ARW – Project France

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This is the translation of a message of support to the bill proposed by Daniel Fasquelle, French GOP representative. This message was transmited by Evelyne Friedel, vice president of Autism Europe and published January 31, 2012 on the representatives’s blog.

As the Vice President of Autism Europe, and on behalf of our international association, I wanted to inform you of the support of our international organization to your bill which intends to remove the psychoanalytic practices in the treatment of people with autism. Your initiative is courageous given the French non-profit and professional “landscape”, and, above all, is necessary from scientific, medical and financial standpoints. Indeed, public funding must be redirected toward high quality educative methods, suitable to people with autism and fulfilling their rights.

As you know, following a collective complaint of Autism Europe against France, the Council of Europe held in 2003 that France had violated its educative obligations in autism, accusing this country of serious delays – particularly in regard to the quality of support. I refer you to the presentation of this decision attached to this letter.

The Council of Europe has followed up on its decision against France. In the conclusions of the European Social Committee published in 2007 and 2008, the Committee noted twice that France sadly does not fulfill its obligations yet (see p. and 27 ff. conclusions of 2007 and p. and 19 ff. conclusions of 2008).

If the French situation is compared to that of European countries, particularly Spain (you do not even need to cross the Atlantic), we find that our delay is caused by the inertia force of the psychoanalytic methods which do not leave room for other educational methods despite the fact that these methods have been evidencing their efficiency for the past 30-40 years.

At the European level, and indeed internationally, France increasingly becomes the exception.

Many psychiatrists working in the international scientific community, and many of which act as Autism experts from Europe, are often moved by the situation faced by families in France.

These families are in fact victims of psychoanalytic methods depriving children of the education essential to their development, which also is one of their fundamental rights.

Now everyone knows that psychoanalytic theories are not scientifically established, and that it contravenes to the requirements of the World Health Organization, which requires treatment to be based on the most advanced state of science (“evidenced based medicine”).

International scientific publications provide an assessment of the French issue:

Both Europeans and Americans experts emphasize the ineffectiveness of psychoanalysis, worse, its adverse effects (see
particular, publications – already old – attached to this post:
James D. Herbert, Ian R. Brandon A. Sharp Gaudiano, “Separating Fact from Fiction in the Etiology and Treatment of Autism, “The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 2002, p. 2 to 4 and 12, and Ministry Spanish Health, “Guide to good practice in the treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders “, 2006).

The Good Practice Guide of the Spanish Department of Health clearly stated in 2006 (P. 13) that “the psychoanalytic approach was one of the biggest mistakes in the history of child neuropsychiatry”.

Persons with autism in France should no longer be deprived from individual support tailored to their needs, because of the obscurantism of some professionals, who are neither scientists nor educators and have been distorting the debate for far too long.

Budgetary constraints are one issue, but ideological obstacles faced by scientific facts are far more difficult to overcome. Adding to this, budgets, which are limited in this domain, must be allocated to appropriate care as required by the Council of Europe.

Evelyne Friedel
Vice President
Autism Europe