Editor’s Note: Time heals all wounds, but does it? What was once revered as "the truth" of medical research and therapy for families raising children with autism, Down syndrome and other disabilities has been discredited, but for those families who either followed the methods or were ridiculed for not following, the scars are as high as the wounds deep. The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self, for Cornelia Read, noted author and, most important, parent, is a reminder of advances and changes in attitudes over time.

This is a review of a book I have not read.

The book in question, titled The Empty Fortress, was written by Bruno Bettelheim. I bought a copy of it in hardcover two years ago, and it sits on the bookshelf in the living room, in a stretch of books on the same subject. All the rest of these are well-thumbed; some I know nearly by heart. The Empty Fortress, however, has remained untouched by me.

I plan to read it, but I cannot utter the more familiar phrase that "I would like to." I detest this book and its author so intensely, in fact, that I could only bring myself to buy the book used. I had to be certain that no money of mine would benefit even Bettelheim’s estate, now that he is, thank God, deceased.

I like to think of myself as a kind person, one capable of forgiveness and mercy and compassion. For this man, however, I have nothing but unadulterated contempt and hatred. Given that he survived a Nazi concentration camp, it is somehow even more awful that Bettelheim perpetrated such cruelty against children, families, and — most especially — women in America for decades.

Before I had children of my own, I knew of Bettelheim in a vague way — his name was familiar to me as someone who merited inclusion in the liberal arts canon. He is today perhaps best known as the author of The Uses of Enchantment, in which he attempts something of a Freudian deconstruction of well-known children’s stories such as Little Red Riding Hood.

As a parent, however, I feel that this man is no less deserving of my disgust than is the author of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This is because Bettelheim made it his life’s work to publicly accuse me and thousands of women like me of destroying our children with emotional cruelty so intense that we make Medea look like Donna Reed. In his works, Bettelheim has proclaimed that I have all the maternal qualities of a Nazi concentration camp guard, an infanticidal Shakespearean king and a child-cannibal witch.

I beg to differ.

Five years ago, I gave birth to healthy twin girls, Grace and Lila. I remember being constantly amazed in that first year, as they grew and tested out the world, at how many thousands upon thousands of little things must go right in order for human beings to become fully realized. Fingernails grow to perfect curves, the heart is formed to beat just so, limbs unfurl and become stronger by the day, and little by little, the brain comes online, discovering itself and all around it.