Who doesn't like Tony Attwood?

Post Reply New Topic

My two pennies into the ring.

Attwood's book saved my marriage.

His was the only book at the time (7 years ago), explained step by step what are the differences are between NT/ASD. I thought my husband was an uncaring, unsympathetic man child. I was a week away from filing for divorce. The NT/ASD relationship books basically came down to ...

-He can't help it, it's all up to you to change. Your relationship will be fine if you scale by any expectations by 90%, and accept he will never be able to be a fully functioning adult in a relationship. The next chapters seemed to be on the spouse has to assume the doormat/martyr role to make the relationship limp on.

Oh yeah...sign me up for that!

If I had ASD, Attwood's book is a hard read because it's clinical. I hate reading about bipolar disorder written that way, but not everything is written based towards the person with the disorder.

I have not read the book yet but have read many of his articles and watched many of his youtube videos.

I do not see him as ignoring us and our perspectives at all. From early on he was the opposite of the complete and total emphasis on deficits that predominated autism discussion even ten years ago.

My criticism is while he says nice things to us about empowering our strengths he has sucked up to the group that thinks we are giving our partners "Cassandra Syndrome"

For those of you who are not aware. Tony Attwood's son is a hard core drug addict that has been in and out of prison as a result of his addiction and is currently in prison at this time. That said. It's been next to impossible for Tony to get an official diagnosis of his son condiction because of his hard drug addiction. He believes that is son has Aspergers because of the trouble that he had in school before he turned to drugs and is using school troubles as evidence for his son diagnosis. So don't be surprised that Tony is on some kind of crusade to understand or fight Asperger's as we know it. For Tony, this is very personal.

I have found Tony Attwood's book and lectures useful.

I book I would love to see one day would be a joint work by Tony Attwood and Wenn Lawson. Both are very well informed, Attwood giving a well informed look from the outside and Lawson an informed look from the inside.

These books aren't always good in NT hands either and for a lot it doesn't help them understand themselves it does the opposite because it often is completely wrong, especially the generations after when you strategically search for this in every child who feels bad and seek help.

When we got to autismcentre almost everyone had in common “we don’t recognize my child in what you saying, could we get help with understanding the difficulties our child actually HAVE and a explanation why?” NONE got answers just a review of the stereotypical autistic person speech (the limited Tony Attwood view).
Also there was one thing pretty much all the parents wanted to know “why does my child (diagnosed AST) feel so bad after visiting their psychiatrists?” A lot of these children shut off because they dissociate stuff who doesn't fit and after a treatment that is so narrow minded that you no longer take in what the child recognize or feel they start dissociating themselves which has devastating effects.

Yes Tony Attwood simplify and gives NT the superiority to say that these children all of them is in some sort of denial because NT always have right over AST and AST view point is delusional.

But it can also be that a lot of these children find it very offensive to be treated like "you are slow and that you must have these specific difficulties you just don’t have." That they can’t be listened to anymore nor even get the right to be treated for example depression or finding themselves because if we feel bad it must be a malfunction in our alien AST brain and the treatment is always putting a lid on.

AST comes in diffrent shapes and it's not just Tony Attwoods view and often degrading conclusions.

What's the if you have aspergas ultimately you become British joke I don't get it ? Most humour is at somebody else's expense a lot of the out there stuff I've done would seem a lot funnier if it wasn't me doing it. He seems alright to me .
Problem is when they predominately focus on your deficits rather than objectively exploring your gifts.