Autistic Encapsulation----Protecting The Self From Pain

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I promised to start a thread on this subject, and someone just asked me again, so here it is:

Just googled and found this book preview, which seems to explain a lot.

http://books.google.com/books?id=x_A_7t ... &q&f=false

Here is one thing I wrote previously on another thread in which I describe how I learned about this concept from a psychoanalytical journal I found (in a book store free box).

The concept of autistic encapsulation is most extraordinary. The way I found out about it is that I literally found a psychoanalytical journal---that one issue which was devoted to autism, and it was like having a veil lifted from my eyes. I could not believe what I was reading as it explained so much. At some part when I began to understand I was yelling out loud...oh sh*t...oh sh*t...(have mild tourettes:-) I literally could not believe it how this explained so many things (and was also very angry that no one had ever given me this information, people who should have known and given it to me, and that this kind of information was held very exclusively by a kind of in group....then I had to stop reading for several months in order to begin to process it all...It is a little difficult to understand the principle of autistic encapsulation, but it was probably easier for me to catch onto because I was already on the track of discovering how the brain organizes and reorganizes data by making a framework that is encompassing. This framework is a form of encapsulating. Basically the brain kind of makes a circle out of certain information and then temporarily (or permanently) functions inside of these reference points.

I will probably be presenting some very unpleasant material on this thread, so am making a disclaimer right at the beginning--- if it gets too painful, stop reading. You will probably not be missing much of anything if you do, as this material is very difficult to intellectually understand, but a hundred times more difficult to work through within oneself, not to imply I have completely worked it through. I guess people help each other do that.

The concept of autistic encapsulation sounds similar to The Intense World Theory.
http://www.wrongplanet.net/article419.html

So is this why I get so easily exhausted and bored all the time, why my threshold for interaction and activity is low, why my body so often is in pain?

I don't know, because I tend NOT to remember most of the events of the day because I am spacing out.

So what is happening? Please help me to understand.

The Intense World Theory would hold that "spacing out" is your mind's way of protecting itself from being bombarded with too much. Sound, sight, smell, touch, taste, emotion, input, memory. TOO MUCH.

To be perfectly frank, my only known problem with the Intense World Theory is that the psychiatric community then jumps up waving the nonspecific sedation/atypical antipsychotic flag. "Well, if you feel too much, sense too much, and think too much, the solution must be to dull your mind, your emotion, and your sense until your thoughts, memories, senses, and emotions are no longer an annoyance for you (read: anyone else).

Been there. Done that. Lived to tell about it.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life chemically wrapped in several layers of wet fiberglas insulation. Think I'll stick with having some measure of control over when I retreat from this intense world I live in.

OP: Link broken. Please fix.

I'm not exactly a mental giant and I only have a bachelor's-level education, but I'm reasonably bright. I'm also an ASD hillbilly armed with multiple dictionaries. I think I'm capable of joining in this discussion, and I'd really like to try.

So, can we keep this thread going? I want to learn more about others' experiences.

Please start your own thread. Thanks.

I am dubious of any attempt by neurotypicals to explain autistic cognition because there often seems to be several tendencies:

Over-emphasizing differences

Under-emphasizing differences

Producing explanations for autistic behavior that are informed by observing autistic children and possibly adults, but not quite so much informed by talking to autistic people. One example I saw of this was a professional dissecting Temple Grandin's writing to prove that Dr. Grandin could not have written what she had written and actually understood it.

Actively ignoring autistic people, or dismissing their self-reports in favor of the aforementioned observational theories.

The book you linked seems to posit a connection between being autistic and some trauma in infancy. This looks like an obsolete (Freudian, psychogenic) theory about autism that is not as far as I know currently accepted. There also seems to be a hint of the refrigerator mother theory - or rather, theory that makes one's mother pivotal in terms of developing autism.

I think I'm done with this upon hitting this statement on 158. Reading past the quoted paragraph is enlightening - I can see if one is working from this text why one might conclude that autism is a kind of personality disorder. I wouldn't recommend anyone work from this text in order to gain understanding of autistic people = there are plenty of books and blogs by actual autistic people that are likely much more informative and accurate.

Hi Verdandi. I appreciate your message, even though I disagree with several of of the main points in it.

Re Francis Tustin, I know her work is out of favor and considered outdated with a lot of people in the autism community, but I suggest not to throw the baby out with the bathwater...Re that book preview, I did not even read the whole thing, just kind of quickly skimmed some of it, .but selected it because it does touch on what I am meaning by the term autistic encapsulation, and I was in a hurry to start this thread because once again someone asked me, and I did promise to start this thread and had procrastinated long enough, though if you read any of my threads I am kind of talking about the same thing. The concept of framing became extremely interesting to me about three years before I ever heard of autistic encapsulation and then began to observe from the angle of my own autism how the mind was framing material..This all brought back some kind of unbearably painful memory of very early childhood experience.

The thing is, with this kind of material, as with everything, it all comes down to grading and sorting. I am basically not a friend of modern psychology, especially psychoanalysis....which I call psycho analysis, not because psychos are being analyzed but because psychos are doing the analysis. I think it all verges on being a cult, and yet, in certain instances I would send a person to a therapist or might even go to one myself, so sometimes it is hard to sort this kind of thing out.

To give a couple of examples. as everyone who has read my messages knows, I love religion, and yet I do not believe in anything. As Dr, Suess wrote---"two fish in a tree---how can that be?" ha ha, but it can be if you understand the perspective I am coming from. But people hear the word "religion" or "God," and they already have their negative associations about it and so will not even read that thread, but in actuality, I am talking about the same thing there as I am here, just using a different vernacular. A second example is the ground breaking work of a therapist named Melanie Klein whose study of and work with infants and young children laid the foundation for an entirely new way of looking at human development--- object relations theory. Her work was brilliant, and I will be talking a lot about object relations theory in the future, but if you read some of her psychological interpretations of troubled young children, imo and surely in the opinion of many others, she was a complete whacko and what could be called confirmation bias obviously played a major role in some of her ridiculous interpretations of these children's behavior.

Anyway, what I have just written is kind of pointing at why participating on my threads may be a little difficult, even work, as certain material cannot necessarily be laid out in black and white, but in order to present it, one first has to prepare a field by setting up various parameters. It is a matter of orientation.

I will reply to what you wrote in more detail, but do not have time right now.

Well I think you just said about five things about yourself that you aren't even aware you said, but you did answer my question! Carry on!

PS, there was nothing off about his question, he was just giving your thread a bump. I'm not really worried about him, I think he can take care of himself - but I think in general if you are going to post threads on a forum like this you might want to consider that some people are more vulnerable than others and it's ok to speak to them with the same respect you would want them to speak to you.

I was taken aback by OP's response, but it didn't bother me too much.

I can appreciate OP's desire to keep the thread objectively rooted.

However, in my estimation we on WP can offer "data" (yes, subjective but still data) from which certain commonalities and differences can be analyzed and then considered in light of OP's initial post.

Okay, to continue...this thread was started when Mercury was in retrograde (and it still is), which according to astrology, is not a good time to start a new project as it can lead to misunderstanding regarding communication, but regardless of what anyone thinks of astrology, sometimes things have to be started at 'bad' times, and sometimes the worst time is the best time, at least according to the saying "God's curses are our opportunities." .Already the reader is not going to like this thread, as the title is talking about pain, plus there is mention of astrology and "God," and there has already been drama here, through through no intention of my own.. Well, good, now the few reading it will be protected, not by following or not following or believing in some principle of astrology or by God or by being 'nice," but by the surrounding iron walls around the fact of pain, and yes, if a person is feeling pain, that is indeed a hard fact for the person who is feeling it, and even the word pain elicits pain. I tried to change the title of this thread just now and take away the pain part, but it was too late to edit it as the time limit has expired, and, oh, the feeling of pain also affects the subjective experience of time.

As I said before, this may not be such a pleasant thread to read, so I suggest to stay away reading here, at least for a while, it if it gets too difficult, but he who is able to persist may be greatly and deeply rewarded. Re the drama, again, that was in no way my intent. This subject is going to be already difficult enough without making it more difficult, but also, I do not want to make it too easy....as this might lead to difficulty in the future..

So, enquiry here to begin soon, at least for me, and in the duration or meantime, blessings to all....