The Spectrum and Panorama of Dyslexia: The Retrospective Study

Abstract

The author began his “dyslexic career” by chance in 1965 as a psychiatric consultant to the Special Reading Services of the New York City Board of Education. At that time, the prevailing opinion within the Special Reading Services (SRS) was that reading disabilities were due to psychogenic factors.* This opinion was presented at the 1958 American Orthopsychiatric Symposium on Learning Disabilities by Jerome Silverman, Margarette Fite, and Margaret Mosher—3 members of a typical SRS clinic team consisting of psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker. In their paper, “Clinical Findings in Reading Disability Children—Special Cases of Intellectual Inhibition,” the authors analyzed the data derived from a study of 35 SRS children (29 boys/6 girls) with severe learning problems, and clearly stated that “work with these children has shown repeatedly that the reading disability is only one aspect or symptom of a more basic disturbance in the child’s emotional life,” and that “physical and developmental factors ... while they do not appear crucial in the origin of the reading problem, may be contributory.” In addition, Silverman, Fite, and Mosher formulated a profile of a typical SRS child and then summarized their psychogenic concepts regarding the etiology of disabilities—which, of course, contrasted sharply with the views of researchers espousing a somatic or developmental pathogenesis.