ARW – Project France 
PDF Michael Yudell, associate professor in Public Health at Drexel University and an autism specialist, published a thorough article on the Public Health blog of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The article explains puts the story of “The Wall” in an historical perspective. Michael Yudell also interviews Evelyne Friedel, vice-president of Autism-Europe.
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a leading newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 330,000. The website Philly.com itself is ranked 594 in the United States by Alexa.
Excerpt:
“A controversial new film by French documentary filmmaker Sophie Robert, screened last week at an autism conference here in Philadelphia, reminds the world that in France these thoroughly discredited and dangerous ideas still hold considerable sway. The film, Le Mur or The Wall, already viewed tens of thousands of times on YouTube, is calling attention to the ongoing stranglehold that psychoanalytic theories still have over autism treatment in France.
The film’s interviews with prominent French psychiatrists leaves the viewer wondering whether in France treatments for pediatric developmental disorders are stuck in some sort of bizarre Freudian time warp. These ideas have been so thoroughly debunked in the rest of the world (not that in the U.S. we don’t have our equally controversial theories of autism—Exhibit A: the rise of vaccine related hypotheses) that its persistence from a non-French perspective seems farcical.
[...]
Despite the intense pressure on her following the court’s decision—she is financially liable and is likely to shutter her company while she appeals—Robert is committed to her film and believes it is drawing a spotlight on the stranglehold psychoanalysis has in France. To Robert, who herself once wanted to be an analyst, “psychoanalysis has an hypnotic effect” and is a “cult antithetical to science.””
Read Michael Yudell’s article on Philly.com
