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Should intervention for ASD be centred on ‘normalcy’ or ‘enjoyment’?

DeSpereaux

I don’t believe that I want to flesh this description out too-much, because I don’t want to distract from peoples’ thoughts on the matter, I’m just interest to see want people subjectively or objectively think. 

What are the negatives of either? What are the positives of either? What is the community focus on?

I have been reading autism-literature, finding like-minded people, and talking to professionals for a while now. I still don’t really understand where I expect my diagnosis to take me, I don’t really know how to make my attempts at enjoyment or equalisation marketable. I don’t really think that everybody in society has the same goals when it comes to autism.

The one concrete thing that I do know, is that autism doesn’t have enough awareness, and that autism doesn’t have enough heads in its community. So I am only sure that we need more screening, we need to widen the bottom of the pyramid, but for what end ’normalcy’ or ‘enjoyment’ and why..?

  • in reply to JuniperFromGallifrey

    That is a very-interesting rabbit-hole, with regards to the empathy-sympathy issue, I believe that most-people do-not distinguish between the two.

    I have talked to a few-people now regarding autism being-diagnosed, I have also talked to a vast-swathe of people regarding autism being-undiagnosed. I found found that the more-conscientious the person that you are talking to, the greater the moralistic stance against autists, and the greater the conflation of Socio-Emotive Communicative (SEC) impairment with not-being-able to feel, which is again conflated with ‘evil’.

    Most do-not consider that there are two-sides to SEC impairment, first is that one can appear cold and the other is that one can be more-exploitable. In society it would appear that there is an additional weight and burden, that neurotypicals place on autists, that make it harder to adjust over-time. So not only are autistic-people impaired but they are also ostracised for that impairment.

    This again reinforces the point that to award autistic-people with support to reach equal-opportunity is not enough, because once autists are equal at the starting-line, they are continually pushed-back and burdened with alienations that are in-excess of the burden that neurotypicals typically-carry.

  • Dating back to Hume, the problem has always involved interrogating one's own Bias and Associations / Affiliations. So how to teach this, but perhaps there have been periods of time where thoughtful or critical thought was better rewarded on a larger scale.

    From a philosophical stand point there are two types of Freedom: Freedom From and Freedom To. Most people have rights which grant them a Freedom From (oppression, false accusation, and so on), but very few have Freedom To.  From what I can assess, Autistics in ratio, don't appear to have either, so on a large scale, I believe changing the narrative around Empathy to include distinguishing it from Sympathy and Compassion, to always speak of it as Cognitive or Emotional Empathy and to continually reinforce that Most people want a sort of Telepathy, not Empathy and want it complete with an unspoken expected response, is a start at addressing the issue of who should be allowed Freedom From. 

    We have entered and era where just considering someone Right-Brained is not enough and doesn't cover the expectation that everyone should be able to be socialised to the masses. Nor does it suit the masses who are and can be hypnotised to dangerous extremes to not have safeguards with in social groups as an evolutionary mechanism. 

    Just a few absurdities to note. This same era is ruthless against ADHD'rs who need a different type of education with more room to move and Dyslexics who need to be allowed to convey understanding without forced to Essay writing. And Autistics who need to be allowed far more time in a library than their peers. 

    Sure, life isn't a walk in the park, but it also shouldn't feel like a prison sentence. 

  • The ultimate goal is that autism should be considered normal. We should be free to be our authentic selves in the wider community without masking.

    Historically and still to some extent the focus has been to 'help' the autistic person to fit in, to appear 'normal'. This has directly or indirectly rewarded masking behaviour and punished or invalidated authentic autistic behaviour. I don't mean only cruel ABA therapies but also the attitude of people who do not accept us unless we mask, the deficit based views of medics, the CBT therapies that try to brainwash us into believing that our way of thinking is faulty.

  • Quality of life. Which is not always enjoyment so much as the absence of suffering.

  • While I am out in the community and masking, I always seem to believe that I am arguing for the sake of normalcy and a fair-trial as-it-were, but the opposite is true when I am with my own thoughts when am alone I lament for and promote pursuit of enjoyment..

    Normalcy I think is what all people are entitled to, because everybody deserves opportunity, I believe it unfair to be entitled to an positive-outcome. I also feel a little guilt when I am talking to others, as I feel as if I am afraid to open myself up to ideological confrontation, so maybe I settle for normalcy because I find that I am inferior when it comes to rhetoric. 
    So that begs the question of whether we need help also with the pursuit of our enjoyment, when others do not, both because we are impaired and because we are on a non-standard journey altogether..

    But on the other hand, we have the question of whether we are securing an outcome for ourselves, ahead of the struggle for enjoyment that we all must be allowed to temper ourselves under...