Interview With Simon Baron Cohen - Need Your Help

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Ha. Refreshingly honest way to put it. Baron-Cohen wants to be the benevolent father figure to autistics while telling everyone else we lack self-awareness. I would take him apart. I don't see how it can hurt your writing career to be quite direct here.

1) Why does he refer to things such as male mind and female mind? Considering that the reference of gender stereotyping is politically incorrect. Why doesn't he just leave it as empathizing vs. systematizing.

2) When he's evaluating empathy, why does he not take into account more then cognitive empathy. Or what what would be referred to sympathy. I believe its true that people on the spectrum lack cognitive empathy( theory of mind) but there is more then one type of empathy out there.

3) What does he think of the theory that people on the spectrum have too much empathy...(not cognitive empathy).

4) Do most people on the spectrum actually score high on systematization? Or is it a default in score. As in since so many of them have very low cognitive empathy scores, and slightly higher systematization scores, they automatically default to being systematizes?

5) Are there people out there with neither, both low empathy and low systematization or does the individual have to have either one or the other?

6) Can he publish the average scores for autistic's separate systematization and empathy scores.

7) How did he get his samples of people? Researchers can easily skew results based on select samples of people.

What is his perspective on female aspies/autistics incorporated into this whole autism male brain theory.

To be told that Aspies have a male mind is to suggest that Aspie women have a form of gender dysphoria, where their biology and self-perception are sharply at odds. Does SBC believe that using gender binary language is useful in describing autism? Does he see how this could be perceived as harmful, or at least unhelpful, for Aspie women seeking understanding of their diagnosis?

Why was that post I replied to deleted? It was blunt but not unfair.

Tambo, I worry that you're approaching this in the wrong spirit. I'll say it again: your writing career won't be hurt by not kissing SBC's arse. Direct, honest questions that challenge his beliefs are a good thing for everyone, very much including yourself.

Ask Simon Baron Cohen if he has Aspergers. He looks like it, and definitely seems the type.

Ask him how his theory fits with the observation that autistic people are unimpaired in making the moral-conventional distinction.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w351h7p66p76gl1w/

Impairment on this test in psychopaths is a major piece of evidence for the theory that lack of empathy is central to psychopathy, since the moral transgressions are distinguished from conventional transgressions by the presence of a victim who the person can empathize with.

The problem with Theory of Mind is that it is a very myopic view of people, especially Autistics. It presupposes that we are all very one dimensional, and thus easy to predict and categorize. It is skewed to exclude Autistics and make us appear less than human, "because they have no empathy." It also presupposes that empathy comes in one flavor only, and if you don't exhibit that flavor, then you are out of luck.

Theory of Mind also doesn't take into consideration the face blindness & mind blindness many Autistics have that precludes them from often experiencing immediate empathy in a given situation. Autistics often need further, supplemental information to pick up on what is going on before they can associate cause & effect, thus experiencing empathy for the given situation. For example: Just because I can't tell someone is sad by the look on their face doesn't mean I can't feel empathy once given further information, such as them telling me they are sad and what made them feel that way.

So, my question is:

Is not Theory of Mind a very short sighted and myopic view on how Autistic people react to a given situation, given that they often process information differently than NTs, and require further information to reach the same empathic conclusion?

Ask him for specific examples of how his writings DEVIATE from orthodox Freudian theory. Press hard, and don't let him wiggle out with vague generalizations. Make him give specific examples of positions he takes that Freud would have disagreed with.

He probably won't answer the question. Psychologically, he might not be *able* to. However, it might plant some seeds of doubt, and motivate him to eventually re-evaluate his own deeply-held beliefs about the relevance of Freud to modern medicine (if it's not obvious, I think Freudian theory is about as relevant to modern psychobiology as bloodletting & trepanation).

Tm, so long as you do your research, it'll be virtually impossible not to ask questions that challenge him.

What I'm genuinely most interested in (and I might ask him, he always replies to emails, which is nice) is how he noticed a connection between autistics, psychopaths, borderlines and narcissists. Autistics and borderlines don't fit in that group by any obvious measure. I can see a connection but it's a very autistic-view thing. So that's odd.

So is the point of this interview to challenge his theory and civilly diss him? I was wondering. How will we be able to see this interview? I think the strategy in this is the challenge is theories and science not so much the ethics behind his theories.