thus, his spirit was forged in the cauldron of controversy against entrenched and powerful interests--interests that were often funded by the most "mainstream" entities in the medical or foundation community. Dyslogic Syndrome, his final gift to us all, shows that Rimland's indomitable spirit continued with him until his death late in 2006. For in this book he has once again taken on a significant sacred cow of the medical and mental health community--that the rapid rise in childhood afflictions ranging from autism to ADHD to depression and even obesity, has emerged not from parental sources or the 'breakdown of the family', but

"rather [from] the poor-quality food substitutes they [children] eat, the pollutants in the air they breathe, the chemically contaminated water they drink, and other less well-known physical insults that cause malfunctioning brains and bodies," p.10.

The force of his argument, then, is to remove the blame or fault from parents for the bewildering, and often destructive, ways in which their kids often behave in the modern world. Along the way, however, he dishes out considerable blame to the medical and mental health communities, which he sees as rather ineffective, but well-meaning, agents of thinking patterns that mask rather than attack real problems and may even exacerbate the multifactored problems faced by today's children.

What Is "Dyslogic" All About?

Rimland tells the story which led to the coining of this term in the mid-1970s. He was contacted by John Wacker, a learning disabilities activist in Dallas, who told Rimland he was writing a paper on what he thought was a rapidly-growing but largely ignored student population--those who had problems not only simply with reading, math and spelling but, even more, with reasoning. He was increasingly becoming aware of "a strange twisted logic" that made the kids unable to think straight and that led to their getting into trouble (p. 16). Wacker specified some of the manifestations of this "twisted logic:" failures in judgment, an inability to understand the consequences of their actions, selfish or narcissistic behavior, impulsivity, an inability to postpone immediate gratification in pursuit of long-term goals, short attention span, excessive need for excitement, inability to learn from experience, etc. (pp. 34-35). Rather than looking at this simply as an expression of difficulty that all kids have always had in coming to grips with growing up, Wacker saw it as the tip of a potentially insidious iceberg that affected far more kids than was immediatly "visible." Dr. Rimland suggested the name "dyslogic" to this kind of behavior; the name "stuck," and now we have it in his valedictory book.

The Scope of the Problem, with a Word on Culprits

Along with an increasingly large number of writers and students of the modern world, Rimland argues in this book, first of all, that the explosion in autism, ADHD, childhood depression, oppositional disorders and a host of other conditions is not simply a result of "expanded diagnostic categories" or "greater awareness in diagnosis," but represents a true and dangerous increase in potentially debilitating conditions. But he takes his argument three steps further. He argues, second, that parents are, in general, not to blame for these conditions in their children. While everyone would prefer that children live with adequate housing and loving environments, he argues that study after study demonstrates the importance of the genetic component in a person's later behavior. He calls it "Myth # 1"--that "most deviance stems from a bad environment, and, in particular, from abusive or nglectful parents" (pp. 45-51).

Third, he argues that traditional "therapies" or methods to attack these conditions often are ineffective and sometimes even make them worse. Sociological and psychological interventions are largely ineffective in treating dyslogic; medical nostrums such as drug stimulants, antidepressants and antipsychotics, often bring on more problems than they solve and, at best, only temporarily mask symptoms rather than address underlying causes. Fourth, he argues for the importance of simple dietary remedies for helping many young people afflicted with these conditions.

Conclusion

The next essay will describe further Rimland's argument and try to evaluate it. Here I will only say that there is an air of plausibility to the suggestion that it is the rush of the modern world, with its new chemicals, processed foods, and generally "toxic" environment, that can interact with genetic vulnerabilities or susceptibilities in children to send them beyond the "tipping point" into the conditions that are listed above. But let's move to the rest of his argument and his suggested route for dealing with this current crisis.

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