5 Books: Steve Silgerman on Autism
“We already understand the value of biodiversity in a rainforest. The same is true of any community of human minds.”
.. Asperger believed that autism is a condition that requires life-long support from parents and teachers, and that autism and autistic traits are common and always have been. He also recognised that autism can convey some special cognitive gifts even in the presence of profound disability. He noted the prevalence of autistic traits among prominent scientists and believed that those traits helped them do their work. He observed: “It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential. The necessary ingredient may be an ability to turn away from the everyday world, from the simply practical, an ability to rethink a subject with originality so as to create in new untrodden ways.”
.. I’ll try to give you a very condensed version, though important layers of nuance will inevitably be lost. Asperger believed that autism is a condition that requires life-long support from parents and teachers, and that autism and autistic traits are common and always have been. He also recognised that autism can convey some special cognitive gifts even in the presence of profound disability. He noted the prevalence of autistic traits among prominent scientists and believed that those traits helped them do their work. He observed: “It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential. The necessary ingredient may be an ability to turn away from the everyday world, from the simply practical, an ability to rethink a subject with originality so as to create in new untrodden ways.”
.. Kanner took a much narrower and darker view of the condition he claimed to discover. He framed autism as a rare form of childhood psychosis – likely a precursor to adult schizophrenia – triggered by emotionally cold, hyper-ambitious “refrigerator” parents.
.. the word “neurodiversity” was coined in the 1990s by an Australian sociology grad student named Judy Singer after reading a book about the social model of disability, which proposes that disability is a product of the way society is organised, rather than by limitations imposed by a person’s condition.
.. deeply honest book by a woman who didn’t know she was autistic until she was in her 40s because the Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis didn’t exist yet. Instead of presenting this moment as a tragedy, Kim makes clear how empowering a mid-life diagnosis can be: “Once it became clear that I was on the autism spectrum, my first reaction was relief,” she writes. “It explained so much that I thought was my fault – for not trying hard enough or being good enough.”
.. The pitch-perfect FAQ explained, “Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity. There is no known cure.”
.. The Real Experts is a much-needed antidote to the poisonous misconceptions that have caused autistic people and their families untold grief for decades, and offers parents of young people on the spectrum something they never had in the past: role models of successful, empowered, radical autistic lives.
.. One of the Jedi mind-tricks of NeuroTribes is that the autistic person in any scene is almost always the emotional center of the scene, even if clinicians or parents are also in the room: a subversive reversal of the usual framing of autistic lives.
.. Now when a reporter calls to ask me for a comment about autism, I often advise them to talk to autistic adults for the story. Imagine stories about racism that only quoted white people or stories about blindness written entirely from a sighted perspective.