AlleghenyAlmanac

Autism and the God Connection

invasion of the Christians?

As a result of all that I was learning, I was also obliged to undergo a spiritual transformation myself. My original, working title for the book was Autism and the Clairvoyant Connection, but I soon realized that it was far more reverential than that; that the loving families I encountered often felt a deeply spiritual or religious sense of responsibility, and I knew there could be no title other than Autism and the God Connection.

Those are the words of William Stillman, the author of  Autism and the God Connection. He is an Aspergian and an autism consultant from Western Pennsylvania. The quote appeared in an interview with  Lisa Jo Rudy at  About.com.  I stumbled across the book when I was trying to find out if people could hear voices that "aren't there" and still be perfectly sane. According to the book, it seems quite possible.

But this doesn't answer the question, can a movie be made that shows extraordinary ability in autistics without making them look like freaks? We are all still recovering from Rain Man, a great movie, but it is a stereotype that seems will last forever.

Stillman's prose in the book is sensitive and revealing. It shows, through anecdotes, the integrity and health of the people he writes about. Setting aside the question of religion, you can see that these autistics deserve our respect and understanding in a world that still has little of both. As someone who has seen many movies completely distort or exploit well-written books, I cringe a little at the prospect of seeing this on the big screen, yet I am interested in the creative possibilities. If Hollywood fictionalized the book's premise it could be a blockbuster. If it could do it without exploiting autistics it could turn into a classic, attention screenwriter Stephen King and director Robert Redford.

The major problem I have with this trailer to what appears to be a quite promising movie is that neurotypicals seeing it may inadvertently put autistics into a box--they are clairvoyant or super-spiritual or something like that. But, to me, you can't pigeon-hole autistics, you can't put them into a neat box because there is great variation from one individual to another. Some autistics are religious, some aren't. Just don't want people to get the wrong idea here.

Autism and the God Connection, a film by Teo Zagar is A Longshot Production, in partnership with The Autism Project. He is a para-educator in the Special Education Department of the Woodstock Union High School in Woodstock, Vermont. As a Hampshire College student he interned with Ken Burns' film company in Walpole, New Hampshire. In 2004 he won an Emmy for regional programming for a documentary on Ohio. He started Longshot Productions in 2004.

Jabberwocky

No, Lewis Carroll probably didn't have Asperger's though a few people have tried to tie his creative genius to it.

It is amazing how his nonsense language still conveys meaning, quite similar to a very funny recipe for Shrump Roast, written by a 12-year-old Aspergian.

There is no evidence that Carroll experienced any developmental delays or communications problems. Diagnosing historical figures is dicey at best. On the other hand, when you use the word "spectrum" in describing autism it might mean that everyone is somewhere on it. And you don't have to be disabled to have Asperger's. It's something to think about. They say many CEOs of big companies have at least a little Aspergian in them. Maybe Carroll did have a bit of it. What in the world does "mimsy" mean? I can't tell you, but it does convey a distinct feeling and it is beautiful!

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came!

One, two!  One, two!  And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

can't get enough JABBERWOCKY? Try this

Smarter than we think

If you saw a kid wearing a bicycle safety helmet and staggering around the mall with a parent chasing after him you wouldn't be alone in thinking he just might be retarded. Or if you walked into a special education classroom few people would disagree with you if you thought everyone there was mentally deficient.

That's because we have a tendency to judge people by their appearances. We can't help it, it's just the way we're wired.

Most people, as a matter of fact, think the majority of autistics are retarded. This includes the British Medical Journal and the current consensus of medical opinion. The 2007 Clinical Evidence Handbook, published by the British Medical Journal and widely distributed for free to American physicians, states on page 64 that of the autistic population, "three quarters have mental retardation."

The definition of autism used by the BMJ excludes Aspergers and requires abnormal development before the age of 3 with impaired reciprocal social interaction and communication, as well as restricted, stereotyped, repetitive behavior. This criteria is confounding because it would include many people today who had these criteria but who are now considered "high functioning autistics" which is considered the equivalent of Aspergers. Either these people somehow "outgrew" their autism or the nosology on which medical opinion is based is terribly flawed and leaves a lot to be desired.

And either these high functioning autistics are exceptions to the rule or the definition of autism must include Aspergers. A growing number of parents and autistics as well as the CDC in the U.S. think that Aspergers really is autism and that autism itself contains its own spectrum of manifestations with many variations from person to person.

While the medical experts are hashing out their definitions, in 2006 one researcher decided to look into the assumption that most autistics are retarded. They certainly appear retarded to the uneducated observer, but how good is the data in the medical literature that supports this notion of lower intelligence?

Not too good, according to Dr. Meredyth Goldberg Edelson, a professor of psychology at Williamette University in Salem, Oregon. She reviewed 215 articles published between 1937 and 2003. The results showed that 74% of the claims came from nonempirical sources, 53% of which never traced back to empirical data. Most empirical evidence for the claims was published 25 to 45 years ago and was often obtained utilizing developmental or adaptive scales rather than measures of intelligence.

Yet the association between autism and mental retardation persists even in current medical literature, she says. Dr. Edelson commented that "An unfortunate consequence of this may be the failure to provide the most effective interventions due to incorrect assumptions about the intelligence of these children."

The research was published in the journal Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities. A reprint of the article can be read here.

At the Williamette University website, Edelson comments, “I’m not saying that children with autism are or are not mentally retarded, I’m just saying the literature doesn’t scientifically support the claims.”

Because retardation in children with autism has been so widely accepted, Edelson said schools and parents have lowered expectations of this group. “In the 1950s, children with autism were institutionalized,” she said. “Today we know that they have more options, from education and treatment to life plans including college and careers, marriage and children. If most children with autism aren’t mentally retarded, we need to find ways for them to interact with society and help them become all they can.”

According to developmental and adaptive scales, Albert Einstein was a mentally retarded child.

 

How to make Shrump Roast

To make shrump roast, take one banjo full of humper-flump leaves and teach them to tango. Then catch several shrump and spank them to see if they are ripe. If they are, throw them back and get some unripe ones. After that tie the shrump and the humper-flump leaves into a ball made of the hide of a were-gerbil, hang it from a pole, and use it to play tether ball with a cross dressing male wolf.

If you followed the directions perfectly you should have a large ball of what looks like moldy, purple and white striped McD's triple whopper with sneeze. Prod this foul-smelling thing into an electric wood burning oven with the door on top. Sprinkle with flea powder and cook till it re-enacts Hamlet. If it's at the duel scene, hit with a fly swatter and it should turn into a large shrump roast.

This recipe was written by a 12-year-old Aspergian named Gabriel, author John Robison tells us. It is remarkable not just because it is so funny, but the precocious child seems to have invented a whole new genre in just two paragraphs! I would love reading a whole book of recipes like this. Just another example of how giftedness frequently accompanies asperger's. Lewis Carroll (whose real name was the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) would have been delighted by this (see Jabberwocky, elsewhere on this blog). "Shrump Roast" is a great satire on complicated recipe books that are just filled with multitudes of steps and assumptions that bewilder non-initiates. 

 

Gabriel's work first appeared in the Jan. 23, 2008 entry of John Robison's delightful blog Look Me In The Eye.  Mr. Robison, who also has Asperger's, wrote the New York Times best-selling book with the same title and invented the word "aspergian" which, in turn, inspired the blog you are reading now.

My apologies to Robison for lifting 2 full paragraphs from his blog. Fair use? Robison himself is quite a humorous writer who comes from a family of writers. If you ever enjoyed the freshness of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s prose you will love Robison's blog.

Cold Soup

This developmentally delayed child did not speak until age 4. His first words were "cold soup." Watch this documentary about an historic figure who exhibited classic traits of autism.

"He told me that his teachers reported that . . . he was mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in his foolish dreams."
-- Hans Albert Einstein, on his father, Albert Einstein


"...never was much good at the 'easy' part of mathematics. To shine, he had to move on to the 'hard' part.' In adult life his mathematical intuition was recognised as extraordinary and he could handle deftly the most difficult of tensor calculus, but it appears that arithmetic calculation continued to be an area of comparative weakness"
-- Einstein's sister

To everyone's surprise, it was discovered that Einstein had a smaller brain than average, but in one area on the left side - a higher density of neurons and many more glial cells per neuron than average.
--from Inspirational Quotes

Quotes by Albert Einstein:

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."

Was Einstein just a fluke of the universe? Quite frequently lightning can strike twice at the same spot. See this video about Vernon Smith, another Nobel Prize Winner!