NTs trapped in language.

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Who is being trapped? see today's NYT article and video:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/2 ... of-autism/

more to follow.

NT-language is by design bound to limit the view of our surroundings to distinct categories, where they in fact don't exist, and, as NTs think mostly in words, so are their thoughts.

On the other hand, NT language (and thought pattern) is the base of all society and has proven it's efficiency.

I think in words though they seem to come with a picture attached. I think words are fine. What i dont find easy is being expected to find hidden meanings behind words, and also listen to voice tone and remember to make eye contact all at once. There is just too much going on there.

I think that Amanda is happy with her mode of communication because she is not expected to process too much stimuli at once. She can just focus on whatever she is processing at that moment.

Words are a good form of communication but they have their limitations. NTs regularly misinterpret each other, and their system of hidden meanings in language is not efficient at solving conflict, it only packages it neatly somewhere else.

But it is the best that regular humans have at the moment.

Verbal linguistic communication is full of traps, adulterated by etiquette, lies, diplomacy, reticence, good manners, hidden goals, treachery and what not. I don't talk enymore and my vocal chords are atrophied for lack of use.

Ugh, and that's not even what I meant by it either. Oh well. I suppose if people in the media get things a bit wrong when they talk to me, then it only follows that people will get things even more wrong when they read what other people have written after talking to me.

Interesting, I just wrote something along these lines on my blog.

That explains why I will often have a miscommunication with my mum, that could end up with disastrous results. The last one that we had, was in October, and that lead to something unpleasant. That's water under the bridge, though.

People do seem to be trapped in a symbol-system quite often though, and that's more what I was addressing. It also applies to many autistic people frankly. I see it a lot.

Although professional fields like Psychiatry and Neurology don't make it any easier for the laypublic to understand about the terminologies used. It behooves a Psychiatrist to label his client with something "psychiatric" so as to keep him as a client and treat him (and do good business or feed his ego, etc.), and the same with the Neurologist, to label "neurological" conditions and treat them.

And similarly with the concept of "pathology". If a doctor were to say "Joe, your liver has some cells which are growing too much and too rapidly, you need to stop drinking" versus "Joe, you have liver cancer, you need to stop drinking", which statement is Joe more likely to listen to and take action? I would think the latter, because just the word "cancer" scares the s**t out of most people.

Labeling any mental/psychiatric/neurological condition as a disorder is not only a way to sum up a group of traits more easily, it also dictates treatment, as well as provide impetus to seek out that treatment. It basically implies, "Something's gone wrong here and it needs to be fixed if possible".