andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2020-02-25 11:24 am
andrewducker) wrote2020-02-25 11:24 am
Some thoughts on the opposing ways autism is viewed
I had a realisation recently about the "autism wars" - an ongoing disagreement between some autism specialists and some autistic people over how autism should be viewed and approached.
One of the groups thinks of there being "mild autism" and "severe autism" (or "high functioning" and "low functioning"). And they are the ones who want to treat it, and mostly focus on the needs of parents in dealing with their disabled kids.
And then there are the ones I knows more of personally. And they basically think of autism as being a different way of thinking. One which happens to have a common co-morbidity with intellectual disabilities - but the cognitive style and the intelligence issues are separate, they're not two parts of the autism. The first part is the autism, the second just hits a lot of the same people.
And (one of the reasons) the disagreements seem to keep happening because the two sides do not realise that they are conceptualising things so differently. If you think of autism as being both the difference in thinking style _and_ the intellectual disability then the people who talk about how autism isn't a bad thing are clearly detached from reality. And if you think of autism as being a difference in thinking (of which group a higher than normal percentage are also affected by an intellectual disability) then people who want to "cure autism" are basically saying "We want to wipe out your way of thinking".
I don't have an answer for this. And it's not my area of expertise. This is just one thing I've noticed. Please do feel free to point out anything stupid I've said, and I apologise in advance for any offense I've caused.
One of the groups thinks of there being "mild autism" and "severe autism" (or "high functioning" and "low functioning"). And they are the ones who want to treat it, and mostly focus on the needs of parents in dealing with their disabled kids.
And then there are the ones I knows more of personally. And they basically think of autism as being a different way of thinking. One which happens to have a common co-morbidity with intellectual disabilities - but the cognitive style and the intelligence issues are separate, they're not two parts of the autism. The first part is the autism, the second just hits a lot of the same people.
And (one of the reasons) the disagreements seem to keep happening because the two sides do not realise that they are conceptualising things so differently. If you think of autism as being both the difference in thinking style _and_ the intellectual disability then the people who talk about how autism isn't a bad thing are clearly detached from reality. And if you think of autism as being a difference in thinking (of which group a higher than normal percentage are also affected by an intellectual disability) then people who want to "cure autism" are basically saying "We want to wipe out your way of thinking".
I don't have an answer for this. And it's not my area of expertise. This is just one thing I've noticed. Please do feel free to point out anything stupid I've said, and I apologise in advance for any offense I've caused.
no subject
I wonder if most of the problem is that kids with both issues are just being diagnosed as 'low functioning autistics' so parents who are really struggling just aren't seeing that the autism bit isn't the (only) problem. I get the impression that even supposed specialists can have very different ideas about anything neurological - we really do still have a very poor grasp of how brain wiring works in general!
But also not my area of expertise either, my understanding is based almost entirely on reading stuff on Twitter and if I've misunderstood any of the autists trying to educate me, I apologise too.
no subject
A good friend of mine is a professor of psychology at Cambridge. He does a lot of work on memory and in recent times has been greatly helped by portable MRI scanners. They seem a great advance on the previous model of finding people with brain injuries and trying to work out what parts of their memory or personality or cognitive functions had been changed.
Or you would observe higher primates and try and draw some correlation between their brain structures and ours.
There was a running joke when we were at uni that his job was basically throwing fruit at monkeys trying to brain damage them for science.