The Dialectic of Autism

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https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/10/ ... of-autism/
I glazed over pretty early, as it takes the author four paragraphs to get out of Ancient Greece, but maybe there's a clue in there.

Quote: Lovaas, the “inventor” of ABA used electric shocks, shouting, starvation and corporal punishment in the 1960s on autistic childrenhttps://www.news-medical.net/he ... story.aspx

He did this long after the 1960s. I personally witnessed him in action beating up a child in the 1980s. It turned my stomach, traumatised me as a witness to this unexpected physical assault, which if it had been done to any other citizen, would have been a criminal form of assault.

As most of the audience with me were professional psychiatrists and psychologists of the behaviourist persuasion, I lost all respect for them that day and still regard them with contempt.

Civilised societies, and civilised "health professionals" treat those with disabilities with kindness and respect. Lovaas was an abuser, and to call his work "evidence based" is a perversion of clinical practice. Anything can be called "evidence based" if you set the standard low enough, and you couldn't go much lower in my view though Lovass and his acolytes.

Quote: the "symptoms" of autism: this gives the misleading impression that every AS person is affected by all of these things in the same way and in a lifelong way. From my own life, these assertions taken from WebMD do not represent me and if they don't represent me, then there will be a lot of other AS people they don't represent either. But WebMD would never bother to consult AS people nor rely on studies in natural settings rather than contrived settings in experimental conditions that don't reflect real life contexts:

I have bolded their "symptoms" for clarity before my response in each case"

Delayed speech and language skills (I was mute until I was 2 years old. Some of this was no doubt due to extreme trauma that happened to me as a young infant - at 2 I began to speak and in whole sentences, which surprised my carers. The doctor was not surprised, he was a survivor of the Nazis as a polish Jew and knew the effects of trauma on infants better than most doctors of the late 1940s, when I began to speak. In the next couple of years, before I went to school, I taught myself to read with a little help from a kind and supportive visitor who helped me with more difficult words. My point is that you have to factor in context before making blanket assertions about disability, and generalisations are misleading).

[b]Flat, robotic speaking voice, or singsong voice[/b] (I am not and never was affected in this way, another generalisation that denies individual differences). I was a reasonably good singer as an older child and successfully auditioned for roles in light opera. I lost confidence later on and never regained it vis a vis singing.

Echolalia (repeating the same phrase over and over) - I have never spoken in this way

Problems with pronouns (saying “you” instead of “I,” for example) - I have never confused these, my use of language was advanced, not faulty.

Not using or rarely using common gestures (pointing or waving), and not responding to them - children of my generation were taught that pointing was extremely rude, and we were punished if we did it. Context ignored again.

[b]Inability to stay on topic when talking or answering questions[/b] - my mind works to simultaneously process thoughts, related sub thoughts, and to form patterns btween these and a topics and related topics spontaneously. I can think of two different things at once, and don't regard this as a "defect" but as an analytical advantage. It is viewed negatively by those who can't perform this multiplicity of thought, because only minorities can do it, it seems, and so you get the "tyranny of the normative" who downgrade the skills that the majority group are generally not competent in.

Repetitive behaviors like hand-flapping, rocking, jumping, or twirling - I was completely the opposite. I could sit still quietly for hours, which I often did when watching or thinking about something that fascinated me - like insects.

Constant moving and “hyper” behavior - I exhibit this only when something external is intensely stressing me out, like being surrounded by menace, extreme noise or conflict happening around me. But not often.

Fixations on certain activities or objects - to some extent this is true. However is it fixation or is it hyperfocus? Hyperfocus can be very advantageous when problem solving or executing a particular skill such as music.

Specific routines or rituals (and getting upset when a routine is changed, even slightly) - this only affected me in adulthood. My childhood was so chaotic with ignorant and abusive carers that I was used to no predictability and regarded it as normal as I knew nothing different. I was constantly a hyperobserver trying to guess what they might do next.

Extreme sensitivity to touch, light, and sound - I experienced this though thought that everyone else did too. The hypersensitivity has increased over time, particularly to noise.

Not taking part in “make-believe” play or imitating others’ behaviors - at school I was the one who made up the games, and others imitated me as the leader of a small coterie of children that I liked. The few friends I had at school liked me because I could entertain them by telling stories that entertained them. Often these were from memory of books I had read.

Fussy eating habits - Intensely applied to me, there were some textures and tastes and food smells which as a child I found repugnant. Beef was the worst, I refused to eat steak until I was an adult, and a lot of food made me feel ill because of undiagnosed allergies and coeliac disease.

Lack of coordination, clumsiness - this was extreme for me. I had no muscles in the calves of my legs (still don't have any) and the stress that I lived with as a child made my hands shake with nervous tension, so I often dropped and spilled things. However I showed extreme co-ordination when playing the piano, alone with a music teacher I trusted and who was kind. When at the table for a meal, the carers would start yelling "don't spill that" when I reached to pick up a glass of water and the aggressive tone of their voices would distress me so much that of course I would spill it, then they would berate me. They were unable to make any connection to my reaction with their own toxic behaviours.

Impulsiveness (acting without thinking)
 Aggressive behavior, both with self and others (I was the victim of aggression from others, the bullied not the bully)
 Short attention span (I was acutely able to focus as long as I found something interesting. Playing five page pieces of music at an early age is not indicative of a short attention span, nor is reading books from cover to cover as a child; I could complete an hour long maths exam in ten minutes. I had a fast and extremely focused attention span, not short one per se.

This is taken in its entirety from: https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/symptoms-of-autism

Overall point I am making: generalising about AS people is a way of undermining all of them at once, and a form of prejudice that "autism professionals" are still doing just as they always have done. Defining AS only by deficits and excluding the positives many of us have is a form of quite extreme stigmatisation and discrimination. The thing that saddens me the most is how many of us internalise the stigmas in blanket ways to themselves because that is what they have been brainwashed into doing, by an prejudiced medical profession, prejudiced "experts", spurious research claims, charities who benefit from reinforcing the prejudices, and an ignorant media.

PS: I guess that to write this post, I must have some ability to stay on topic, so I hope the Web MD writers have enough of an attention span to read it sometime