The aim of this paper is twofold:
I decided writing this after reading of Uta Frith’s “Autism, the enigma explained – second edition”, and I will use it as an example throughout this text, because it made me really angry, and it is also seen as the standard work on autism. Prior knowledge and reading of this book, will certainly help to understand this paper, but are not strictly necessary I think. I will try to quote the relevant sections from Frith’s book where needed.
Footnotes in this text are used as a structural element to make a text a little bit less linear, but they can be equally important as the text itself. Please do not skip them.
For the sake of easy writing, I am gonna use a disclaimer to clarify some things. This will allow me to take on a more arrogant, but mainly also a more clear approach in the rest of the essay.
First and for all. I am gonna give a lot of harsh criticism to academics, and to Uta Frith in particular. I must say two things about this. Not all academics will fit the shoe. There are always exceptions that confirm the rules. I want to allow myself to generalise with this in the back of our mind. Also it must be said that clearly not everything that Uta Frith has said or written about autism is wrong footnote 2:I must say however, that it strikes me that it seems accidental that she sometimes hits the nail on the head. end of footnote 2 , but I think she already has exceeded her share of appraisal, and therefor I am not gonna feel obliged to be unbiased in my analysis. It must be said however that I use her book as an illustration of how bad things can go, but that she is in no way the only one to take the blame. Many follow in her wake and should also take their responsibilities, and their share of the blame.
This is a philosophical theory! I have no knowledge whatsoever in the field of neurobiology. Any correspondences with existing neurological reality are purely coincidental.
I feel obliged to add another section to the disclaimer. After writing this whole theory, going into dept about patterns of thinking and so on, I started to realise something.
It seems that I have applied the Gödel theorem to psychology here. That was not at all intended, and it puts us in a very embarrassing position. It implies that as an autist mind would be a bigger complex system than an NT mind, it would be impossible for a NT academic, to say anything meaningful about it. This would make this theory very awkward, since it takes away all possibilities for defence for the people I attack footnote 3: Of course we are all lucky, and this is also a generalisation, which inherently means that there are exceptions, and therefor NT people could say really meaningful things about autism, and therefor this does make our position a little bit less awkward, since you are not completely deprived from your defence. Did Gödel ever mention the incompleteness of his theorem? end of footnote 3 . It means that the theory would be right, even if it is false footnote 4:Meaning that even if the neurological details would be incorrect, the theory would still stand. These neurological details are only a cloth hanger, to tell the bigger story. I would have written a text to explain autism even if I had never read about the bigger brain theory. end of footnote 4 . It all becomes completely recursive.
Since we all know, there are no solutions for paradoxes. Therefor I have decided to publish this anyway, without changing its original tone. Even though the combination of the bigger brain theory with Gödel implies that psychologists had no chance in the first place, still I think I have reasons to be angry, and therefor, this will remain an angry theory, and for sure not a politically correct one.
On top of that, it is a very young one. The ideas formulated here are only just shaping as I write. The idea that autism comes from ‘bigger brains’, I only discovered yesterday, so this is a young theory, and definitely not an elegant one.
I must say that I never got the point of this section of books. Nobody seems to read these things, except for wives, friends, relatives and colleagues who have been waiting for an excuse to shoot the author. It seems that the longer the list, the more fearful the author is of their close environment. Being an autist, this kind of mind games never worked for me anyhow, so all I’m gonna do is promise to my loved ones that I will keep doing my best at learning how to give a bit more genuine support and appreciation, which they surely deserve.
One acknowledgement must ironically be given here however. I must say that it is Mrs.Frith who brought the bigger brain theory to my attention. Without it, I would still have killed the present theories from my personal knowledge of how autism works for me, but I would be lacking a neurological explanation for all this. This wouldn’t undermine my claims, but rather give Ms. Frith the opportunity to say that I was lacking central coherence.
This neurological basis however allows me to put everything in a nice bigger context. I am very grateful to her for this one important contribution. It is striking on the other hand how she overlooked the importance of this theory, even though it was right under her nose. She has been struggling for years looking for answers, writing an entire book about it, moulding herself in endless bends and corners to keep standing with theories that make absolutely no sense, where right under her nose lay the answer, that explains all the findings of her experiments and all the results of the brain scans much better than her infamous “Explaining the enigma”, which she euphemistically calls herself: “a somewhat reckless subtitle of this book.” It is clear that she was kept from seeing this by her ideology.
This bigger brain theory blatantly doesn’t fit in the framework of an autist being a damaged version of a normal human being. If this was not an ideology, but a theoretical premise for her research, she would have felt no resistance questioning it’s validity. She would also without doubts have started her book with stating that this was the hypothesis she was gonna test. The rest of her book is so nicely structured as to give us clues that this was not the case. This was not a hypothesis that could be questioned empirically. It was more like a Weltanschaung.
If I had suffered from the same ideology, my self-image would be so low, that I probably wouldn’t be around anymore. It was my luck, that I only discovered being autistic just now, because that way this line of thinking did not manage to poison me so much, since I was yet an adult with a life full of experience behind me to compare and see through the bullshit. I can imagine that if told this from childhood, many auti’s suffer also from looking at themselves in this perspective. It is for you people I write this. I believe that if you read this, and start thinking about yourselves, you will recognise yourself as you really are, and feel much better in your skin.
Thus, I must also, I realise now, also to thank my stubbornness, to hold on to my much-criticised ‘rigid’ flexible thinking, which I now realise is not rigid at all, just sound reasoning that doesn’t suit NT social culture very well.
I am a 24 year-old male that discovered about three months ago that I had autism. I accidentally got “The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. – Mark Haddon” in my hands and was struck immediately by the methodology of thinking of the main character. It appeared to me straight away that this book was about me, like after half a page or so. Thanks to the approach of the ‘academics’ on autism, all I knew about it was the Sally and Ann test, which I would have never failed, even in childhood, and that autists cannot recognise facial expressions footnote 5: It is a bit like describing blindness, where as there is a whole spectrum of people who are visually impaired, going from seeing almost like normal people, to almost blind. We too wear glasses, we make our mental glasses to compensate. However with our glasses, the advantages of being an autist do not go away. However these advantages are never thought of, except the extremes like savant skills, which are extremes, and therefor will also come often together with this total or almost total blindness. There is however many more advantages about autism that are often even interpreted completely opposite, because of not understanding them, like rigid thinking, whereas I think we obviously think much more flexible. Our flexible thinking is then being referred to as not seeing social context. Our seeing many more possible contexts than the one NT’s see, is being referred to as weak central coherence, and so the world seems upside down. end of footnote 5 . Even with this pathetically wrong knowledge of autism I always used to say I had a dash of autism, but of course didn’t understand the overall impact it had on my life. After all, this autism was not at all like me. Uta Frith still goes round proclaiming this kind of bullshit about autists. In a recent interview with her, I read: ”Autists cannot lie and they cannot manipulate.” Let me put this right for once and for all Ms. Frith. Autists can do everything you can and more... footnote 6: In many of the testimonies by autists and their partners, I read about visits to these so-called experts with the greatly distressing answer: “Madame, it is impossible that your husband has autism, after all autists cannot be adults, neither have intimate relationships.” That they would now not anymore dare to claim this, is not the relevant lesson here. It is an attitude still widely spread amongst professionals, not only towards autism by the way. They now make different claims, which are no more based on real knowledge or sound reasoning than this one, but will be stated with the same hautain arrogance. end of footnote 6
Christopher, the main character, had a lot of symptoms that I didn’t have. This was the start of a quest for knowledge about autism. It was shocking to see that all the books by academics that I managed to get my hands on, seemed to be full with bullshit and awfully, wrongfully drawn conclusions. In contrast, all the texts by autists and partners of autists were highly interesting and allowed me to identify which parts of my personality were affected by autism.
In the end I have to conclude that everything is affected. But at the time, I had to start to build up from the behavioural symptoms I recognised. After reading numerous, but numerous texts about autism, I still read about symptoms I recognise, that I have not seen in any other text before. I think that to try and draw up a list of symptoms of autism would be a clear sign of not understanding the nature of the beast. It would be like claiming to write a list of behavioural symptoms of being female.
This also makes it hard to structurise this text. Imagine that mainly men would dominate the field of expertise about women (delegated this status by college degrees). They would describe a whole load of things about women not conform their norms (e.g. Hysterical, not interested in football, some more random stuff, being less intelligent than men, etc… ) footnote 7: A bit like Freud’s (and contemporaries) approach. end of footnote 7 . On top of that, they would have the pretension to tell you how this would be psychologically explained. How in this context would you start to explain the differences between genders from your point of view. The ‘symptoms’ described by the men would not really structurally make sense, even if they would, from their point of view put them in a structure based on their analysis.
In this situation, it is really hard to write this essay in a structured manner. Since we as autists, have not for 50 years had collective development of how we see the differences, so these ideas are really young. Neurodiversity is now setting in. For the rest, I think many of the ideas presented here, will be new to most readers. I have to base myself therefor on a text from the ‘opponent’, with its completely twisted structure. This makes it difficult to write structurally, and a lot of the text will be explaining quotes from Uta Frith’s book, and explaining why they are wrong interpretations. I have no doubts that later, this field will be much deeper examined, and better described.
On top of that it would be no more than normal, that in this negative atmosphere, you would like to emphasise a bit all the advantages women have. Just to maybe bring things into balance a bit. This will also be quite arrogantly done in this text.
People being offended by that arrogance should think properly about the above paragraph. I mean, this text might be more than my real opinion, it has a function and is written in this light. I even don’t think it makes sense to really have an opinion about this. I don’t even know where the truth is, probably somewhere in the middle, who cares.
The sad reality we are facing about psychology as a science, is that the same ideological or religious-like mental problems that caused psychologists in the past to try and prove women or Negroes less intelligent than white men, that have caused persistence in saying that homosexuality was a disorder and needed a cure, that lobotomy, obligatory electroshocks, isolatory confinement or drugs footnote 8: Generalisation, you see them coming?-> I am not saying that it could never be a sound choice to treat a mental problem with a drug. What I am aiming at is that in a healthy situation, it would be an exception, not the rule. end of footnote 8 are sound solutions to mental problems, are still vividly alive and kicking today. Neither of these were conclusions of sound reasoning.
There is no other conclusion to this than that it greatly pleased the ego of these people with a degree, to have the powerkick of looking down at others and in the same time having great power over them. It seems that they feel that the degree they hold gives them the right to oppress others. This DISORDER is clearly the same one from which are suffering: Politicians and other dictators, policeman and women, military officers and privates, perpetuators of domestic violence, parents, teachers, bosses, an other endless list of invented functions, etc ……This is the disease called “delegated power”!
I am not claiming that these dynamics are always clear to the people who put them in practice. An enormous and powerful propaganda machine is put into place to push clear analysis of dynamics like the one above in our unconscious. It is the very clear that this propaganda is aimed mainly at the oppressor, telling you that you are not an oppressor. This is a very deep process difficult and unpleasant to grasp. It might take you a long time to free yourself from this doctrine enough to see it. After all Goebels would look bleak in comparison to the contemporary propaganda. It has shocking consequences and shows you how for example ethics are no more than a police-man in your head, because they never apply to people with power, how anti-globalisation movements comfort you, that it is not you oppressing people in the third world, but delegates at the WTO. This will make clear to you that you are not responsible for your actions, such as paying taxes to pay for the bombs killing Iraqi children, because what other choices do you have? Water finds the path with the least resistance, like your conscious finds the path demanding least courage.
A thorough study of the psychology of politics, or the politics of psychology, would lead us away from the scope of this article, but it was necessary to mention, if we want a clear view at the position of Uta Frith in her book “Autism - explaining the enigma”. Following quotes from this book nicely illustrate the above analysis:
Immediately in the preface we find traces of this thinking:
“Most people have accepted that autism is a lifelong condition and that it is inappropriate to expect a cure, as if it were an illness like flu that could be shaken off. It is rather like blindness, which is also a lifelong condition with extensive effects on the family and the community of the sufferer. While the label “blind child” is acceptable to most people, this is not the case with “autistic child”. Of course I realise that the label “child with autism” emphasises that first and foremost there is a child. A handicap should not be mistaken for a person’s identity. But specialists writing about the condition need to be able to identify it without confusing their reader. This is why I have used the adjective “autistic” if this increased the clarity of the writing. I regret that this is at the cost of being politically incorrect. But how would one forget that autistic individuals, just as blind individuals, each have their distinct and unique personalities and their own way of managing their life?”
I’m not gonna bother explaining that, just replace all references to the word autistic by female, and you will get the picture.
In the first chapter “What is autism”, she often calls autism a disorder.
In the second chapter “The Enchantment of autism”, one first enjoys the charming and funny story of Brother Juniper, an autist of twelfth century Italy, after which she makes some philosophical comparisons between autists and robots, including AI Bots that can initiate conversation. Here she makes an interesting point that we will examine in detail later in this text. She also revealed again a tip of the hidden axiom that formed the bases of her research:
“Where bringing up children is concerned, good parenting and special education will not make a damaged child normal, but will make the child achieve its normal potential.”
Remember how before she emphasised that “there is first and foremost a child”, now we catch her of guard. The political correct veil has dropped enough to let us peep at her true face. There is not really a child, more like a damaged child, part of a child.
It is not surprising that people like Uta Frith can count on the support of a lot of parents of autist children. Parents don’t make children because they feel they will do these future brads a favour. They make children because they want them. Actually they don’t make them, they consume them. When it turns out that the child does not fulfil the expectations raised by the commercial, they want to angrily return it to the Wal-Mart to express their fury. Obviously these parents would turn to people like Ms. Frith with a lot of hopes of cures. No doubt that it is this parental attitude, that has helped to shape the idea that autists are “damaged children”.
The third chapter “Lessons of history”, presents a whole bunch of stories of autists in the past, all seen through the eyes of the NT people surrounding them. After some stories, the reader can’t help it to wonder from where the necessity comes to attribute such importance to the descriptions of NT’s about autists who lived in the past. One wonders whether there is a lack of contemporary autists, as well as why the advantages of being able to ask autists nowadays how autism functions are not being taken in consideration. Clearly it would be as if Mrs.Frith had been a botanicus footnote 9: In the acknowledgements of her book, we see no mention of any autists (the already mentioned danger of leaving someone out of your acknowledgements… those who do read it…indeed), this is not surprising, because it is as if she would have studied plants. She would also not have mentioned them in the acknowledgements. It also illustrates that she has learned nothing from autists, and therefor implies that she never listened to them, or asked the right questions. I will come back to this later. end of footnote 9 . She studies objects. In the end of her book she explains this by demonstrating serious doubt about the self-consciousness of autists.
Further it is noteworthy that Mrs.Frith finds autists puzzling. It never occurred to her that NT’s are just as puzzling. This is clearly due to an overly egocentric NT point of view. It will turn out that actually most characteristics attributed to autism are just as well applicable to Neuro Typicals, or any other neurological group. It is clear that they are characteristics of looking at each other without realising that Neurodiversity is at play here. In the rest of this essay we will dismantle the current theories about autism from this perspective, as they are presented in Mrs.Frith’s book.
The conclusion of this introduction is clearly that there was an underlying dogma poisoning the empirical research of Mrs.Frith. It can however only be seen by reading between the lines. She would never literally pose it as a hypothesis for the research, either because she was not aware of her biased point of view, or it was not politically correct. In any case, her assumption was:
“Autists are damaged humans” footnote 10: We have been promoted, before this would have said: “autists are damaged children.” I am however not at all impressed by this promotion, as to stop striking against ‘academic’ psychology. end of footnote 10
As we pointed out in the beginning of this introduction, this axiom was not taken because of sound reasoning, but because of conscious or unconscious political beliefs.
Bigger Brain Theory – The theory that autism is caused by having bigger brains, with abnormally many synapses or grey cells or both. Neurological research has shown that autists have bigger brains.
Bottom-up control – see top down control
Central coherence, local coherence – Having strong central coherence means that one sees things in a context, as opposed to autists for example who are being accused of not seeing social context. The opposite, having strong local coherence, means someone does not easily get confused by surroundings, for example in a visual illusion.
Local coherence – see central coherence
Neurone – A brain cell
NT, Neuro Typical – Person or culture related to having a neurological brain set-up that is conform the norm. In this book interpreted as being not autistic, and thus not having extra complex neural set-up in the cognitive parts of the brain.
Sally and Ann test – A test for theory of mind, whereby someone is asked where Sally would look for something she left behind, if Ann had moved it in the mean time. Autistic children will often point at the place where the object really is, as compared to where Sally left it.
Savant skills – The ‘special’ skills autists have like being able to say pi to a thousand digits after the decimal, or hearing absolute pitch, or writing e = mc², or having photographic memory, etc…
Synapses – The connections between neurones (brain cells).
Top-down control , bottom up control – This relates to how a brain deals with incoming information or ideas. Bottom up is quite obvious, it assumes all information just goes up to ones attention unfiltered. Top down would be some central attention span controlling unit deciding which impulses to filter out and which to process.
As for introducing a new theory on autism, we will, unlike Mrs.Frith, try not to let everything depend on assumption. We will put forward three hypothesises, which will not be questioned within this theory, but are of course stated clearly to be available for questioning later:
Further conclusions will be deductions from these three premises, combined with results from the experiments mentioned in “Autism the enigma explained – second edition.”, as well as the results from neurologic research (e.g. Brainscans footnote 12: Also just taking the ones mentioned in Mrs.Frith’s book. end of footnote 12 ), and knowledge about autism by personal experience of the author, unless we add more hypothesises, which will be clearly stated. The personal experience makes this theory of course a personal account, and asks for feedback by other autists.
I will for now be assuming that this is only genetic influence, however I use this only to explain things. It is not really a hypothesis for the theory, because I have a gut feeling that like with everything there is environmental and genetic influences. It would just be beyond the scope of this book to make any claims upon this.
Here we enter a whole new world. One entered, I have the impression, by few neurologists or psychologists. What happens in a brain with many more connections than other humans have. As for one easy answer, the savant qualities of autists explain partly what happens there. As to clarify the other aspects of the difference, let’s write a short semi-fiction story about Jamie and the swodin computers.
In an ideal brain, all neurones should be connected to all other neurones. This would allow all possible lines of thinking, without bias. This ideal brain, would also be in high need of a very strong cognitive capacity to deal with the enormous possibilities created, and with the randomness of this (a chaotic element). This brain would excel in the power of abstraction. It would be like a tabula rasa, only defined by the fact that neurones could activate one another. Somehow like a computer with no software installed. Obviously the essence of this is that you can not use a computer without software, but you are also not yet limited to the operating system that came with the vendor. Nature figured this and went back to work. Nature installed an operating system.
Operating systems can have certain attributes. One could be less complex, easier in usage. Of course, this ease of use comes at the price of loosing flexibility and customisability. You would have to stick with the functions included. On the other hand might be an operating system that gave you basic commands, to talk to your hardware (basic motoric functions, breathing, heartbeat), but still wouldn’t deliver a template for social interaction. This would be far less user-friendly. This would be a computer for geeks, who want to write their own software.
Programs or different computers could talk to each other in any way they like, unlike with the easier operating system. Programmers might be able to develop software for it in any programming language they prefer, whereas in the first case, maybe only one or two would be supported….Obviously to support all this extra functionality, the complex system needs many more neurological connections.
Let’s call the simple system SWODIN and the more complex system XUNI. Our story begins with the law of Murphy. As one might imagine, shit always goes wrong and nature forgets to include the manuals this time. This leads to the users of swodin being in advantage of the few xuni users, because actually the system is quite user-friendly and easy to learn. After they master it completely however, there is little room for further development, or specialisation, but hey, they have been lucky. The swodin system comes with 1 built in network protocol, so the swodin computers easily communicate with one another. To their even greater luck, there are plenty of swodin users around, so they set of on the happy and cheerful business of chatting to each other.
In the middle of all this swodin happiness was Jamie. Jamie had been given a xuni computer. He hadn’t really chosen this, as a matter of fact he didn’t even know about the existence of other operating systems. He started poking around a little bit to explore his computer. As he found out, without manual, a xuni computer wasn’t fun. It was utterly complex to use and everything had to be built from scratch. Jamie spend hours and hours of very hard work, to get the basics functioning. In the mean time the others, who could see a computer in the network, did not understand why Jamie was never answering to their chatting attempts. It seemed his computer wasn’t even making connection properly. Maybe his network adapter didn’t function? Maybe he wasn’t at all interested in them? Maybe there was no user behind this computer? At first Jamie didn’t pay to much notice to his network adapter, because he was busy from dusk till dawn trying to get his machine working.
One day, the computer users heard a story, that on other networks similar users were found. In most cases they didn’t communicate at all. What a mystery…Some of them seemed to communicate a little.
Jamie in the mean time had come round to having a look at the network adapter. He knew this served the purpose of communicating with other computers, and he, there seemed to be a network connection found. After some more fiddling and programming, Jamie managed to intercept packets. As you can imagine there was no network protocol delivered with xuni, so Jamie was building his own. How cool. The packets looked something like this:
54 6F 20 64 65 63 69 70 68 65 72 20 74 68 69 73 20 6C 69 74 74 6C 65 20 74 65 78 74 2C 20 69 73 20 61 20 70 69 65 63 65 20 6F 66 20 70 69 73 73 2C 20 74 68 61 74 20 69 73 20 68 6F 77 65 76 65 72 20 69 66 20 79 6F 75 20 6B 6E 65 77 20 68 6F 77 20 74 6F 20 64 6F 20 69 74 2E 20 49 66 20 79 6F 75 20 68 61 64 20 6E 6F 20 63 6C 75 65 73 20
61 73 20 74 6F 20 77 68 65 72 65 20 74 6F 20 6C 6F 6F 6B 2C 20 61 6E 64 20 63 6F 75 6C 64 20 6F 6E 6C 79 20 74 72 79 20 74 6F 20 73 65 65 20 70 61 74 74 65 72 6E 73 2C 20 69 74 20 77 6F 75 6C 64 20 62 65 20 75 74 74 65 72 6C 79 20 64 69 66 66 69 63 75 6C 74 2C 20 77 6F 75 6C 64 6E 27 74 20 69 74 2E 20
Jamie was puzzled! This would take him years to decipher. The network protocol never got completely finished, because it turned out to be utterly complex. Maybe the other users were using a relatively simple protocol, but he just didn’t have a clue as to where to start looking. The possibilities were endless, and the clues none, just a series of numbers. Every programmer would build a network protocol differently. There was no way of finding out than to search for patterns and their meanings….Jamie did however built a sending routine into his network protocol, but it seemed that the other computers didn’t manage to decipher the packets he send either. They must have looked just as confusing.
In the meantime, the swodin users were wildly speculating about these weird xuni computers and their users. What was going on with these ghost computers. Was there sleeping beauties beyond the hedge of thorns that blocked the communication? Were the users of these computers in a “death-like sleep, or rather in a life like death” footnote 13: This is how Mrs.Frith starts the second chapter of her book. end of footnote 13
Some brave princes presented themselves to be the forefront of the research. Some of the computers were giving some sort of signals, so they would start observing and trying to decipher the packets. Unfortunately, the princes being of the kingdom of swodin computers, were lesser computer experts than the xuni users, since they had only been able to learn the standard swodin system, and were not aware of the possibility of having more complex systems like xuni.
After a while, the people who had xuni users on their local network, started to ask questions to the princes about the progress and the ego of the princes was flattered greatly. Everybody was looking at them with great awe and expectations…. Well? The princes started of a bit shy:” Euh…. Well…. You know…..”, and more like “We haven’t yet completely found out you know…..”. But the people were curious and insisted… “Well …” the princes knew they could not say they had no clue. So they started fantasising…:”Well, it seems that the users of the xuni computers cannot imagine that we are trying to communicate to them, and also they don’t realise the effect of their packets on our computer systems, so it seems that they accidentally send a virus sometimes. Also it is clear that the operating systems on these computers were damaged…” “They are also uninterested in us and insensitive to the feelings of other people” shouted another. So it came that the swodin users came to look at them with a mixture of pity and hurt.
The princes were falling over each other to be the most interesting and to acquire most status. The more the naive, ignorant listeners were clustered to their lips, the more speculative the stories became. In the end they would be wondering what was left of their original righteous intentions, as they seemed so far of track. Ah well, maybe the question was not so relevant anymore, since there was no way back anyway.
It turned out that actually there was some sort of compatibility between the two systems, they did appear to be similar, just with the xuni system being more universal and less pre determined than the other. It turned out that there were hybrid systems. Some were more like swodin, and some were more like xuni. Also the successful integration of the xuni users depended on their analytical skills and their ability to write good software like network protocols to imitate the built in swodin protocol.
Some of the users from the hybrid computers had these analytical skills, as well as the luck that there was a basic design included of the network protocol, even though it still needed writing out the code itself. They managed to communicate basically with the others, of which they didn’t knew they were different, because the others didn’t talk about operating systems much. The parts of their network protocol that they had invented themselves, because of it not being complete, tended to confuse the others, as did the corresponded parts of the swodin protocol to them. But as by sometimes talking to each other, they started to understand they were somehow different. Different than most users. They all of a sudden realised the princes were actually talking of them, and knew that this was disgraceful. Therefore some of them, who had a good enough network protocol to communicate, started to take on their defence, and a xuni rights movement was founded.
The rest of this story is history I reckon, so I’m gonna stop this because I don’t like writing fiction. footnote 14: I now figure that actually this whole story is history, how could people have missed this? end of footnote 14 This metaphor does of course not explain everything, but I hope that it makes it easier for NT people to realise how we experience this.
How would you relate this to a brain. Let me do an attempt. This is not so much because I have the pretension to say I know how the brain works, but just because I think it helps to give it some physical shape. This is only how something like this could possibly be working. It is more to be able to visualise it. This way, we can imagine that it is neurologically possible that this theory is correct. A sort of imaginary practicum for the theory, to make it less lonely. We therefore introduce a new sub hypothesis:
The brain works like a neural network giving weight to certain lines of thinking and eliminating lines that are too light.
I see this with help of a concept in artificial intelligence. In the neural networks used in this field, neurones, and paths, lines of thinking, get a certain weight. If this line of thinking leads to a successful result for example, the weight of the neurones on this line will be increased by 3. If this lead to a failure to solve the problem, the neurones on this line receive a minus 1 penalty. On trying to solve a problem always the line with the highest weight will be tried first. This way a dynamic network learns from its successes and failures. If a neurone drops below a certain level, it could be eliminated. Sometimes, new neurones could be created at random by creating mutations footnote 15: This last sentence applies to AI, not to real brains. end of footnote 15 .
Imagine now this situation for real brains. Maybe for a certain idea a Neuro typical has 30 possible routes through a number of neurones. With the weight calculations and maybe additional clues as of which line to choose, this decision might not be difficult. Especially towards social interaction, if the other people would also vaguely have these 30 connections, more or less. We would understand each other now wouldn’t we. But what if you had like 30.000 possible connections for figuring why person X had really said this for example. Right, you had a problem there.
There are solutions here, for example, imagine that with the weight system, the 30 routes that NT’s have would be positively discriminated towards the other 27970, you would just have superior possibilities in thought, no? footnote 16: We could consider that NT’s have the same connections, but just a different weight division. This would however be inconsistent with the results of the brain research, which found that autists have bigger brains. end of footnote 16 This however is not possible (nature did forget the manual). How do you determine which 30 to give higher weight? There could be a logic rational way of determining this. Maybe like in a given chess position, a certain move is just the best move. It’s just superior. Or more, say a number of moves, can just be determined to be very bad moves. This way you could make guesses to eliminate these 30000 to maybe 5000. This is an example of the kind of techniques autists use to make communication with NT’s possible (we will see later that this pattern matching logic is our main way of thinking. Life, the universe, is however not as simple as a chess game, and nobody so far has been able to find the pattern found everywhere in life. It is however I think the nature of autists, to recognise in a line of thinking the presence or denial of this universal pattern. It could be called a universal pattern of wisdom, or sound reasoning if you like).
The problem with these other 5000 is however that even if they got a weight by their quality, with the best move getting a really high probability score, this still doesn’t bring you very close to choosing the right one, since rational logic is not what the Neurotypical brain is based on. It is based on a genome. The only way to give a weight score in the neural networks of an autist about the lines of thinking of NT’s, is to copy the entire section of the genome that constructs the brain.
This is why for example a computer will never be able to communicate in a natural way with NT’s. However sophisticated the neural network is in giving weight and so on, there is now way to logically predict the next move of a NT.
The NT network protocol, making communication possible, is not determined by logic, but by arbitrary choice of the swodin programmer. Without the manual (the entire genome section constructing the brain), there is no way of determining the true motivations, intentions, etc… for a communication, but to try finding abstract patterns in the chaos.
The reason that the entire section of the genome is required has to do with the necessity of applying theory of mind, or as Ms. Frith calls it, mentalizing. We will follow her example and use the word mentalizing which means the process of attributing mental states to others.
To end this chapter, already a nice conclusion can be drawn. The story of the operating systems explains why autists are slow starters. For example if Einstein developed his theories in late life, he would make a good candidate to be an autist, but a Mozart, which was seen as a wonder child, composing at very young age and so on, would not likely have overcome all the childhood difficulties of a xuni operating system. We are diesel engines. We start slow, but drive further.
If one was to find several autistic wonder children, this theory of autism would be in severe need of revision.
To me it seems like common sense to see that different brain areas having more synapses (/grey matter) would generate the different characteristics of autism. Having more synapses in the parts responsible for vision, or memory, would maybe allow you to have photographic memory. More connections in the aural areas might lead to hearing absolute pitch, more in the areas giving gradation to senses may lead to oversensitivity.
This is all very obvious. It gets more complicated when it comes down to relating the more cognitive or psychological effects of this. For example having also more synapses in the cognitive control parts of the brain, or the units recognising patterns, might allow good compensation skills for cognitively understanding social interaction of NT’s. In the parts relating to reason, this might lead to extreme mathematical skill.
To conclude this part, I would like to say that the important lesson is, it could probably be any part of the brain, and the effect is one of greater complexity with greater potential, but harder to master and therefore risking not getting mastered (completely). It will also imply greater preference for specialisation, because if you get much more information, you could analyse this information to much greater extend. If you had to remember every detail of what you saw, your hunger for visual input might be satisfied without leaving your room, whereas other people like to go on holidays, to other countries, to see new landscapes… It’s a bit like having a really efficient digestive system. You would probably not eat very much. Imagine you were force-fed to eat as much as others. I think you would feel sick too.
In the rest of this text I will actually just be looking at ‘symptoms’ and their interpretation by Mrs.Frith, to then explain them from this background and pointing out that this makes complete sense to my experiences of life. It will also become clear that about all the critique Mrs.Frith (not only her) gives on autists, can be reversed. In this light we will prove that her stance was insensitive, and that NT’s also lack mentalizing skills, at least to the same degree. We will show that Mrs.Frith’s viewpoint on autism demonstrates weak central coherence, that autists actually need very good top-down control and much more…
I think a fair word needs to be said about this also. Looking at these brains, when would we say someone is an autist. At first sight, I would say, it’s up to the individual to decide whether they experience it as a serious handicap, or advantage, in their life. There is no outside diagnoses that can make meaningful statements about this. On the other hand, we should urgently stop seeing it as a handicap. I would like to speculate autism is something that comes in normal population like a Gaussian curve, where on one end you have autistic features, and on the other end, you could for example have someone with few synapses in their brain regions dealing with hearing, and they might be deaf. Same for other autistic features. At the other end of the curve there might be people with few connections in their cognitive regions, and be mentally retarded? Autists might also appear to be mentally retarded, because they need much more top-down control to come to the same standards as anybody else. The increased synapses in visual functions might not have come hand in hand with the needed equally increased capacity to process all this extra info.
I think therefore the term autism or autist starts to wobble a bit. I would like to say there are autistic features. Maybe if these autistic features occur in the central cognitive regions of the brain also, one could have the feeling that is affects overall experience of life. I certainly have this feeling. Otherwise one might just have talent for mathematics or have an exceptional memory. The same dynamics apply to both however. As a person with many synapses in the aural area, might be able to listen or at least hear with much greater precision, so can a person with autistic cognitive central unit think much more precise and complex. If however there are too many synapses, chaos emerges, in either brain region. This is the randomness mentioned before.
As all of this is far from being understood completely, this does imply that we are still far away from thinking or discussing how autistic children and adults would best be guided. For giving meaningful answers to this, we would need to get a much better grasp of how autism works in relation to Neuro typicality.
For example, maybe the network protocol of the swodin computer was definitely not as refined as some of the home-made ones written on the xuni computers. Also about other features of the computers (metaphoric for the universe, not only one’s own body), the xuni programmers just knew much more, because they had had to built the routines to address them themselves. Maybe the xuni users just refused to adapt certain aspects of the swodin network protocol, because they saw the limits of it. They saw no need to limit themselves equally, to great disliking of the swodin users which were often offended because their simplistic signals were just being ignored by the xuni users because the latter ones just thought them of little relevance. They would have liked to be able to draw more complex conclusions. (this often harvests blame for being insensitive)
Many of the skills of autists are taken unjustly for faults, as this turns things upside down, do we want to guide autists as to teach them also to behave faulty? It appears to me not. That’s why I have stubbornly held on to my so called ‘rigid’ thinking. That’s why a lot of auti’s have been protesting adaptation programmes. I think it would be therefore precautious, to conclude on how to deal best with autism. Maybe some of the autistic social skills should be taught to normal children instead of the other way round. We should take a fresh look at this once we truly understand what we are dealing with.
This booklet will not concern itself with practical guidance, because for now I think it is first needed to build a solid theoretical foundation.
In the rest of the book, I will be mainly talking about autistic features that have to do with the central cognitive control unit, and with social interaction. Simply because I have no “autistic senses”, only autistic thought. Also, because I think that autistic senses are easily explained, and I have already explained how I thought this was caused neurologically.
It is time I think to introduce yet another set of hypothesises, because I think otherwise I would fall into speculation or philosophy here too much and that’s beyond the scope of the article. Indeed, it’s not a new theory, but one suggested at different points through philosophy and science, I assume. I have not at all done research into this, and think that I came to these conclusions because of thinking of my autism and how I make choices in life and thinking.
Say, if you have many more neurological connections, as we saw in chapter one, you need to do some sort of elimination to go from chaos to reason. We saw how this could, in a virtual neurological model, be done by adding weight to connections. Say we are playing chess or igo. footnote 17: A Chinese game extremely valuable for analysing abstract patterns, because it is far more abstract even than chess. The board also represents a far more complex and chaotic universe. end of footnote 17 It is quite obvious to determine which connections are to receive superior weight. Those that will win you the game! Life here might be more complex, and the goals also (they should be unless you are a capitalist bastard), but the same patterns can definitely be used to determine good and bad moves. The enemy might here be considered doing stupid things, being insensitive for your girlfriend and therefore losing your relationship with her, behaving bold which makes people feel bad without wanting to…However, I think adding weight to the neural network in autism will be done by testing to a set of abstract patterns, similar to that of igo.
The collection of these patterns in our heads is what one might call wisdom. These patterns are interleaved with each other. They nuance each other, point at exceptions, ultimately extending this web of interacting patterns, until it becomes utterly enormous and at last unworkable. A neural network with weights added to specific lines (this is, I think, called ‘intelligence’, if combined with self-awareness of course). This could be extended even further. Your ultimate set of data, your ultimate control group for testing truth, would be the relations between all the atoms in the whole universe. This is where pattern recognition comes in. How can you represent such large wisdom in a pattern as compact as possible, from which all others can be derived according to the rules of logic.
The enormous wisdom that is held by the circle for example can be represented in the number of Pi. An infinite string of digits. If one was to make this wisdom more workable, more usable than such a long string of digits, one could look for a pattern, to simplify it. The pattern that one would ultimately find is the drawing or concept of a circle, infinity, recursive and limited in space, as opposed to a line which will never come back to its origin. Infinity cannot be represented in decimal numbers, it would therefore be nonsense to look for a pattern in π represented by decimal numbers, because the sort of wisdom called infinity, unreal numbers, cannot and never will be represented in decimal digits. Why look for a pattern still when this is the synthesis of all the circle’s wisdom:
A perfectly balanced, endless loop. What we can yet not grasp is how this kind of wisdom could be of use to a computer. I think the reason is consciousness. The difference with a computer is that a computer looks at the info itself. It has for now not been programmed extensively to maintain all sorts of circumstantial information needed for recognising patterns. We attribute a lot of circumstantial properties to things. Associations will include: time, in relation to structure, like at what time of the day/week/year/life, did something happen, in what circumstances, in what context in relation to all sorts of things; were other people involved in the event?, were there causes, or consequences of it, on who, why, ….. You get it, this list is endless. It allows us to collect and compare information about how predictive things are for example. This is something that I’m only just getting aware of while writing and the consequences are yet beyond my grasp, but are definitely of great importance footnote 18: In the field of Artificial Intelligence for example, understanding things like this would make an enormous difference. end of footnote 18 . The abstraction is build up of many layers. Our circle for example would not only be recognised in a loop iterating through time – sun gets up every day – but also with all other possible meta-properties, like shape, mental constructs or ideas, to the fact that we saw loops in several different things that were related by some other circumstance. This abstraction seems like it can go on forever. This is something that needs working out for sure, but one thing is very clear. Increased complexity of neural networks, greatly improves the benefits of using patterns. A computer with more storage space and calculating power, would definitely have an advantage as to store and process patterns in circumstantial properties.
Similarities in these meta-properties are definitely more important for autists than the actual properties of the subject, because that’s how things interrelate, that tells us something about how to add weight to certain lines of thinking. That allows predicting things. This is why I think autists are actually thanks to their nature quite lucky in terms of compensating mentalizing skills with people or systems of different neurological set-ups. That’s also why, as we will see in the next chapter, autists will make remarks that make no sense when only looking to the literal context. They will often tell you something about the circumstances (or more likely the patterns in those circumstances).
However, in humans it is clear that abstract patterns give us wisdom, as we start to recognise them in all other aspects of life. I think that through the neurological set-up of autists, we are much more susceptible to such patterns, and obligatory so, since for us there is much greater need, to create a gut feeling of good and bad decisions, as there are many more options than for a NT. Obviously NT’s have this also, but I think, limited to those connections that have not yet been eliminated by their neurological set-up. The more possible lines of thinking you have, the more complexity you can hold (by means of a weight system), and therefore the more understanding you could build up about complex systems (like the universe, Einstein’s and Newton’s, or about mathematics or computers, or go games or chess games, or all these complex and chaotic systems auti’s just love to study to improve their basic universal pattern of wisdom). This is why autists have savant skills. An autist might hold a neural network complex enough to hold the true nature of the calendar. A pattern through which a date can be linked to a day of the week, without having to memorise all of them. A formula if you like. Just as in the go game, it would be impossible to memorise all the concrete entries in the table.
In the go game, this concept is nicely demonstrated, and computers are hopelessly lost. Unlike in chess, there are many, many more possible lines of play, 361! footnote 19: For those who don’t know this formula, it is 361 times 360 times 359 times 358 all the way down to 1. Never multiply by zero, or you will find you’ve lost some possibilities, lol end of footnote 19 , to be mathematically correct. With computational power today, this is too many to generate a tree. This means no memorising all the possibilities… They only way to resolve the game is by means of abstract wisdom. No wonder that there are hundreds of proverbs illustrating aspects of wisdom that are needed for good play… The odds are now that one American go player defeated the handtalk go software with a head start of 35 stones for the computer. Imagine you would give the computer a head start of 35 moves at chess….
Anyway because I like them, I still want to state the hypothesises given to us by the makers of the film “Pi”. Quote from the main character:
“12.45 restate my assumptions:
Scientific rigor obliged him to state his assumptions. As to not be tricked by them without realising. Why is scientific rigor needed here? Because we are studying systems of which the complexity surpasses by far our grasp. If you had an utterly complex brain, you would need scientific rigor to keep it from falling into chaos. This is sometimes perceived by NT’s as rigidity in thinking. Our thinking is however only bound to rigid patterns. The patterns of our wisdom so far acquired. A methodology for thinking, which must not be parted from, because otherwise you end up with, for example, unchecked assumptions which can be greatly disturbing. We must work very systematically, to be able to learn anything. This might give someone the impression we are very rigid and repetitive. But the auti might just be checking a whole lot of possible solutions with a similar pattern that only changes a little bit every time. This is the only way to learn. If we would try out things randomly, we would be completely lost. Say it looks like this type of pattern is not gonna solve it, but if we don’t make it absolutely sure, then we would not be able to eliminate this pattern group for sure, and that would be a nightmare in a very complex brain. To keep overview of our lines of thinking, we have to deal with them in a systematic rigor.
These patterns are however extremely flexible and can be applied to anything in life. That is flexibility missed partly by NT’s, it seems. I think it becomes clear that many of the freaks deepening out one specific aspect of life, or of the universe, are autists. We can just build a much deeper understanding of the universal rules. This explains why only footnote 20: Just to clarify things a bit. The stance of this text is not to imply that autists are superior to other people. We are different! It is a very wrong pattern to try and classify people hierachically. A genius is no better than a fool! end of footnote 20 an autist can find things like e = mc². We can also for example focus on one detailed aspect from something, because for us the detailed aspect actually beholds a world of complexity of it’s own, on which the same patterns can again be applied. Another person’s consciousness might be filled with the greater context, leaving no more neurones to specialise any further. The more neurones and synapses you have, the more you can specialise, while still being aware of the context.
In the film, it is suggested, that if a computer finds the one true pattern, that can be found in everything, it starts to realise that pattern can be applied to applying it, and to this applying, …. An infinite loop takes place, and burns the chip by overheating as self-consciousness is born. This idea is not completely aloof. I can imagine that computers could be at ultimate self conscious, and that this is the realisation that the patterns you use to examine others also apply to yourself…
How do we deal with this infinite loop in our brains? Does it not yet drive us mad because we have not found this one true pattern? Do the loops always stop somewhere with incomplete patterns? How comes though that we can be self conscious without this universal pattern? Is this because our senses like touch, vision, taste, smell and hearing help us be aware of ourselves? Is there an ultimate difference between awareness and consciousness??? Many questions remain unanswered here. They are also beyond the scope of explaining autism.
I have thrown most of the remaining theories of Uta Frith into one chapter, because if the abstract patterns in the last chapter are understood, then separating speech, rigid thinking, central coherence, savant skills, small talk, stimming… no longer makes any sense. It all comes down to the same universal pattern. I have tried to organise them a little bit according to theme.
Mrs.Frith devotes a chapter of her book to verbal communication. What immediately draws our attention is the conversation she had with an autistic girl. She tries to have some small talk with her, which obviously fails. Instead of asking the girl why she doesn’t like small talk, she spends the whole chapter pondering over the question, not to come to any sensible results, all because she failed to realise she could have just asked. It seems that however well Mrs.Frith manages to see lack of insight for such things in autists, she doesn’t seem to notice she is heavily affected herself. There is actually not one instance in the book where she mentions the opinion of autists, even though there has been a quite strong claim from an autists rights movement footnote 21: Several people asked for references here, well, type “autism rights movement” in a search engine, or in wikipedia. end of footnote 21 explaining our point of view, and explaining that it concerns Neurodiversity instead of a disease.
It needs little explaining that a lot of communication, especially small talk, is not literal, and that people say things other than they mean. The meanings are not to be recovered by means of reason. They are recovered because NT’s know intuitively what it means. This leaves the actual words as rather uninteresting vessels for a meaning.
I think for an autist to be listening to small talk, it can best be understood as a person without computer knowledge, listening to two computer geeks vividly discussing “the performance optimisation of their programming code, depending on the compiler, or manual fine-tuning at the assembly level…” Quite clearly any English native has a vocabulary including all the words in the preceding sentence. You might however, I suspect, be left completely astonished, but after a while also bored to death, if you tried to follow a conversation about this subject. Even if you used computers in your daily life on a regular basis, you would still stand no chance following this cosy discussion.
That’s because all these words have specialised meanings when relating to computer programming. You find yourself in a lucky position though, because in your daily life, not everybody approaches you in an attempt to start such a discussion with you (only autists maybe lol). Imagine you had to cope with that, if this was the norm, and everybody seemed to be such computer geeks except for you. What embarrassing situations would be created. Imagine people relied on this cryptic computer jargon to figure out if they like each other and to start friendships and relationships. You would have to try and build compensatory skills to keep standing in such a world, thinking really hard to figure what things might be meaning, an extremely tiring process, I can assure you. As you would try to join the conversation, you would regularly say things that sound really stupid to computer nerds, as to which they would behave appropriately. This makes you feel very stupid and sad.
In groups things spice up a little bit, because when talking to one person, you can kind of tune in to each other a bit, guess some answers (often this is possible, because people actually want to hear you repeat them. If you listen carefully enough, they will answer their own questions, and you just have to repeat these answers), and have time to think and process information. But in groups, you have like 5 geeks randomly talking through each other, sometimes about several subjects at once. Since most opportunities to meet people occur in groups, you realise it’s not gonna be easy to meet someone, because you could either be noted for your disinterest, for your stupid comments or for your silence, now that’s attractive. No worries, you could still approach a random person who is by themselves. Then however, he or she would look at you like you were a freak probably, since you could not figure whether the right pickup line was the one about “Algebraic semantics of imperative programs” or the one about “designs for a decision-theoretic Agent”. Would you be surprised that a lot of the “not-geek” people felt rather lonely and depressed in this world? Would you be surprised that even though they had similar need for social contact, touch, sexuality and affection, they lived mostly in social isolation? Would you be surprised if they started to avoid social contact and ended up in a negative spiral of depression? Obviously the less you see people, the less energy you have to go and see them.
I think that this somehow represents how we feel. On top of that no manual. No computer books explaining these things, just you listening and trying to find some patterns.
It is obvious to me, that we also have a hidden language, as small talk seen in NT culture. This can be spotted through the many puzzling things we say. They are not at all random and can be explained. Just like for us, meanings behind small talk seem to be arbitrary, so will auti talk seem arbitrary for an NT. This implies that it too is a result of a specific neurological wiring, just as the arbitrary choice of meaning in NT’s hidden language is a result from their genome.
A nice example of this can be found in Mrs.Frith’s book:
“For instance, in our experiment, one child insisted that there was a panda in the cup (even though he had not seen it and he said he had not seen it). When he was shown what it actually was, a rose, he did not react with surprise.”
Mrs.Frith writes about this event:
“The child does not understand the difference between justified knowledge and a mere guess…. [and about the not being surprised]… Could it be that he often experiences wrong expectations of this type?”
Now that’s a nice example of how Mrs.Frith turns the world upside down. A whole book long she has done nothing but guessing about what autism is, but with the pretension of being an expert. The child’s answer however makes complete sense to me. Look at it this way:
You enter a room for an experiment. There is two researchers and a cup. They ask you what’s in the cup. Obviously they are very likely to know what’s in there, since they are doing the experiment. Obviously, you don’t, because you just came in and hadn’t seen the cup. Therefore they don’t ask you because they are genuinely wondering what’s in there (otherwise you might say you don’t know), neither can you figure their intention to ask you this as you cannot see how this would be a test for your patterns, since it was a random unknown factor what was in the cup. In a real-life situation, you might have said coffee, but this was an experiment, and you don’t like coffee anyway. So it seems it’s a random irrelevant question. Random irrelevant questions are those asked by NT’s for some hidden intention that you cannot grasp with the best effort of the world. (after all, they are unpredictable for something innit?) Since an answer is also expected on questions of which you cannot guess intentions, you have to say something. The most sensible would be to say something that points out to the asker that you have not understood the question, without bothering with “Sorry I don’t understand you again” every time, because you are getting a bit fed up with these people saying things to you that make no sense at all and than either laughing at you or getting cross because you don’t react right. So the most sensible answer is one that is obviously incorrect, as to make the other person feel awkward for asking something so stupid, so that they get conditioned in being clear to you. So it’s obviously a panda, don’t you think? Secret message being if you are upset because I give an obviously wrong answer, illustrating not wanting to cooperate, then don’t ask me stupid questions like that. In this case nobody got cross, just puzzled, and obviously the boy was not surprised to see that there was a rose in the cup, because he hadn’t been saying anything about the real, physical world, neither was he pretending to know something about that physical world. If you would have said to him, “no, there is no panda inside”, he would probably have said “yes there is”, knowing that you still hadn’t gotten the message, and needed to think about it some more. Wow, that’s a very long description for something I knew instantly.
Sometimes, irrelevant random questions are also questions of which you do know the answer or intention, but realise that the asker will not become any wiser from it, since they want you to say what they already know. Auti’s just don’t like to be used for games like that. Even if we realise the confirmation is important for the person. It just doesn’t feel right, because it rewards a dishonest, a crooked way of communication. It rewards creating a dynamic where it seems like one’s opinion is asked, where in reality it isn’t. It also creates opportunities later for being held accountable for saying this or that, when you were just repeating someone’s own opinion to make them feel good. Auti’s just value honesty more than flattery, I think.
If an autist says something that appears to be completely random, try to see the underlying meaning in terms of patterns. Try realising that his answer was decided on probably by what the pattern came up with and not what the physical reality was like. It generates expressions that are true, even if they are not true. Just like this theory is true even if it isn’t, because it’s importance is not in whether the boy had exactly this motivation for saying panda or something else. The basic underlying thing was “if you ask random questions, you will get random answers.” And the underlying pattern of this theory should teach you something about points of view between different groups of people. It should teach you how people like me are gonna attack you if you have a shitty attitude. It is not so relevant whether it teaches you anything about neurology, and therefore it is not so relevant whether the neurological parts are imaginary, or coming forth from a research. It should just show you that a different approach can perfectly explain the autistic behaviour with pure logic, even though you are completely puzzled all the time. That your own research results will support this theory, and that you are therefore probably quite far off track. This theory is true even if the literal things stated here are untrue.
Another even better example is the following:
“Milton is an intelligent autistic boy of 12 who took part in our experiments on reading. He read – fluently – selected passages of text and we asked various questions to test his text comprehension and general knowledge. After he had given a particularly good answer we asked quite casually, “Oh, how did you know that?” His matter-of-fact reply was, “By Telepathy.” We repeated the question on several other occasions, and he always answered in the same way. He never said, “I just read about it”, or “My teacher told me, ” or “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
Milton had an explanation of how knowledge came to be in his head: it was put there by telepathy. We have not found an ordinary 12-year-old who came up with such an idea. Nevertheless, it suggests a glimmer of understanding that there are such things as thoughts. Alas, a glimmer is not enough.
Milton did not reflect that this idea simply would not fit with other information he had about the world and could not understand why the experimenters laughed. Was the absent self to blame? Perhaps so. He did not use information from his own past experience, from general world knowledge, from the text he had just read, nor from the intentions behind our questions. Instead he gave a stereotypic all-purpose answer. It is the sort of cause-and-effect explanation that would have been quite adequate for the question: “How does the iron stick attract the pins?” – Answer: “By magnetism.” Clearly, for everyday understanding the physical world is different from the mental world”
Now, we see clearly some of the psychological patterns at play. First of all, Mrs.Frith blatantly suffers from literal interpretation, which she always blames auti’s of doing. When talking to children, this is a very problematic attitude, since I reckon children often use other words to say things, since they don’t have the right vocabulary yet. Secondly, he gives a particularly good answer, followed by another particularly good answer, but because Mrs.Frith doesn’t understand the second one, she sets of on half a page of pathetically weak and humiliating theories about this boy clearly brighter than her.
The boy could have answered: “it’s obvious isn’t it?” , but that would exactly been a type of meaningless answer Mrs.Frith would have probably given herself if she were twelve, which would only reveal that she would have not even a glimmer of understanding about things such as thought. Or one might just repeat the information given in the text, which would also be a notoriously meaningless answer, nevertheless a common one.
On the contrary, Milton, being much more aware, tells us something about his thinking process. He is actually wanting to say “The abstract patterns in my thinking allowed me to deduce the correct answer.” This might include anything from patterns in the info in the text, to intentions of the experimenters, to his past knowledge. He probably, at that age did not posses nor the vocabulary nor the consciousness to say it that well, but had nevertheless given this skill of abstraction a name, after something that has a lot of similarities to it. Telepathy, is also a way of knowing things without having all the pieces of information, and is something that other people don’t have. That’s why you thought he had given a particularly good answer, Mrs.Frith, because he had used a skill that you don’t have. (telepathy) I think this way of naming things after similarities is very common amongst children, by lack of a better name.
Why he gave the same answer every time? Maybe because he had just discovered this skill, and really felt like a fish in the water. Maybe for certain thing he had several ways of knowing something, like absolute knowledge – “a teacher told him” – and abstract knowledge , deducing comparing possibilities to find the most probable one. Maybe the info from the two systems often started to correspond, as he was getting his patterns up to standards, but he still preferred to refer to the patterns, because auti’s just prefer this kind of knowledge above absolute knowledge, since it much more useful in most cases. So for him, it became a matter of fact, that you obtain knowledge by telepathy and that you double check by other lesser means.
Maybe he is conditioning the researcher by repeating the same lesson because you blatantly hadn’t understood it yet.
Just for your info, when it comes down to patterns, understanding the mental world is no different than the physical world.
I think a very common thing also heard from autists, would be the: “I just know, you have to believe me, I just know, even though I cannot explain it at this moment.” This is however not a very successful way of convincing people. I have had this problem many times. It just means that the complexity of the problem is as such that you have some gut feelings, but cannot yet completely prove everything. Just like my stance in this theory, where sometimes I still have to leave questions unanswered.
An example of this might be familiar to a lot of people:
If you are typing, maybe you just typed a word and for looking at it something is telling you that you misspelled it. You don’t however know exactly what is wrong, neither how to correct it at the moment. Sometimes you solve this by just trying out some spellings until this feeling of misspelling goes away and you know that this was the right spelling. Sometimes you start doubting, and you would have to take a dictionary. However, you were fucking sure that it was misspelled.
I have this all the time with all sorts of situations. Even though I cannot explain or say correct solutions always, or can give the solution, but cannot explain you why, I do have really strong gut-feelings over things. Over time I get proven right a lot of the time. Not always, because if your pattern gives 100% certainty about this, you would just be able to explain.
If we would not have our own unspoken codes, and would only possess literal speech, our thinking would not be so puzzling for you, because literal speech is what we understand in common. That’s also why autists often fall back to it. In an attempt to find a common ground, an agreed on code, that can be verified and understood by both groups, by means of a dictionary for example. This allows us to delegate meaning to something if other more intuitive or compensatory structures fail to fulfil this task. In case of questions asked to us, and I think especially in the case of children, there is a considerable pressure to give some answer. It is I think a pleasant and comforting choice to use literal speech rather than trying to guess for intentions and motivations, because it reduces chaos to one side of the communication, then allowing NT’s to recognise the pattern in our communication, and therefore adapting and establishing a more efficient way of communicating. Imagine that we would always try to guess your intentions, thus sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, this would lead to an unsolvable chaos when it comes down to communicating because our answers would be sometimes more appropriate, sometimes far more ‘aloof’. I think I use a combination of different systems to decide when to use literal speech, when I think I have a fairly high success in guessing about motivations or intentions, I interpret. When I don’t, or I don’t like the manipulative techniques (see also next paragraphs) people use for communicating, I talk literal.
There is one more very important exception to this. When NT thinking is limited, we feel a very strong urge to refuse to follow. We might very well understand intentions, but be intuitively, held back to accept this as a common ground for communication. We don’t accept the attempt to make this into a precedent. This may appear as rigid thinking, but it is more like demanding sound reasoning, and refusing to be tricked in leaving this principle by some suggested unspoken assumption. It’s like silence is acceptance or something. We have to block the conversation here, to force the other to stick to the rules. This happens when NT’s fail to do decoupling or detaching of things. A very common problem. Let’s look at an example:
In a meeting, I would give arguments for decisions I’m against, and the other way around. Other people don’t seem to do this, and therefore, if you give an argument for something, they immediately conclude that you are wanting this to be decided. They fail to detach sec theoretical overlooking the information and possibilities with the decision making process. Often they will give false arguments to create an atmosphere in which the decision they are aiming at will be taken. In this case I just attack the arguments of my companions, because for me this is no good ground to have meetings, and explodes in your face in the long term. For me negotiating works on basis of really tight analysis that cannot be denied by the opponent. As you can imagine this can lead to companions feeling betrayed, and all the people present confused about my opinion. They fail to detach things.
Here one might say I have rigid thinking, because I don’t accept bad arguments for good decisions, but I think on the long term this is not sound practice. It therefore actually says nothing about the rigidity or flexibility of my thinking. I think in a lot of cases psychologists have been making conclusions about behaviour based on the assumption that they, the psychologist, were per definition sane, and that the autist children were per definition insane. They don’t realise that the opposite will often be the case. They would actually probably learn a lot if they took therapy with one of the autistic children. footnote 22: This is of course a general critique on psychology, and does not only relate to autism, on the contrary. end of footnote 22
Autists find different things funny than NT. Maybe something is funny, because it triggers feelings of contradiction, because it refers to lines of thinking which are not present in your brain, but on the other hand, there seems to be some sense in the remark. What if for autists, this line was present in their brains as well as another two thousand lines in similar context, maybe they would not understand what was so funny about this one as compared to all the others. This is of course only one sort of humour, but I have noticed, that this is the kind that leaves us unmoved. We on the other hand find things sometimes funny because there is some distant and weirdly twisted relation in patterns that apply to 2 or more otherwise completely unrelated things. If we make a joke like that, and explain it an NT, they often find the relation so far fetched, that they don’t find it funny anymore.
Certain tests have lead Mrs.Frith to believe that we have weak central coherence. This she notes because autists do not seem to take into account the context of things, and would also not be confused very much by misleading surroundings like the visual effects in the underlying picture:
However, it is obvious that autists have both better central and local coherence than other people. Therefore, the judgement of Mrs.Frith was troubled and fooled again. In the picture above for example, she would only see context as the relation between the white and the black balls, and therefore think anyone that would not limited to this would have weak central coherence. I however see context as the following (things that jump immediately to attention):
Now for some reason, NT’s will only be tempted to see the relation to the white balls, or at least heavily emphasise this context as compared to all the other possible contexts. Tell me why. Give me one good reason to do this. There isn’t. This is nothing more than weak central coherence. You fail to see that the relation to the white balls is in my case 1/8 of the context, and therefore of limited strength of helping misjudgement.
I think this is a very common weakness in the NT brain. Failure to see things for what they really are, just because one context (for me this is still local context), takes too much control over their thinking. This results in coupling things much stronger than is good. NT’s will often make remarks, or give arguments that are not relevant because the other contexts overrule them, but they fail to see this until it is pointed out. This limits you. I cannot see why this would limit us. If I want to look at the perspective in the picture, the black ball at the right immediately looks bigger to me. I have control over whether I want local or central coherence. NT’s have weak central coherence, because the set-up of their brains pushes them to see one context and dismissing all the others. I think this is due to having less complexity in the central cognitive units, and therefore limited processing possibility for context.
In her book, Mrs.Frith concludes that autists have weak top down control, because they do stimming, have a narrow attention span, and can have hypersensitivity. I think this is not at all the case, neither is anything pointing in this direction. I think that with extra complex neural networks, top down control must be on an increased level too. This can of course give problems if the cognitive unit cannot follow. Also, if there was no top down control, and all incoming information would be equally attended to, then we would not have narrow focus.
I think bottom up control is also completely as a concept misconceived. It is always thought that things get filtered from the top, or just send forward from the bottom. I think there is a misunderstanding here. If one could see and process the input from photographic vision, I think it should be noted that there would be no harm in seeing all the details and the bigger context at once. What happens I think, is that with normal people, neural networks in the visual processing areas are not complex enough to receive the possibly very complex image from the eyes, rather than that the top controls to leave things out. There is just not enough memory and processor speed in your computer to process film.
So what happens, some selection needs to be done. It seems to me that it would be greatly unpractical to do this top down, because this lack of enough neurones, happens very low at the incoming stage. Also, how do you say this pixel of the image we want, and this one not. This would almost be impossible. It is much more logic that there is a predefined control of the incoming signals. What I would expect to see here is merely a standard division of the available resources. As with myself it is obvious that if I look in front me, in the centre of my viewfield, a lot of information is packed, and I see a lot of things very detailed, where as close to the sides, it all gets more and more in gross contours. footnote 23: If I point my eyes next to my computer screen, I can still see it, but I cannot read the text anymore. No matter how hard I try with top down control, to choose to positively discriminate the stimuli coming from the side. end of footnote 23 This might mean that about half of the neurones that receive information from my eyes, are devoted to the centre part of my field of view. This is maybe one tenth of the area I am seeing. The way thus to see something else in more detail would be to change my focus.
This, autists might just as well do, but might not want to do if they are concentrated on something. We are able to block things out, not only other people calling our name, but also the reports of autists being able to stand severe pain and cold point in this direction. This all indicates very good top-down control.
I will try to explain narrow attention span and stimming below, so lets have a look at some other things. As for hypersensitivity, I don’t know, because I have never had this, but I can imagine that if you had many more neurological connections in the parts of your brain that determine how loud something is, this would give you a very big spectrum. I can imagine something strange happens with the definition of loud here. I do however not know for sure.
As for rigid and repetitive behaviour, I have already explained this. An autist solving a problem, would seemingly repeat a test solution which fails over and over again. This is however not illogical, because in the mean time the brain is figuring out which part of this solution is not adapted to the problem, and so has to change. There are just to many possible solutions to start trying at random. This would lead to chaos, therefore a very rigid systematic approach is needed.
If autists have special focus on the circumstantial properties of things, constantly looking at similarities and patterns, our central cognitive unit would all the time be occupied. We would only be able to do one thing at a time, because we need this central cognitive unit big style to keep things together. This explains why we are very sensitive if pulled out of our concentration. Also this means, that we could switch to something else, but then losing the all so important information that the cognitive sections of our brain would be holding at the moment. Therefore we would not be able to switch back. If this was some hours of intensive work just stored there, you might realise why auti’s could be really bad tempered if you insisted on disturbing them.
This leads to situations. The following will be without doubt familiar to a lot of autists. You sit working at your computer, quite concentrated. All of a sudden, your girlfriend turns up, asking: “What shall we eat for dinner tonight?”. After a while she also stops accepting “I don’t really care darling, whatever you like,” for an answer. To answer this question sensible, we have to pull back the entire cognitive army, a massive troop movement, to send them somewhere else, losing the strategic positions they had in the process. We would have to start considering what vegetables are cheap at the moment, what have we already eaten this weak, what would the girlfriend maybe like to eat (utterly complex process to figure this out), how much work will be invested in cooking. Are we very hungry or just a little bit. And so on. Our entire army, our cognitive brain sections, were not sitting on their lazy arses in the army base waiting eagerly to get into action. They were out in the field in heavy combat, when a message was send: “got to come back immediately and go somewhere else.” You might imagine the troops, already tired and in positions, not being so enthusiast about this plan. It is also quite reasonable that once back home, they refuse to set of again, therefore leaving us with a blank mind when trying to think about food.
This results most of the time in angry girlfriends feeling like you don’t care and like you don’t want to take responsibility in life decisions, whether in daily life or more important, thinking you are addicted to your computer. An easy solution would be, she asking, “can you come down and spend some time with me in half an hour?” This would allow gently pulling the troops back, making sure that the strategic positions don’t get lost. This would also allow letting the troops rest for a second before setting off again. That gives much less stress and is much more rewarding for both parties. It’s this type of things that can cause stress leading to things like stimming, shutting down, or other unpleasant autistic behaviour.
It is obvious that these behaviours are caused by exactly the same factors as they are caused in neurotypicals. This kind of behaviour is natural in situations causing distress, fear, feeling threatened, feeling powerless…. It is obvious, that to grow up in an environment that sees you as completely aloof, and that pretends to have to correct you, is much more stressful than to be conform the norms. On top of that autists have to do a lot more absolutely exhausting brainwork to deal with the world, definitely in arbitrary social interaction. Talking to a stranger for five minutes can leave us in a state someone else might be in after doing a mathematics exam. This is a good breeding ground for stimming, escaping eye-contact, aggression, running away, shutting down, stopping talking to people for extended time, etc… Especially if you are being pushed into situations you can not deal with.
Therefor these are not at all symptoms of autism, merely of the position we are put in by our environment.
They aren’t, but why are for children basic operations like +, -, x and : more interesting than goniometrics? Because it is simpler to master, and because you cannot do the latter without understanding the former. Since we see the world in much more complexity, it takes seriously more effort to organise things and look for patterns. Maybe the little boy with the wooden cube that he can study for days on end, is paying attention to all the contexts involved. He is studying the pattern of the wood grain, he is feeling the surface texture, he is seeing relation between this block and others, ….
I think for a child, your cognitive units can only process and learn from a system of a given complexity. Since normal children will dismiss 95 percent of all information, they can look at everything at once, and it is the things that draw most attention (that move most, that make most noise, and have more colours), that will receive attention. Where a baby just sees a fluffy object, an adult might notice that it is a representation of a bear, that it has medium long hair, which is of a brown that looks a bit like the colour of diarrhoea, that one of the eyes was not sown on correctly, and that the label says it needs washing at 40 degrees and must not be ironed. If the baby also saw all this and more, he might just spend much more time studying his teddy bear minutely. That’s exactly what autistic children do. The complexity of the system they are looking at is satisfying at that moment to learn about the world. Humans on the other hand are very complex and unpredictable. I must say faces and people intrigue me a great deal now, but not as a kid. It was just too complicated to learn anything from. One first needs decent understanding of the physical world before one can extend understanding towards more complex systems. Humans, with billions of neurones in their head behave very complex, arbitrary and difficult to predict. If I was a young child, I would not bother trying to get my head round it.
Circumscribed interests must also be seen from this point of view. They represent a world of complexity of their own. Enormously fascinating, interesting and good for learning. Don’t be mistaken, your auti will not only learn things about this circumscribed interest. They will learn about the relation between things and will use this knowledge later in all other aspects of life. It’s just like a big dataset. Controlled in size. That’s just good for practising thinking. Whether it is computers, or types of trains, chess,… It are predictable systems that are good for learning. I think that if we figure we master this circumscribed interest to the point that we can not learn much from it anymore, we might just drop it from one day to another and look for something else to learn from.
I have never managed to go to school very well, because you have to learn things by heart. Once your intelligence has found the relations in those kinds of informations, it just doesn’t make sense to memorise another hundred. I cannot do repetitive work if I don’t learn from it. My hunger for wisdom becomes ever the more difficult to satisfy of course, because you need more and more complex systems. For now computers and politics suit these goals well, but it is possible that in the future, I will have to find other things.
Why computers and not people. Computers are predictable. They work according to the rules of logic, except for the programs written by humans. (This creates an extra challenge.) Learning in such a system with big complexity and logic predictability is greatly rewarding for your brain.
Humans on the other hand, seem to be random. They do not function according to the rules of logic, and have many factors involved that are completely unknown footnote 24: Such as what experiences did this person have in earlier life, earlier in the day, what do they know and not know, genetic determination, one could make and endless list of unknown factors. end of footnote 24 . This makes it greatly unrewarding to learn about humans. The things learned would often only be of use when dealing with humans, because there is no logic in the info. Just very specific fragmented knowledge. On top of all that, making errors on your computer, means you might have to start something over, whereas humans are greatly unforgiving for making mistakes. This means that there is definite resistance to working with people.
By a number of experiments and a line of reasoning of an almost impeccable empirical standard, in sharp contrast with the rest of her book, Mrs.Frith collects evidence for the claim that autists are mind blind. As for once, as I noted, her reasoning was impeccable, was it not for the same stubborn mistake. You guessed it. Assumption leads her again to a wrong and unstated premise from which she deduces her evidence. To part thus immediately from her path, we are again gonna make a sub hypothesis, as to keep clear track of where mistakes might have slipped in:
Mentalizing is a process of projection, and therefore needs a level of sameness between the mentaliser and their subject
I have not done research as to whether others had already been working on the functioning of theory of mind, but at first sight on the internet, the subject had only come up in relation to autism. I cannot be bothered to do a more thorough attempt of finding out, because the above hypothesis, for me, seems like common sense.
Again Mrs.Frith seemed to stand right on top of the answers she was seeking, and yet overlooking them. The following evidence presented by her supports the above hypothesis. In her book she mentions the brain regions that are involved in mentalizing, according to neurological research. About the amygdale she writes:
“The amygdaloidal region shown in figure 11.9, is known from many studies, including the ones from outside the scanner, to be particularly concerned with the emotional states of other people, especially sadness and fear. It is active, even if people are not explicitly aware of the emotion. This would also make it an important component when intuitively attributing emotional states to other people.”
Also she explains the workings of mirror neurones:
“They observed that certain neurones in monkey brains were active and produced electrically recordable impulses, not only whenever a monkey grasped an object in a certain way, but also when the monkey saw someone else grasp an object in the same way.”
“One theoretical possibility is that these cells are working well in the autistic brain, but are not influenced by those cells that normally distinguish the self from another Agent.”
It is 1+1=2 that this means that the amygdala is a mirror neuron system. That’s why it’s even active if people are not really feeling this emotion. This completely points at the hypothesis of projection.
Therefor, to do successful mentalizing, you need to be of similar wiring. If not, your projected mental states will not correspond with reality. This explains my entire life with NT’s. Always when I was in groups, I have been conditioned to hold back. To not be myself. If for some reason, I started to feel at ease in these groups because it was just nice people, and good atmosphere, I would start to relax. I would stop suppressing my mentalizing skills, but on the contrary start to allow these mentalizing skills to determine my behaviour in an intuitive way, things always, almost without exception, went pearshaped. This is not because these mental skills were at all malfunctioning, but because they were anticipating other Agents of similar wiring on which they could project. This lead to numerous embarrassing moments, people becoming angry at me, bullying me at school….. The list is endless. How surprising autists don’t show much of their mentalizing skills. We have been conditioned the hard way not to mentalise, on penalty of severely getting bashed by our NT environment.
Are you surprised to see that on brain scans the regions that are thought responsible for mentalizing, show less activity? I am not. To me this appears completely normal after a lifetime of conditioning.
Does this mean that autists would have normal functioning mentalizing skills if they were growing up in an autistic environment. This is hard to imagine, because it seems this environment does not exist. At least not in my life. Therefor I could only answer, I have a gutfeeling this would be the case. I cannot couple this back to any experiences, except for those very recent experiences of reading on autism, were people like Uta Frith can express shear amazement about certain autistic behaviour. In these cases I often feel like I can immediately explain why autists react like this or like that, even for a lot of symptoms I don’t have. It all seems very natural and logical to me. I have the impression that that are awakening mentalizing skills. Probably those are what allowed me to set off on this quest of ‘explaining the enigma’…
The hypothesis, of course, implies that to mentalise you need to be of the same neurological wiring. I think it is obvious that NT’s cannot do any better in mentalizing towards autists than the other way around. That’s why Mrs.Frith is so puzzled by the way autists think, and I am so puzzled by the way NT’s think. It is also obvious that NT’s do not posses superior mentalisation skills when it comes to other brain pathogens. It would be impossible for a NT to feel when a situation might be stimulating epileptic attacks for example except by being told, that stress stimulates epilepsy (this being told, is like reading the manual, which is naturally not supplied). Also a schizophrenic would probably be no more predictable to a NT than to an autist. On the contrary. I think that by their obligation of being analytic, and recognising patterns, autists would be much better in doing compensatory mentalizing with groups of different neurological wiring than any other group. This would explain why people suffering from other brain pathogens, have much more problems building compensatory behaviour. It think also that if you would put an autist and a NT in an environment where social behaviour was random, the autist would have superior chances, due to more complex neural network in the cognitive area that serves for compensating mentalizing possibilities.
As to why autist children do not pass the Sally and Ann test, to me it seems that this is due to slow starting. I think that on later age, autists also mostly pass the test.
Is there hope for psychological research in autism? Well, after writing the bulk of this text, I have found at least one researcher that opened my eyes. One that seemed not only come to conclusions that correspond my experience as autist, but also managed to communicate with autistic children who had before not communicated. Thus, I think an extra part must be added.
This is an inspiring light, isn’t it? It concerns Patricia St John. She explains her findings and her quest in “The secret language of dolphins.” Indeed, she used the same techniques in communicating with dolphins and autists. The main thing to be noted about her approach is that she has approached both with respect. That’s really all it takes, and I think all she discovered, respect. If approached with respect, both dolphins and autists are prepared to interact with people.
This respect manifested for Mrs. St John by not expecting them to comply with the neuro typical standards. She approached with the intention of letting the other decide upon a means of communication. She approached without thinking: “My means is correct and superior, and if you don’t comply to it you are not sane.” All of a sudden, as a thunderclap in clear sky, the children showed prepared to communicate. These are some quotes:
“If the value of the interactions and exchanges has been raised, even minor, by those who had most to gain from it, than this would satisfy as test. With other words, if an autist child is prepared, without compulsion, in short time, to interact with a new person, where before this was impossible, then there has to be something happening between these two people. This ‘something’ will become the subject of research, and not the child.
On top of that, I would completely change my priorities. I would not endeavour to find a definite result, rather search for the results that answer the individual needs of the ones with whom I had sessions. It wouldn’t be relevant whether I would like the child to talk. If any form of communication would be born, I would instead allow the child to develop a mean of expressing themselves. The child would be completely in charge.” footnote 25: Quotes in this part are from “The secret language of the dolphins”, and were translated back to English, because I didn’t possess an English copy. end of footnote 25
Probably most of these children were approached for the first time in their life by someone without expectations. Someone who allowed them to be who they are, without trying to force them into a mould. The main importance here was, that she did not decide on the mode of communication. She left that completely open for the children to decide on.
She made other important conclusions. She saw us for what we really are. Cognitive beings that modify and condition our environment. She realised that we are not passive victims and prisoners in our own bodies. She realised that we communicated. We kick of because we are displeased with things!
Imagine how you would react to someone that approached you with the profound conviction that you were stupid. Someone who wouldn’t say this, but would behave after it. Right, you wouldn’t be tempted to react very positive to the interaction. Imagine now, that most people behave like that. You would probably lay on the floor screaming and kicking from time to time because you felt angry…
“What if progress, not repetition would be one of the answers to the problem of limited ability of being attent for a longer period.”
“Contrary to many idiot people, who can easily do repetitive work, autists easily loose interest for any activities that they didn’t preserve themselves.”
These two quotes are amazing, especially coming from the mouth of someone who is not autistic footnote 26: Or at least doesn’t describe herself as such… end of footnote 26 . That it is possible to come to such sound conclusions by ‘outside’ footnote 27: outside here meaning outside the head of the auti. She actually uses very interactive ways to deal with the children, as opposed to just observing from the outside. end of footnote 27 observation, is something that I find astonishing and hopeful. It also explains why a lot of other people fail to communicate, like in the example of the panda, where to get more sensible answers, would not be to repeat the same question, but to progress…
Further it is interesting to read how her insights came from direct engagement, and not from clinical observation. She describes that sometimes the observers of the interactions came to complete opposite conclusions about what happened than herself. She nicely explains this in the following quotes:
“When I was working with people or animals, on their terrain, the objective becomes subjective, and the subjective becomes objective.”
“As researcher, I am, by recognising the existence of cognition and creativity in the subject, no longer bound to identifying repetitive behaviours, but I can concentrate on those that are positive, and point at progress.”
I think this sheds a very clear light on what has been causing autists to be so puzzling for psychologists. The basic refusal to comply with people that address you in a disrespectful way. We must be very grateful to Patricia St. John for pointing out that other ways are very feasible indeed.
Starting of from a gut feeling that contemporary academic neurologists have set off in completely the wrong direction in trying to explain autism, which was also down to earth disrespect for our condition, I set of on a double quest of explaining autism, and breaking down the misconceived theories these academics fostered.
The main goal was proving that with the things currently known to neurologists as of results of neurological tests, experiments done with autists, autism rights movements, autobiographies, …. far better ( as in much more realistic and convincing ) theories could and should have been deduced. Even by someone who never studied neurology, neither psychology and had only found out about autism about three months ago.
Thus, the theory posed, is foremost a philosophical one, and not an attempt to give at once a neurological correct explanation. I think this last thing might be intriguing, and I am curious as anyone, but is of infinite lesser relevance than how we choose to deal with the unknown. This relates to the common disrespect received by anyone who is not conform pathetic right wing conservative norms, or equally pathetic yuppie standards, such as there are: immigrants, women, people living in the majority world, queers, odds, aloofs, jobless, animals, plants, environments, hippies, disabled people, people of different religious beliefs, fools, vegans, smokers, etc………… ……………… ………….. It is worth noting that in other cultures these anomalies have often been treated which much more respect. Maybe this is an indicator of how bad a culture needs a scapegoat. It is then a sign indicating dangerous prospects like the one pursued in Nazi-Germany.
I then picked a neurological fact which suited my political ideas, just like others had done before. I proved that this angle was at least more convincing than Ms. Uta Frith’s “explaining the enigma” and with the theories beheld by most researchers on autism. I used it to illustrate my experience of being an autist just as others use results of the experiments they do to illustrate their beliefs, even if the evidence seems to point the complete opposite direction. This can not be overemphasised. Science is everything but impartial.
After that I noted that autists are stuck with a very complex, flexible brain, housing many beautiful qualities, but hard to master. The less predefined the template, the more cognitive power is needed to master it. This is done by virtue of abstract pattern recognition. These patterns help to decide upon which choices to make in life, both in daily life, or exceptional situations. NT’s also use these patterns for wisdom, and many of them can be found back in our culture, for example in the form of proverbs.
Many of the behavioural signs once attributed to autism, now should be demystified as being symptoms of living in a world in which you are not conform the norms… It is noted that the ones referring to difficulties in communication, apply in similar amounts to NT’s as to autists.
There is only a vague line between being NT or autist, probably this is like a gaussian curve. At this moment, I have no clues as to who would be populating the opposite side of this bell shape. People with a very predefined neurological wiring. This could be people with very limited and rigid thinking footnote 28: Maybe people behaving much more by instinct, and much less by ratio end of footnote 28 . I really don’t know. As for when someone is to be considered an autist or not. It depends whether you still accept the term autism, because it can mean so many different things, both positive and negative. It can mean things like having a talent for something, or hearing very well, or it could be having increased complexity in the central cognitive unit of the brain. It is obviously a choice that has to be made by the individual, and not by some ‘professional’.
As for me, I have never considered going to a doctor to get diagnosed. I am of sound mental capacity, and therefore as well classified (actually better), to decide what my condition is. It is clear that I experience my autism as being a handicap seriously restricting my ability to live out my life the way I would like to live.
The biggest challenge for the future, I think, is to see whether it is possible to deal with handicaps, or support people with handicaps as to diminish this feeling, and to limit the need for depression and social isolation. Autists are blatantly not the only ones suffering from these problems, and they point at the nature of being handy capped, rather then of being autistic. It makes infinitely more sense to study possibilities to overcome this challenge, than to search for a genetic cause of autism. I think it will also be much more rewarding and appreciated, if handy capped people and psychologists set off together on this track.
As for some final quotes from Uta Frith:
“My approach to autism has remained the same. In a sense this is pleasing. It means that the ideas discussed then were robust enough to withstand the challenges of empirical tests. In another sense it is disappointing because no breakthroughs have happened that might have allowed a radically new light to be thrown on autism. The light that was shed by the early cognitive and increasingly neurocognitive studies of autism is only a dim one, but still it illuminates.” p.viii
“What is this abnormality? How can one explain it’s many paradoxical features? These are the questions that I shall try to answer in the course of this book.”p.1
I hope Mrs.Frith, to have answered your need for a radical new light, as well as for explaining paradoxical features, which when seen in their true light, the bright and omni directional light of Neurodiversity, are no longer paradoxical at all. I hope this will for once and for all replace the dim light you are referring to.
It is also worth noting how in the one phrase, where you refer to autism as for what it really is, an abnormality, you immediately notice that your viewpoint makes its features paradoxical.
I now understand why my friends reacted with reserve, when I told them that I had autism. Because they were not corrupted by delegated power, because they loved me for who I am and didn’t want to accept that my self image would be spoilt by the atrocities that us autists have been accused of. I love you too, dear friends, what follows I learned from you and I will never forget your love.
After writing all this, I feel empty and sad. Sad that we are so misunderstood. On the other hand I must be grateful to myself, to my autism, that it has not allowed me pull down my self image to that of a damaged human, a robot, incapable of love or empathy, that you wanted to make of me, Mrs.Frith. My autism has given me powers to see things as they really are, and to build a solid self image, based on sound reasoning, rather than corrupted power kicks. I see that in our autism, and therefore our brain, there is uttermost beauty, inspiring and mystical powers and that in our hearts live the deepest and most intense emotions, as passionate love, respect, raging fury, friendship, pain,… with all their hopes and expectations, even if we do not posses the network protocols to communicate them in a way understandable or desirable to Neurotypicals.
I do not ask for recognition of this. I do not care. This world has left me cynical and disappointed. I expected more, but not anymore. The reason I have started this battle was not status, nor victory, nor confirmation. I don’t want autists to achieve the political correct status of women, black people, homosexuals, or other minorities, so we can find the next scapegoat, so we could make another child to fill the emptiness in our own lives. This is not a plea to be allowed to join the corrupt game. I am not asking that women can make careers, that black people should have equal chances to run for president, or that homosexuals could marry. There could be only one but highly unrealistic goal, which would be to abolish careers, presidents and marriage at once. Lets hope that autists don’t start to behave like Margaret Tatchers, Colin Powells, or homosexual capitalists. Let’s keep what nobody else can take away from us: our marginality as well as our DIGNITY.
All uncensored feedback welcome at najamelan at gmail.com -- 2006