I haven't said this in years, but please would you help with my (CBT) homework?

I recall a good many years ago now seeking some counselling on my (then-undiagnosed) AS difficulties......the advice I got was that I needed assertiveness training. I was introduced to the idea of Transactional Analysis: the parent-adult-child theory.

At the time I didn't know I was just being dumped with an in-vogue gimmick - didn't really matter what I came for, just something to give someone with what in those days was classed as immaturity problems - hasn't quite got the hang of adulthood - an easy way of explaining away autism.

Therefore it does make me wonder if that's what your therapist is up to. The idea of parent-adult-child is that some people fall into a "child" state of mind that lets people tell them what to do, others have a "parent" telling people what to do mentality, and that what you have to aim for is a balanced sensible mature "adult" way of responding.

So looking at the scenario, if you are inclined to the "child" side of the scenario, you'd react to this as if the other person was being being parentish, and be all sorry, or you'd act in a parent-like way yourself and talk down to this person. What you are supposed to do (and will eventually do after a lot of similar exercises), is come up with some response that calms everything down. So your therapist wants to know how you feel - parent-like or child-like, how you would react and how you'd cope with the upset.

Trouble is this sort of thinking hasn't anything to do with autism. It doesn't recognise that noise or aggression might be harder to process, that it might be harder to placate the other person because your look or response might make things worse, that you cannot ensure the right body language, or facial expression or turn of phrase that achieves the adult reaction your therapist may (if I read this aright) be leading you round to doing.

I might be wrong. Just my reaction to this idea of exploring scenarios of challenging situations doesn't show much understanding of autism. Does the therapist have a sound background in autistic spectrum?

Transactional Analysis originates in the work of Penfield and Berne in the 1950s. The idea is you have certain innate preconceptions or experiences that cause you to behave the same way in similar situatiions. Transactional analysis is supposed to help you break out of these pre-sets.

But autism deprives you of a lot of the mechanisms needed to analyse these scenarios and develop better social responses. So this approach, while you might explore some scenarios doesn't address the fact your real difficulty is not pre-learned responses but understanding exchanges at all.

I recall a good many years ago now seeking some counselling on my (then-undiagnosed) AS difficulties......the advice I got was that I needed assertiveness training. I was introduced to the idea of Transactional Analysis: the parent-adult-child theory.

At the time I didn't know I was just being dumped with an in-vogue gimmick - didn't really matter what I came for, just something to give someone with what in those days was classed as immaturity problems - hasn't quite got the hang of adulthood - an easy way of explaining away autism.

Therefore it does make me wonder if that's what your therapist is up to. The idea of parent-adult-child is that some people fall into a "child" state of mind that lets people tell them what to do, others have a "parent" telling people what to do mentality, and that what you have to aim for is a balanced sensible mature "adult" way of responding.

So looking at the scenario, if you are inclined to the "child" side of the scenario, you'd react to this as if the other person was being being parentish, and be all sorry, or you'd act in a parent-like way yourself and talk down to this person. What you are supposed to do (and will eventually do after a lot of similar exercises), is come up with some response that calms everything down. So your therapist wants to know how you feel - parent-like or child-like, how you would react and how you'd cope with the upset.

Trouble is this sort of thinking hasn't anything to do with autism. It doesn't recognise that noise or aggression might be harder to process, that it might be harder to placate the other person because your look or response might make things worse, that you cannot ensure the right body language, or facial expression or turn of phrase that achieves the adult reaction your therapist may (if I read this aright) be leading you round to doing.

I might be wrong. Just my reaction to this idea of exploring scenarios of challenging situations doesn't show much understanding of autism. Does the therapist have a sound background in autistic spectrum?

Transactional Analysis originates in the work of Penfield and Berne in the 1950s. The idea is you have certain innate preconceptions or experiences that cause you to behave the same way in similar situatiions. Transactional analysis is supposed to help you break out of these pre-sets.

But autism deprives you of a lot of the mechanisms needed to analyse these scenarios and develop better social responses. So this approach, while you might explore some scenarios doesn't address the fact your real difficulty is not pre-learned responses but understanding exchanges at all.