In little over half a century, autism has gone from a little known and rare condition to be considered an epidemic in the United States. Understanding how this happened reveals much about changing views of human nature and the role of emotions in the formation of the self since WWII. In this presentation, I will focus on Bruno Bettelheim. Once heralded as a genius, he is now vilified as the most visible defendant of the view that rejecting mothers caused their children to retreat into autistic walls. Placing Bettelheim’s work in its social and scientific context, including views about children’s emotional needs, helps illuminate his powerful role in turning autism into a metaphor about contemporary social anxieties concerning the mechanization of personal relations and the dehumanization of society. Ever since Bettelheim, the history of autism, the history of emotions, and the history of the self have been deeply interconnected.