Adults with Asperger’s,. November 2008 Asperger’s in social context Self-diagnosed Aspergers’ reports are varied but ‘Social Learning Difficulties’ are problems in common, hindering their happiness and competence. Treatment should take account of whether underlying causes are inadequate sensitivity to other people (Wilkinson, 2008), or too much (Szalavitz, 2008). Lee Wilkinson describes therapy strategies to teach recognising how others feel, in order to respond less gauchely and apparently blind to social cues. But if the cause is hypersensitivity, people with Asperger’s may be over-aware of others’ emotions, but do not know how to respond, although relieved by therapists’ friendship. Compare a poor driver who can see the risks but lacks the driving skills to avoid them. Parents and others can give intensive training about how to behave – but in the next social situation, it flies out of their heads or they behave stiffly trying to follow instructions. They sense how people react to them, anxiety rises and behaviour worsens. Many comedians – possibly Aspergers– raise laughs about such gaffes. Why, for example, avoid eye-contact? Perhaps too much sensitivity, and fear of what may be seen by meeting eyes that reveal more than any assumed kindliness of voice or gesture. Helpful therapy might be to enable watching, privately, video of clients’ own public behaviour, so they can see where they go wrong, and see why it repels others. Such undirected viewing in a non-threatening situation can also enable more alertness watching how others get it right. The video experiments that I had opportunity to do with children found parents remarking on how their child had suddenly become more likable. Society itself needs ‘therapy’ – to value sociodiversity like biodiversity. So much waste of people when seeking to ‘normalise’ everyone. Rather, recognise that oddity may have potential for independent thinking and discovery, as in lists being compiled of ‘probable’ Aspergers, from Newton to Mark Twain and Henry Ford. ‘People they laughed at’ could be a text for all schools and libraries. Accept an etiquette of how to tell people pleasantly when they bore or irritate, and how people so advised can respond with thanks and not offence – instead of the present unexplained rejections and cruel remarks offstage. (Make a TV comedy showing how. Kindly humour is the lubricant.) Essential also to help Asperger outcasts are the redeemers, those brilliant and generous people with the social blindness to see the potential rather than the ‘over-the-top’ dismal social bloomers.
Mothers of odd children can be helped to appreciate their strange child as precious china, with a possibly beautiful future. Parents can learn how to love their child without requiring to be loved first, as some expect. (A role for psychologists in pre-parent training.) All children can learn to enjoy the variety amongst them, as they love the variety of the rest of nature. They can be co-teachers, because it is from other children who accept them that there is most chance for young Aspergers to absorb the social skills training they need – isolated, their problems worsen. References Szalavitz, M. (2008). Welcome to my world: Could autism be explained by a brain in overdrive? New Scientist, 20 September. pp 34-37. Wilkinson, L A. (2008). A childhood disorder grows up. The Psychologist, 21.9. 768-771
Valerie Yules Letters 