Yes, I do think that the hypothetical “vaccine-autism” link distracts us from the key issues of education, services, and understanding about autism. Nonetheless, vaccines were the topic of some of last week’s top posts:

Musings on Camp and Independence
Should I be sending Charlie to camp?
The Dangers of DIY Doctoring
Doctors and patients at odds, and the latter more armed with (mis)information than ever.
Nintendo At School
Charlie is learning how to play video games, at school.
Michael Savage’s Parting Shot
Ah, Michael, just give it up!
Public Spaces Mean Extra Precautions
What if I lose my child in a busy public place?
Not Able …read more

This week my summer school class on Psychology and Literature read Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. On Thursday morning the students had a quiz in which they had to “diagnose” Christopher, the novel’s main character, with autism or Asperger Syndrome, based on the DSM criteria. We also talked about the book in terms of development (looking at Erik Erikson’s stages) and also in regard to theories of social psychology, such as moral exclusion and dehumanization; its concrete, visual language; its plot that’s set into motion when Christopher finds Wellington, a neighbor’s black dog, …read more

I’ve started teaching summer school, in a special program for local high school students and a course on translating Virgil’s Eclogues. The Eclogues are pastoral poems about shepherds and poetry and…….ok, that’s a bit too far from the usual discussion on this blog. The other class is on Psychology and Literature and, as of today, we’ve read this, this, and this, and discussed Freud’s theories of psychosexual development (the oral stage, the anal stage…..) and Erik Erikson’s 8 stages of psychosocial development—-and I’ve been reflecting on how different Charlie’s development has been.
I know that these theories are “just” theories; that …read more