I'm in awe of their courage. You mention that your book isn't meant to be an assault on all talk therapy as therapy. I believe that talk therapy has a place. Thousands of people who are miserable about a job or a divorce or the death of a parent or who suffer from countless other problems can find help from a good therapist. My point is a simple one - some problems are too severe to be cured by talking.
Lung cancer is in that category.
So is autism. Part of the emotional climate of the 1950s and 1960s was to hold parents, especially mothers, responsible for almost everything that went wrong. Mothers spoiled their children by smothering them with attention, or they neglected them by not paying enough attention, or any variation you can imagine. But this general distrust of parenting reached its most shameful extreme in the case of autism and other conditions. The smugness of the psychiatrists got to me.