SAY IT WITH MI FOLX
Before the 1990s, society dealt with individuals who fell outside the cognitive norm through a brutal combination of institutional isolation, medical blame, and forced assimilation.
The historical treatment of neurodivergent people prior to the 1990s framework focused heavily on suppression rather than accommodation:
## 1. State Warehousing and Permanent Isolation
For most of the 20th century, children who exhibited severe sensory overloads, an inability to speak, or intense repetitive behaviors were routinely separated from their families.
* The Treatment: Doctors routinely advised parents to [permanently institutionalize their children](
https://bluegemsaba.com/the-history-of-autism-and-institutionalization/) in state asylums or "schools for the feebleminded".
* The Reality: Once inside these institutions, individuals were largely hidden from public view. They were subjected to forced sedation, physical restraints, and crowded conditions, living out their lives completely cut off from mainstream society.
## 2. The "Refrigerator Mother" Era of Blame
During the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, mainstream psychiatry did not view neurodivergence as a natural biological or genetic difference. Instead, it was classified as an emotional psychiatric disorder caused by bad parenting.
* The Treatment: Prominent psychologists popularized the "Refrigerator Mother" theory, claiming that autism was caused by a mother being cold, detached, and unloving toward her infant.
* The Reality: Instead of receiving developmental or speech support, mothers were forced into intensive psychoanalysis to "fix" their parenting, while the children were treated for emotional trauma or misdiagnosed with [childhood schizophrenia](
https://theautismservice.co.uk/the-history-of-autism/).
## 3. Harsh Behavioral Modification
For individuals who were not institutionalized, early behavioral interventions in the mid-to-late 20th century were deeply punitive.
* The Treatment: Early iterations of behavioral therapy focused entirely on forcing the child to look and act exactly like a neurotypical person at all costs.
* The Reality: Therapists used intense physical aversives, slaps, and even electric shocks to forcefully extinguish traits like stimming (rocking or hand-flapping) or avoiding eye contact. The goal was total compliance and masking, rather than understanding the individual's communication or sensory needs.
## 4. Masking and Drifting Among High-Functioning Individuals
People who had average or high intelligence but struggled socially—those who would later be diagnosed under the [expanded DSM-IV spectrum](
https://www.kennedykrieger.org/stories/interactive-autism-network-ian/lost-generation-growing-up-autism-before-epidemic)—were given zero accommodations.
* The Treatment: Society labeled these individuals as "eccentric," "anti-social," "difficult," "lazy," or "failures".
* The Reality: They were forced to mask their struggles in standard classrooms and workplaces without any support. Many experienced severe mental health crises, chronic unemployment, or dropped out of society entirely because they lacked a framework to understand why their brains processed the world differently
* The rise of the deinstitutionalization movement that shut down these mass facilities.
* The origins of the disability rights movement led by self-advocating individuals.
* How the concept of neurodiversity was first coined in the late 90s to push back against the medical model