Who’s Trapped in Whose World?
February 28, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Are people with autism trapped in their own world? Or are the rest of us just trapped in ours?
asks Tara Parker-Pope on the New York Times, regarding the the Wired magazine article on autism featuring Amanda Baggs and Michelle Dawson.
Parker-Pope asks a chicken and egg kind of question about autism: Is it a disease and a disability? Or is it a difference, a different way of being human? And who decides—autistic persons themselves, “experts” in autism, those who live with autistic persons—or who should decide?
Great subject line. If I may presume to riff off of it for a moment:
Anti-aut: “He’s trapped in his own little world.”
Autie: “No, I’m trapped in your little world — THAT’s the nightmare!”
Anti-aut: “And as his behavior now demonstrates, autism leads ultimately to paranoid delusions.”
Autie: [*meltdown*]
:-\
Autistic people should be treated with respect. Autism itself should be fought with a vigor in proportion to the negative impact it has on an individual. If has not affected you negatively, then treatment for you is not necessary and would be wrong.
Let’s see, my daughter cannot read, has no friends, cannot find her way home from a block away. Sounds to me that she’s pretty trapped.
She at one time was not a happy child, but as her autism has lessened she has become much happier.
As it lessens she becomes more a part of the world, and wants to participate more in it. Thus she becomes less trapped in hers.
It’s an agonizing slow process with an LFA kid, but one which is a fantastic thing to be a part of.
Charlie has a lot of similarities with your daughter—-so much has taken so agonizingly long for him: Reading those words on flashcards; each syllable and sound — he’s still not 100% clear with saying his name; spends his afternoon and evenings and weekends with us, or therapists who he is very fond of, no same-age friends. Lots of limits, but not trapped—-always trying to push at the boundaries.
According to Freud, the only cutoff between mental illness and normality is the ability to work and love. If an autistic can do that, he shouldn’t be diagnosed with ANYTHING on the DSM IV.
Kristina, I agree wholeheartedly in that our children progress. I see that progress as breaking the chains of her autism. In doing so her horizons expand as do her possibilities. It is my hope she’ll break more of those chains and progress further.
An interesting question, one i have often pondered on!
Yup, the New York Times, and its readers, are always the last to find out about anything. I’m minded of what they had to say about Dr. Goddard, and rockets.
I’m amazed that anybody still pays money to buy and read that rag.
I wonder if mayfly could replace “autism” with mental retardation and say the same things about his daughter?
Like:
—–Intellectually impaired people should be treated with respect. Intellectual impairment itself should be fought with a vigor in proportion to the negative impact it has on an individual. If has not affected you negatively, then treatment for you is not necessary and would be wrong.
Let’s see, my daughter cannot read, has no friends, cannot find her way home from a block away. Sounds to me that she’s pretty trapped.
She at one time was not a happy child, but as her intellectual disability has lessened she has become much happier.
As it lessens she becomes more a part of the world, and wants to participate more in it. Thus she becomes less trapped in hers.
It’s an agonizing slow process with an intellectually impaired kid, but one which is a fantastic thing to be a part of.——-
The early definitions of autism precluded children who seemed to be mentally retarded. Now that might be the wrong way to divide autism, but I am always amazed at how parents rail against “autism” and mock “autistics” who don’t have MR as not being the real autistics, when they’ll say, “well if my kid was like you (not intellectually impaired on top of being autistic) then I’d be happy… so why don’t you just shut up… because you aren’t like my kid (mentally retarded)”. But “high functioning” autistic adults are not anxious to throw mentally retarded autistics off the autism boat as desperately as parents of “low functioning” and mentally retarded, or possibly mentally retarded (and badly under estimated) wan to throw the “high functioning” adults out of “their autism”. Like Lenny Schafer keeps trying to define “autism” (Schafer Autism) as what his son has and if a person is not like his son (who is apparently autistic and mentally retarded, both) then they aren’t really autistic.
But it’s possible that Kanner would **not** have used Lenny’s son as an example of autism, but of MR or maybe MR with “autistic features.”
My kid has a significantly lower IQ than I do. I am not going to state my ASD kid’s IQ here, but it’s not so high. I can see the difference between autism and intellectual disability, I think, though they certainly are tangled in each person.
But I am amazed at how parents will rail against autism when they really are railing at mental retardation/low IQ. It’s a stupid thing to do in any case. You can help with low IQ with education, lessons and understanding. You can help autism with the same and maybe some PT and OT and understanding the neurological problems, like balance problems and eye/hand coordination problems and hearing sensitivity… but railing against it is dumb. Attacking autistic adults who are really autistic but not mentally retarded (not saying anyone here is doing that) is really, really dumb and it happens all the time in Internet interactions with cure oriented parents.
Well, Ms. Clark, I reckon that even NY Times readers might be educable, and you may have helped a bit toward that end, here. That is some clear thinking.
though I hate Freud I love that statement. I think any disability is just another way to be human
MS Clark, is to disagree with someone the same as attacking them? I found the statement, which has many all atwitter, to be asinine. Indeed to paraphrase W.F. Buckley, ‘I won’t insult your intelligence, by assuming you believe it.”
Let’s look at the statement. When asked, “Should autism be treated?” the answer was “Yes with respect.”
This statement does not say to treat autistics with respect, but autism itself. It is advocating for a brain disorder. I found the statement flippant. If autism itself is to be respected, then certainly one should do nothing to mitigate it. Perhaps one should bow to it with fear and trembling. The statement idolizes autism.
This statement takes the argument away form the hypothetical world of cures. Hypotheticals are posed such as ‘What if it were totally safe, made the child perfectly happy, and resulted in peace, prosperity and freedom for all mankind?” which is inevitably met the response “That’s impossible” showing a total misunderstanding of the term hypothetical. But now we are of the world of impossible cures and into the world of treatment.
I’m not talking about biomedical quackery. The treatment for autism in my daughter’s case is love, sleep inducers, and dopamine inhibitors. All three have resulted in lowering the severity of my daughter’s autism, and coincident with that has been a great increase in her happiness. I’m sure her CARS score would still be high, but not nearly as high as it was. Her progress had been at the expense of her autism. You cannot admit this, because your philosophy blinds you. It is blasphemy for you to say anything bad about autism. After all doing so would mean you weren’t treating it with respect.
You then as is your wont, construct a straw man. Let’s see do I think mental retardation should be treated with respect. No, I don’t. The cognitively disabled should be. Should it be treated in proportion to its negative impact? People lower down on the IQ scale need more help. Once a person has the capacity to make his own decisions, and is not a danger to himself or society, and can maintain that without treatment, then the treatment can be stopped. However, the treatment for the cognitively disabled is patience, hard work building a foundation of skills, and hard work, adding to that foundation. Learning never stops.
I think it true that autism masks many of my daughter’s abilities. However, this is not a positive point in its favor.
You then replace my statement as he has become less autistic she has become much happier, with as her intellectual ability has lessened she has become much happier. I’m afraid I don’t see your point here. It is true, as her skills improve and she is able to do more things she has become happier. Her cognitive disability makes it harder for her to learn, her autism makes her not want to do so. As her autism has decreased, her willingness to learn has increased. It still impedes her, her progress learning still very slow, but it is quicker now than a few years ago.
I mention my daughter’s cognitive disabilities because they cause me to worry more about her future, than her “autistic” perseverations. Cognitive disability is not a requirement for autism. However, in the LFA child they are linked, and it is very probable the damage which resulted in the autism also caused the MR.
I’m not so much railing against autism as those who cannot say anything negative about it. I’m railing against those who want the condition stricken from the DSM-IV.
If their autism is not disabling, but my daughter’s is disabling, are we dealing with the same condition?
I ask you again Ms Clark, what benefit has autism brought my daughter?
@larry–
“According to Freud, the only cutoff between mental illness and normality is the ability to work and love.”
For better or worse, the DSM doesn’t specifically mention these..
@justhisguy,
Happily the NYT can be read online now for free!
Mayfly, I take no joy in what I feel compelled to tell you, and I dearly wish it were otherwise. But, from where I stand, you seem to have a set of hyper-simplistic and superficial notions in place of what should otherwise be an understanding of human development. Now, you may find those notions be comforting and absolving. But, as I’m sure countless adult Autistics have tried to tell you — because we’ve been forced to endure the paralyzing effects of how you and so many others choose to portray us — those notions you find so comforting will only impede your daughter’s growth as a human being.
You say “Autistic people should be treated with respect,” but those are just words. Real respect for Autistics cannot be made compatible with your view of autism as some evil monster to be hunted down and exterminated. In your conception of Autistics and autism, you employ an inflammatory false dichotomy — and just like Bush’s jingoism, “you’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists” — that dichotomy is lethal.
“Hate the sin; love the sinner,” is an old saw in religion that has devastated countless lives. “Love the child; hate the autism,” is no different. Just like “loyalty to petrified opinion,” fictitious disjunctions “never once broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world, and never will.”[*] Such fallacies only forge more links to add to the chains by which societies shackle any and every human variation, and so long as you struggle to convince yourself that autism and human happiness are mutually exclusive, you are a danger to all of us.
Autism is an integral part of who I am, who we are, and like it or not, autism is an integral part of who your daughter is. You are going to have to find some way to live in peace with that fact — or, ultimately, your daughter may well find it impossible to live with what you are, or worse yet, what you have made of her.
HERE’S WHY: Just like the effects of any parent’s undischarged emotional baggage, the effects of your hatred of autism are both subtle and pervasive, and NO child is capable of reliably separating such effects from her own developing identity as a human being. You may tell yourself that your hatred of autism is an expression of love, but that makes no difference, as your daughter is still forced to internalize those effects as unconscious hatred for who she is. That’s just how it works, as part of our nature as human beings, and so long as you cling so jealously to your hatred of autism, there’s no getting around the result.
Like countless thousands of others, I HAVE LIVED IT. Thus, with the benefit of personal experience, as well as a sea of psychological theory and principles, I’m trying to warn you, for her sake, and for yours.
Mark my words…
* and my apologies to Mark Twain
Mayfly,
You lost me. First of all, no one is attacking anyone in this discussion. So why bring up the idea of “attacking”? The quote that you called asinine, the one that went something like, “yes, autism should be treated, but treat it with respect.” Was not my quote. I did not quote it in what I wrote to you. It’s not a quote from Amanda Baggs, it’s a quote from a young man who is pervasively autistic, if I can use that term, but who is not mentally retarded (intellectually challenged, or however you want to say it). The person who said it was DJ Savarese (I think he’s about 16 years old) who probably would be seen as Mentally Retarded today if he hadn’t had parents who were dedicated to getting him to communicate via Facilitated Communication and a keyboard. A few decades ago he probably would have been sent to an institution at age 3 and never seen again in the outside world. He certainly wouldn’t have been quoted in a report by CNN as if his opinion meant something significant. By the way, when you are quote by CNN as if you have something significant to say let me know (I have not been thus quoted), then you’ll have the same stature as DJ Savarese…. So you called DJ Savarese’ quote asinine. How …. uhm… thoughtless.
Anyway,
The problem remains that you seem to be calling your daughters problems that are in fact related to her intellectual challenges or physical problems “autism”. Autism itself does not prevent people from being able to hold a book the right way up. Some autistic kids hold books upright and read them at age 2 or 3. So Autism does not prevent people from being able to read or spell. Though motor problems strongly associated with autism in some kids prevent them from being able to move their mouths to state that they can spell/read as we can see was the case with Carly (autistic, but not mentally retarded, thought to be MR… also the case with Sue Rubin, autistic, thought to be retarded but was not). Being autistic has not stopped Carly or anyone else from learning certain things intellectually, but being mentally retarded can impede learning certain things intellectually. My kid took forever to learn the multiplication tables. It wasn’t my kids autism that impeded that, it was the intellectual disability. Thank goodness for calculators and a mom who can handle multiplication tasks for that kid.
Only your daughter can answer what MR has given her or taken from her (mentally retarded people can have very fulfilled lives, by the way) only your daughter can answer how she feels about being autistic. I am really kind of appalled that you keep asking/demanding that others answer this for you. You aren’t interested in our answers anyway, from what I can tell, unless you get an autistic person to say, “Gosh, I sure hate my autism. I sure wish I had a dad who hated my autism and tried to rip it from me.”
No one. I repeat NO one, has suggested that you don’t try to mitigate the problems that your daughters autism, physical problems and/or intellectual disability has caused her. My ASD kid has major physical problems (hence all the trips to the doctors and all the surgeries and various real world “appliances” to help that kid get around and do things that others do without such “appliances”), my kid has autism spectrum issues, and my kid has lower IQ issues. I work to mitigate all of these and advocate that people try to meet my kid where s/he is at not try to imagine what s/he could be or would be had s/he not been “cursed” with such difficulties… uhm… by some bad witches who I angered before that kid’s birth or something… no wait, that’s the Rumplestiltskin fairy tale… or Sleeping Beauty… or … Beauty and the Beast… no …
This is not just directed at you , Mayfly, but, you get the kid you get, not because the universe or the evil fairies or the FDA conspired to hurt your kid or you.
You work with what you get. You don’t need to hate any aspect of the disorder or disease in order to mitigate it’s problems. And remember, that it’s possible that your kid wouldn’t even be considered autistic in Kanner’s time. But people like Amanda Baggs would have been, because she never came across as mentally-retarded as a child (if I understand her history correctly). Even my kid wouldn’t have been considered autistic, probably, back then because my kid could relate to people somewhat and didn’t talk only in echolalia as a preschooler.
And what dkmnow said is very important. Even parents who HATE their kid’s cancer are harming their kid. You can’t do that. You can consider the cancer from a biological standpoint and try to figure out how to get rid of it, but hating it is stupid. Attacking it is stupid. Finding a good oncologist who knows how it works and can get it to stop growing is smart. You don’t need hate in there anywhere to accomplish a cure for a kid’s cancer. I never hated my kid’s severe physical problems. I didn’t see them as something to be ripped out or attacked. Neither did I see them as a gift. But I can see autism as a gift… and a challenge. Even the low IQ can give some advantages, though it certainly takes something away, too.
Dmknow.
Just what are my simplistic, er excuse me hypersimplstic, understandings of human development?
Is it my belief that autism can be ameliorated though the methods I’ve described? Yes I do.
What do you find unloving. Should I stop playing with her? Should I stop telling her nursery rhymes especially the ones which make her smile.
Should I stop taking her on walks on Saturday afternoons. Should I stop taking her to church on Sunday’s. Should I not put gloves on her when she bites herself. Should I stop giving her medicines, should I stop sending her to school. Should I stop singing her to sleep at night. Should I not tickle her on the days she is ticklish (some days she is, some she isn’t)
Nearly all these things are done because that’s what you do to children. You see I don’t see my child as a child not as an autistic.
That’s how we interact, on a heart level. On the heart level as the psalm says she is perfectly and wonderfully made, and she is just as much made in God’s image as you or me.
If I take a more worldly view, I can see that my daughter has a severe disability called autism. Some of the things we do are a direct consequence of that. But whether a direct consequence, the fact is by any measure she is both less autistic and happier.
If that makes you upset, than I question the whereabouts of your heart.
Your response does not deal with the questions at hand, but seeks to demonize thoughts contrary to your own.
In your fantasy, I hate my daughter. I don’t know what I am supposed to be doing in such a world. Perhaps keeping her up 24-hours a day a doing ABA and scourging her when she gets things wrong.
If someone says anything bad about autism, you feel insulted. For goodness’ sake Autism is not a character flaw. It is certainly not a sin.
I’m sorry you cannot grasp the thought of hating the sin and loving the sinner. I’m guessing it’s because you’ve only been exposed to people who hate other people’s sin, but excuse their own easily. They are soon exposed as hypocrites. But someone who is open about their sins and their victories and failures to overcome them, can certainly help others with their inequities.
Again, you can be an atheist and be of superb moral character. I do think however that any religion worth its salt improves that character.
But, we are not dealing with sin here. We are dealing with a disability.
I at one time ventured that I hated autism. Believe me I do not. Hating it is futile. It is not hatred to describe its horrible effects on some. It is not loving to refuse to admit that reality.
There was child recently who totally lacked Coenyme Q and had other metabolic difficulties. She displayed symptoms of mild autism, CARS score was 33. Her doctor was able to treat her by giving her what she naturally lacked. Her CARS score dropped and many of the markers of autism went away.
Is the child better off. Did the doctor do the right thing? Were her parents unloving in approving the treatment?
Are all ways in which autism manifests itself beneficial to the autistic?
If the answer to that is no, then is it immoral to try to lessen the harmful effects?
If your child is perfectly, wonderfully made…she IS PERFECTLY WONDERFULLY MADE. Either your God made her as He wanted her, or He did not. You don’t get it both ways.
Hypocrisy check on aisle 9…
Ms Clark you wrote
“Attacking autistic adults who are really autistic but not mentally retarded …”
That’s why my reference to “attacking” I did not say that I was attacked.
I didn’t say the quote was yours, I assumed from your earlier message that you supported it. Was I wrong in that assumption. Do you not support it.
You bring up facilitated communications. Everything I read about this in the scientific literature says it’s cr*p. Yet you a lover of science are in favor of it. My church run’s a school for special needs children and emphasize it’s use. It’s also sent Lightwriters to Kenya and Africa. Volunteers go to special needs children’s homes to help them with the devices. My feeling on this is that their hearts in the right place, but they unwitting participants in a hoax.
Why do you go against scientific consensus on Facilitated Communications? You see despite our differences, I usually find a useful tidbit in what you have to say.
I am not trying to get anyone to say they hate their autism. I am trying to get people to admit that not all manifestations of autism are beneficial.
You say one cannot her separate Autism and MR, then proceed to do so. Her unwillingness to learn, and her lack of social growth is a direct result of her autism. I know some Down syndrome children. They may also be cognitively disabled, but their will to learn, their wanting to belong to a group never left them. Parents of LFA children have to sped years instilling that in their children. Do you not think her learning disability is exacerbated by her autism?
She has certainly become a better learner as her autism subsides.
If I may return to the trap scenario. Imagine a maze, the child starts out in the deepest, darkest, dankest corner. You can refuse to help that child, or you can reach out. You try different doors, but soon find that love works best. After what seems an eternity you find yourself in a different part of the maze. This part lets some sunlight through. It’s a happier place for your child to be and you become happier as well. You more quickly find another door leading to more sunshine and happiness. Will my daughter ever escape the maze, perhaps not. But I hope she’ll be able to find a sunny spot.
Yes, I’d love to have someone tear down the maze, and all her problems be instantly gone. However God has not chosen to work that way. In his wisdom, it is better form us to take this journey slowly. It’s good that I am not God.
What perplexes me is the refusal by some that the maze exists, and the darkest parts of the labyrinth are not happy places for anyone.
The people who are attacking autistic adults (who like to be autistic or are against a cure for autism) are really attacking them. They are not merely arguing with them or disagreeing with them. So if your question is, “Why are you saying “attacking” when it’s really “disagreement”?” The answer is, I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about people who attack, really verbally savage and brutalize autistic adults who say that they are happy with their autism.
The attack goes like this, “My kid is autistic (and maybe mentally retarded, too) how dare you who are just autistic (and not mentally retarded) speak for “autism”? You are not like my child (who is autistic and mentally retarded)!!!!!!!!!! (add another hundred exclamation points). How dare you speak for my child who has the real true autism not the mere quirkiness that you flaunt… etc, etc.”
Point being that “real true autism” doesn’t need to have the addition of mental retardation, that originally “real true autism” was was Kanner identified and it didn’t include MR, so if anyone has “real, true, original, authentic pure autism” it’s the ones like DJ Savarese, Tito Mukopadhyay, Sue Rubin, Michelle Dawson, who are very impaired (in different ways) but not mentally retarded, too.
I believe that you are dealing with your daughter’s MR if she is “refusing to learn”. But then again, I think that she is not refusing to learn but maybe she can’t understand what you want from her because of auditory integration problems, or maybe she can understand what you want just fine but can’t control her muscles in a way that allows her to show you what she knows… Dov Shestack, …add him to the above list of “real, true, pure” autistics who aren’t mentally retarded but who were assumed to be for a long time, he needed someone to sit him down with a letter board and help him to see that there was a way for him to show off what he already knew… what he was assumed to be “refusing” to learn, but had learned. The kid could read HEBREW for crying out loud! And his parents didn’t know it because they were too busy training him to “touch blue” or to sit still and shut up and not bug people with his “behaviors”.
It’s my opinion, not that I have researched this a lot, that much of what was found to be phony in FC was done not with autistics but with people with Cerebral Palsy. And I think that the cases that were shown to be absolutely genuine, even in court, like Sharisa Joy Kochmeister… have been tossed aside as not being of any substance. Never mind that she needed a facilitator to help her type (to remind her where her hand was in space and to focus her attention or whatever it was). If she was handed a keyboard and asked a question she couldn’t do it on her own, but with someone to hold some part of her arm she could. And she proved it with a blindfolded facilitator… or maybe it was a blind (real blind) facilitator for a judge who found that she was really doing the communicating.
There are various kinds of FC and some people work hard to call it anything BUT FC because of the reputation that FC got (probably someof it was deserved). Soma, Tito’s mom worked hard to get Tito to write independently, she found that by constantly urging him to write the next letter, next word, that he could do that. But alone he wouldn’t do it (at least not in the beginning).
If you read “Strange Son” you can get an idea of how an FC “test” can fail because the autistic person can feel ashamed that they are not being believed, that they are thought of as “not there”.
There are solid, real scientific reasons for why a person would need a facilitator.
Did you ever see “Awakenings”? Did you see how the catatonic patients could catch a ball when thrown to them but couldn’t stand and walk? or do anything else with their hands, basically?
Was that fake? Did the patients fake that they could not do other things because they could catch a ball? Were they malingering? No.
They had a movement disorder. Autistics can have movement disorders. It has been shown that they can be “willing” their bodies to do something but that their body might not obey the command. So having a person intervene and help them to pull their hand back from the keyboard and so forth can have a real world rational explanation for it’s need.
And, kids who start out with lots of help with facilitation, frequently go on to type independently. You might want to familiarize yourself with Alex Bain he has a blog on the hub (another genuine autistic, not retarded, but quite impaired in some ways).
As for your dramatic description of a maze. Have you seen anyone here question your use of medications to help your daughter or criticize any particular technique you have done to help her mitigate her special needs? Did anyone “scream” at you for trying to get her more sleep, that you were undermining autistic culture or harming one of ‘our own’?”
No.
The thing is, if your daughter is autistic, and has health problems and has intellectual disability, then those thing are NOT going to go away. Not with any amount of pills or lessons. They are there for life. If, say, she has occult seizures, for instance and they are interfering with her learning, even if you deal with those, she still will have problems, she will remain autistic, and all of us here would encourage you to get her on meds for her seizures (or try the ketogenic diet if that was appropriate).
You could ask Tito Mukhopadhyay if he felt like he was deep within a dark maze and if he felt like his mother had taken him to a brighter part of the maze, or whatever. He might say that it was something like that for him. But he also might tell you that he’s very happy to be in the “maze” of autism and always has been. You’ll have to ask him.
I don’t feel a need to construct that kind of mythical labyrinthine metaphor for helping my kids. My NT kid has had real problems, they are typical people problems maybe, but they are real problems. I never had to create a mythology to explain helping that kid through those serious problems.
I wonder if you feel a need to cast yourself as a hero in a drama? My kid went through life and death (really) situations as a child and young teen. I have never felt the need to be given a medal or be canonized for helping to get my kid through those situations. I’m a mom. All moms are supposed to do these things, even if they themselves happen to have been born into a deep dark maze populated by scary, mean Minotaurs making Byzantine social demands with accompanying draconian punishments for failure.
Hey, you want I should send you a tiara for being a good dad?
I forgot to add, that I thought that DJ Savarese’s statement that autism should be treated with respect made a lot of sense. DJ is autistic, he’s been treated with great disrespect, but I think his adoptive parents have treated his autism with respect, and they have treated him with respect.
I think even if you hate a disease, say cancer, it makes sense to treat it with respect. In the sense that you could throw pounds of herbal teas at it and take “it” to a quack like Buttar who would prescribe coffee enemas and chelation for it. I think that that would not be respecting the seriousness of the disorder and not respecting that the thing could kill a person.
Treating autism with respect doesn’t mean locking the autistic kid in a closet for 15 years and throwing him or her some food once a day.
Treating autism with respect doesn’t mean not treating any concomitant health problems that the autistic person has.
Treating autism with respect doesn’t mean throwing the kid into a noisy classroom with a mean teacher so that the kid will act “more autistic” and he sure will in that scenario.
Treating autism with respect (to me) means realizing that it is there for life; that it is not going away, and finding a way to work with it’s existence to maximize the person’s potential… working within the constraints of a society that tends to greatly disrespect the autistic way of seeing and feeling and hearing and thinking.
Apparently, the folks at CNN didn’t think it was an asinine statement. I think they saw some depth to it which is why they included it in their report. You should be so lucky, Mayfly, to have one of your statements quoted in a CNN program.
Go DJ Savarese!!! You are a smart guy and we appreciate your thoughts!
Kassiane, if everyone had God’s view then I would no worries. I do worry what will happen to my daughter when my wife and I are too feeble to look after here.
This may be prideful in thinking that my wife and I are the only ones who can look after her. It is based on fear, fear that she’ll be abused, unable to tell, and have no one to advocate for her.
Mayfly,
I have a long comment in response to you that is awaiting moderation. It came before the one I wrote about DJ Savarese’s quote. Which I should add was also quoted in the WIRED magazine article, but the reporter didn’t properly cite DJ as the source, even though Amanda told him that it was DJ’s quote (the reporter’s tape recorder broke or something)
Mayfly,
Sadly, your long-winded evasion is exactly what I expected. “Distracter mode,” in spades: you didn’t even touch the actual content of my argument, and instead, have succeeded only in supporting my point with an interminable torrent of tangential demonstrations. Similarly, witnessing your conceit of taking others to task over “straw man” arguments, among other things, reminds me anew of just how bitter a thing irony can be. From what I’ve seen here, you appear to be a practiced and relentless manipulator — and there is nothing so universally dangerous to the development and welfare of autistic children.
Bob, weave, and spin all you like. I made my case. I trust readers here to decide for themselves.
@Ms. Clark,
I hope your comment went through…..let me know.
@mayfly,
I’ve been thinking about the labyrinth image—-life’s a maze to work through, but with Charlie’s hand in mind and with him casting light on the path through. For myself, for me, very particularly, when I let go and stopped thinking that Charlie had to reach this or that “goal” or “outcome,” I was able to help him more, by starting with where he is and seeing where the path leads us.
Along the way, I’ve been keenly aware of my own not-exactly-normalness: The labyrinth I’m thinking of isn’t the one that King Minos made to imprison the Minotaur, but one of those outdoor ones, made of hedges, in gardens, and under bright sunlight.
“From what I’ve seen here, you appear to be a practiced and relentless manipulator-and there is nothing so universally dangerous to the development and welfare of autistic children”
That’s quite a nasty comment.
Mayfly appears to me, to be a loving, caring father, who is deeply concerned about his daughter’s welfare and future. Like any parent he is trying to do what he thinks is best.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, whether they be right or wrong. Personal attacks are unneccessary, though.
Come on guys, play the ball not the man!
If the people who KNOW that everyone is “fearfully wonderfully made” (or pick similar statement of choice from whatever, I like “a child of the universe” from the Desiderata personally) act on it, the attitude will be contagious.
It will take a long time, but it will.
“From what I’ve seen here, you appear to be a practiced and relentless manipulator-and there is nothing so universally dangerous to the development and welfare of autistic children”
I don’t know if that’s true of any particular poster around here, but it sure as hell is a true statement in general! It’s profound!
Ms Clark, further communication with you is futile. Do I think I’m a superdad, no I don’t, but I won’t have my efforts to help her belittled.
Dkmnow. What a hateful tirade. It deserves no response.
Wow. This got quite the comments. All quite interesting.
Wow. This got quite the comments. All quite interesting. A little too intense for me.
Kristina, yes it went through, thank you.
Mayfly, belittling your efforts to help your daughter would look something like this? “Sleep? You want her to sleep! Why how dare you?? You monster!!! No one wants their kids to sleep!”
All I did was question your descriptions of your daughter and question why you use such dramatic illustrations for your parenting efforts. I have been there when my kid nearly died a few times, but I’ve never felt the need to create dramatic (dark maze) imagery about that, and I wouldn’t even mention it now except to show that I understand “drama” in parenting.
“For better or worse, the DSM doesn’t specifically mention these..”
That in itself is evidence that the ability to work and love doesn’t exist in mental illness.
Larry: “…but it sure as hell is a true statement in general!…”
I presume you’re referring to my point that manipulation by primary caregivers is a catastrophic pathogen to autistic children.
If so, I thank you for that acknowledgment. It’s always encouraging to know that some few will not overlook (or sidestep) the parts of my argument that actually matter.
Ms Clark, the maze analogy doesn’t fit the situation you describe. Similes are not universal. How long was your child on death’s door? To lose a child his infinitely harder than dealing with a child which has shutout the world, and is often violet. But a couple of weeks in the hospital, and the child recovery I don’t think is.
The maze analogy was about autism not me. Since you cannot bring yourself to say anything bad about autism, you cannot even conceive of the maze.
My message was one of hope, that you and your child can emerge from the maze, and all it takes is love. If My wife and I can do it, anyone can.
You know as I think back on it as ineffective as my daughter’s ABA therapists were, they played an instrumental part in leading her through the maze.
*Sighs*
I was just thinking…
If we all took a leaf out of Kristina’s book, we children of the universe,(I like that description too Kassiane) it sure as hell would make the world a better place I reckon.
Her gracious consideration towards others and their feelings whilst still firmly stating her point of view, is certainly something to aspire to.
“though I hate Freud I love that statement. I think any disability is just another way to be human
”
About four years ago, Amanda Baggs joined Asperger’s Circle, which I also belong to, for a few months. It turns out that she had undergone Freudian psychoanalysis when she was younger. Afterwards, she hated her therapist and hated Freud. The problem was that according to Freud, the transference involved in therapy will often be negative. And that is just as therapeutic as positive transference.
Unfortunately, if the therapy was at all effective there is no way Amanda will admit it!
What’s truly ironic, though, is that her psychoanalyst recognized her rich inner life and tried to address it. That’s a far cry from the goofball psychologist who couldn’t imagine her being able to set up her computer without the help of her caretaker!
I wonder if psycoanalysis would work on me. Freud said it would not work on Irishmen. But then I’m only _Scots_-Irish.
I do think I see what you mean, Larry; that it is better that your shrink understand that your head is working, even if he has wrong ideas about what’s going on in there, than that he think there’s nothing going on in there at all.
Of course, hating Freud won’t cure psychotherapy of it’s delusions…
But SRSLY, the virus that ravaged old-school psychoanalysis is alive and well today in contemporary psychotherapy. Even conventional psychodynamic “theory” is so infinitely malleable that interpretation of absolutely ANY behavior can be easily twisted into some remarkably plausible “pathology.” Further, any resulting conclusion on the part of the professional (working solely withing the domain of psychodynamics) is inherently untestable, and thus, cannot be disproven.
(In other words, it ain’t science … I’m often reminded of an offhand remark Noam Chomsky made during a lecture: “There’s nothing in the social sciences that qualifies as a theory.” The largely academic audience erupted in laughter and applause.)
That, in combination with a number of other factors almost unique to the “mental health” professions, puts the therapist in a position of near total impunity.
And. That. Is. Dangerous.
That’s how it seems on the face of it. As a cure, Freud himself was disappointed in it. Even so, it’s better than the damned ignorant medication.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/11/ma_565_01.html
As a theory, though, psychoanalysis has stood its ground. For instance; the above report is a good validation of Freudian theory. According to Freud, all the neuroses are sexual in origin. In fact, that was Charcot’s contention way back when. And guess what. All psychiatric medication–including Prozac–has the convenient “side effect” of removing the patient’s sex drive! Medication cures are necessarily temporary.
Anyway, whether or not psychoanalysis is a *science* is a pedantic question, to say the least. Cryptography is not a science either. It’s an art. And yet the United States military depended on it to destroy the Imperial Japanese Navy at Midway. Dead languages have been restored by it–even to the point of figuring out pronunciations of words.
When Freud wrote “Interpretation of Dreams” he insisted that the key he discovered could analyze any dream down to the tiniest detail. If all observable data can be easily fit into a paradigm, you have to figure it’s worth something.
Anyway, the way psychoanalysis works is to put forth hypotheses, then present these to one’s peers inviting them to trash them. If any evidence comes along that does not fit tidily into the hypothesis, the psychoanalyst must be ready to abandon that hypothesis with no regret.
Freud himself had to abandon a few of his own theories over the years. And since Freud’s time, a few more have bit the dust, or at least have been weakened a bit. But psychoanalysis itself will endure I think.
It’s a way to approach impossibly complicated phenomena. Compare psychoanalysis to psychology. Psychology fancies itself to be a science, but ends up restricting itself to the point of uselessness. By limiting itself to the use of experimentation and statistics, it only ends up belaboring the obvious and necessarily ignoring deeper determinants.
My favorite psychology experiment was where the scientist drops a handful of coins in a crowded elevator and observes how everybody ignores it. He then later drops money in the elevator when only one person is in there with him. That one person will invariably help pick up the money. The conclusion is that the phenomenon is due to “diffusion of responsibility.” BRILLIANT! As if everyone didn’t assume that ahead of time. Now tell us where these cockamamie dreams I have come from. And what about my weird OCD symptoms. And my damned panic attacks. Give me an experiment!
“I wonder if psycoanalysis would work on me. Freud said it would not work on Irishmen. But then I’m only _Scots_-Irish.”
Scots-Irish is sure enough Irish. Cheer up. That was one of Freud’s theories that he was forced to abandon I think.
I too am Scots-Irish. I think the reason Scots-Irish are immune is that they reject the influence of Saint Patrick
I always wondered why Freud abandoned his original trauma theory (just prior to his “psychosexual” business). My own hypothesis is that — given the widespread pshychological addiction to brutal pedagogy in those days — it would have gotten him lynched. I tend to think of the “psychosexual theory” as a cleverly disguised repackaging of the former.
The main artifact of psychoanalysis that I’m interested in seeing survive is the recognition that the bulk of “mental illness” is caused by how we have been treated by others, especially our primary caregivers, and most especially during our formative years.
But, of course, behaviorist and medical models have almost completely swept that under the rug. The New Era of Mental Health: ‘Humanizing’ Dehumanization, For Fun and Profit! YAY!
:-/
I am a Freud freak. I have read over seven-thousand pages of his collected work and I have never EVER read that he abandoned his trauma theory. Nor did he repackage anything.
I think you got it bass-ackwards. Freud’s original seduction theory required traumatic sexual ABUSE. It didn’t occur to him until later that the infantile sexual memories he found in his hypnotised patients might be erotic fantasies. He had assumed that children were innocent of sexuality. You can still find residues of his early thinking in “Interpretation of Dreams.”
However, the trauma was still essential in his later theories. He spelled it out in “Three Case Histories.” Parents withhold love from children who exhibit sexual impulses–masturbation, gawking, goosing, etc. The greatest trauma that can happen to a child is the withholding of love. Therefore the child has to repress such forbidden wishes. That’s how it works. It’s as clear as a bell.
There is little doubt that Freud was embarrassed by having to eat crow. He had furiously defended his seduction theory against all sorts of blatant scorn from his peers. It galled him to discover that they were right and he was wrong. But HE was the one who made the breakthrough discovery. Not his contemptuous colleagues.