As Autism Awareness Month draws to a close I have some thoughts
I've been reflecting on. Neurodiversity
is not actually a new movement. It's at
least 100 years old evident by the philosophies and practices of Dr. Asperger and colleagues' work in pre-WWII Vienna:
"Asperger and
Weiss worked on a ward at the Children’s Clinic founded in 1911 by a physician,
schoolteacher, and social reformer named Erwin Lazar. His approach to special
education would still be considered innovative today. Instead of seeing the
children in his care as flawed, broken, or sick, he believed they were
suffering from neglect by a culture that had failed to provide them with
teaching methods suited to their individual styles of learning."[i]
But with the destruction of his clinic his work fell into
obscurity and left an opening to be filled by a much darker narrative. For decades Drs. Kanner, Bettleheim, Rimland,
Lovaas, (and still today) Wakefield took advantage of a populous that was
vulnerable[ii]
with agendas driven by ego, money, fabrication, and many more unethical
practices.
Dr. Lorna Wing rediscovered Asperger's work in the 1970s
and then broadened the diagnostic criteria to include people who were struggling
but ineligible for services due to having no formal diagnosis. This led to an upsurge in prevalence but with
it more panic. But in reading the forgotten
history of autism laid out in NeuroTribes I see it as
honoring Asperger by restoring the spectrum[iii]
that Kanner artificially truncated. Neurodiversity
advocates now are reclaiming/reviving his work. But that leads to some hazards...
"History may
not repeat itself, but it often rhymes" - Mark Twain
Time and again different philosophies go in cycles,
falling in and out of favor. For
example: educational constructivism vs. didacticism, medical vs. social models of disability, Dualism
that postulates mind and body as separate entities vs. Monism[iv]. This could explain the stigma surrounding
mental health when it isn’t seen as legitimate as a concrete physical ailment
vs. something in the mind you supposedly control. Far too often people coping with depression
etc. are told to “just get over it.”
It has been said that autism is both a difference and a
disability. To avoid the vicious cycle
of progress/decline we must reconcile all these views. To genuinely help people on the spectrum (and
with other atypical perceptual styles) it is imperative to:
1.
Identify and mitigate disabling aspects. This must be done in a way that respects individual
agency.
2.
Educate and advocate for tolerance and
acceptance in the public consciousness of benign differences.
3.
Above all, the underlying strengths that have
been left by the wayside in favor of normalization must be brought to the
forefront and nurtured.
With these goals in mind, this year I founded NeurodiversiTC: The
Neurodiversity Initiative of Teachers College, Columbia University with the
aim of reaching across departmental lines, unifying teachers, counselors,
clinicians, policy makers, et al. Where
this goes and how successful it will be has yet to be seen. These are not easy questions so we cannot
expect easy answers but in laying out the issues we can decidedly work on them.
[i] Silberman,
Steve (2015-08-25). NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of
Neurodiversity (p. 84). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[ii] And
even gullible to any so-called expert with the title “doctor”
[iii] Originally
phrased as a "continuum" by Asperger’s diagnostician Georg Frankl
[iv] McLeod,
S. A. (2007). Mind Body Debate. Retrieved from
www.simplypsychology.org/mindbodydebate.html
