Soma Mukhopadhyay and the origins of RPM
Any honest discussion of the Rapid Prompting Method has to start with its origin: a mother and teacher named Soma Mukhopadhyay and her son Tito.
Mukhopadhyay, originally a chemistry teacher in India, developed the method that became RPM while teaching her nonspeaking autistic son Tito to communicate. Tito went on to write several books, including The Mind Tree, published as a teenager.
The family eventually moved to the United States, where Soma began teaching other nonspeaking autistic children. The HALO clinic in Austin grew out of that work, and RPM spread internationally from there.
What the encyclopedic entry gets right
The Wikipedia page is even-handed about the controversy: it documents the strong skepticism from mainstream speech-language professional bodies, the lack of large blinded efficacy trials, and the methodological objections — alongside the testimonials and case histories from families and the trajectory of students like Tito himself.
It is a reasonable starting point for someone who has heard of RPM only as "the discredited method" and wants the actual history.
Why origin matters
RPM was not invented by a clinic chasing reimbursement codes. It was invented by a parent who refused to accept that her son could not learn. That does not, by itself, make the method correct — but it does change the story from "a manufactured pseudoscience" to "a homegrown practice that grew faster than the research could keep up with."
Those are different problems, and they deserve different responses.