The concept of autism
Is the child 'autistic' or just mentally handicapped?
1. Is the child functioning intellectually and developmentally at a
much lower level than his chronological age?
If yes he or she is one of the above. Go down to next row:
1. Is the child functioning intellectually and developmentally at a
much lower level than his chronological age?
If no he or she is neither of the above.
STOP!
2. What social class do the parents belong to, or what social class
do they aspire to?
If 'lower class' consider the diagnosis of plain
mental handicap
to be more likely and go down to next row
|
|
V
2. What social class do the parents belong to, or what social class
do they aspire to?
If 'higher class' consider the diagnosis of autism to be more likely
and go down to next row:
"You built your house superb. Yeah, i? is be?er'n mines, whah-uh-mean?"
"I say, that monkey talks like a cockney!"
(But in this year 2008
people whom one might imagine should be educated seem to think it's cool and clever
to add a liberal sprinkling of glottal stops into their speech - people like TV announcers, ex-prime
ministers, and the like. Many foreigners speak better, (not be?uh), English than the English)
3. How does the child look?
If the child is ugly or clearly physically abnormal in some way, and
maybe looks stupid, e.g. with Mongol features, tongue lolling out, drooling,
grimacing, squinting etc. consider diagnosis of ordinary mental handicap
to be most likely.
3. How does the child look?
If the child looks pretty, as if nothing could be wrong with it,
consider the diagnosis of autism to be very likely. (Some of the
children with whom the author worked over the years were
attractive, e.g. C.W., J.W., D.R., and A.A.)
Way back in the middle Sixties I studied a young child who had been
diagnosed as a possible case of 'autism'. It did not take much time
or intellectual effort to conclude that the most parsimonious
explanation of this child's condition was organic cerebral dysfunction,
especially of the temporal lobes. This was at a time when organic
factors were not prominent in the concept of this 'syndrome'. Nowadays
everyone seems to realise that organic factors are pre-eminent in the
'disorder'. All my experiences since then have failed to make me look
with any more favour on this so-called condition
History.
If we look at the history of this idea we see that originally there was
a feeling that the condition was caused by parental failings, e.g. the
so-called 'refrigerator mother'. Had this element in the idea been
retained then of course parents would not be queuing up to get the
label for their child. Now that the condition is felt to have an
organic basis this means that parents can quite happily accept the
'diagnosis' of the condition for their child. Paradoxically however
some remnant of this early view seems to live on in the concept so that
parents feel that there is some way in which their 'real' child might
be brought out of this condition, happy, loving, normal and intelligent.
This belief in a magic cure is typical of parents of any disadvantaged
child but may be especially pronounced in the present case. It is true
of course that the filtering through of the idea of organic causation
into the popular concept may make the search for the magic cure as
likely to be one involving pills, medicines, (often fringe types,
herbal, homeopathic etc.) or crank diets, as to be one involving
psychological methods. What of course is not understood is that neurons
in the C.N.S., once damaged or destroyed, practically never regenerate, and that
many of the child's handicaps are permanent. For religious parents,
their search for magic cures may of course take them to such places as
Lourdes.
Like other concepts of highly questionable validity, (such as the Nazis
ideas of race, the superior Aryan type and the inferior Eastern
peoples), the idea of autism seems to naturally find itself in company
with very shady characters, be they people or concepts etc.
The label of 'autism' is used
1. to make parents feel more special and privileged and hopeful for the
future, than if they were simply told that they had a mentally
handicapped child.
2. to absolve the parents of blame in the production of their
handicapped child, (note that this function depends on a later rather
than an earlier view of 'autism'.)
(I have known a number of cases where parents have been highly motivated
to have their child diagnosed as 'autistic' to divert attention from
evidence that they may have been partly or largely responsible for
their child's psychological condition by virtue of poor parenting,
emotional or physical neglect or even abuse, (including sexual). The
smokescreen might be used, not only to hide the truth from others, but
to hide it from the person himself or herself ; there is usually some
degree of self-delusion).
3. to get their child into a school which parents feel will be good
for the child because it has special facilities and resources
unavailable in a state day S.L.D. school. If the school of choice is
characterised as a school for 'autistic' pupils this makes it necessary
for parents to shop around amongst various 'experts' to find one or
more who will stick this label onto their child.
Originally the diagnosis of autism was a rarity, and the percentage
of children suffering from this was supposed to be very small. Now
'autistic' individuals are ten a penny and the term has become more or
less a synonym for severe learning difficulty. To cover oneself silly
qualifiers are in vogue, such as 'autistic traits', 'somewhere on the
'autistic continuum'', and similar pretentious phrases. Even worse are
phrases such as someone having 'a touch of autism'!
Idiot Savant
There seems to be some sort of contamination of the concept of 'autism'
with the concept of the 'idiot savant', the wise idiot. Nowadays of
course it is not politically correct to use the term 'idiot',* even in
the French and so the term is transformed into 'savant syndrome'. Here
the individual who is functioning generally at a very low level is
found to possess some special ability, at a significantly higher level
than that of his other abilities or skills. So we have the mentally
handicapped individual who is talented at drawing or playing the piano
or in remembering which days fall on which dates in various years. I
myself have encountered one or two individuals in each of these
categories. By far the least useful is the skill in matching days
and dates, the other two areas of skill seem much more interesting.
This days and dates trick was studied by me in two individuals, and
the feat proved to be very easy of explanation.
We know from basic psychology that abilities in humans are relatively
strongly associated or correlated. The possession of ability levels
which are greatly different one from another is statistically unusual.
It will be a highly unusual event when a subnormal individual is found
to possess a relatively very highly developed skill or ability. So our
'autistic' students turn out usually to be subnormal through and
through, with no relatively great aptitudes of any type.
* Recall that in psychology textbooks of times gone by, the terms,
'idiot', 'imbecile' and 'moron' were scientific categories depicting
various degrees of mental incompetence; as times go by these become
terms of abuse and new labels have to be found, so we got successively,
'subnormal', then 'mentally handicapped', then 'learning difficulty',
'special needs' and so on. What is referred to however does not change. So also with 'hyperactive syndrome of childhood' and 'A.D.H.D.'
(Go to
'idiot savant' for more on this topic)
Facilitated Communication, (F.C.), and autism.
We saw various studies of 'F.C.' in 'autism'. Here we saw these two
unsavoury characters in cahoots and in unholy intimacy. This reminds
one of the saying that you can know a person by the company he keeps.
(Now of course the concept of F.C. is no longer accepted, I myself
did a study at one of the schools I worked in to disprove the idea,
back in 1987 but one is amazed that this silly idea and practice ever
became so widespread, unchecked by anyone having the slightest
knowledge of early psychology, e.g. "Der kluge Hans" and the horses
of Elberfeld.)
(Go to
'facilitated communication' for more on this topic)
