Published on 12, July, 2020
Over the last century, psychoanalysis has suggested that one surprising difference between NT and Autistic is how they mature due to a difference in language and a different Salience Network (Sensory-Perception). A thought about this which can better help is that Autistics being Hyper-Sensory can be more concerned with environment while Typical kids are more concerned with Social. There is nothing wrong with this, as we need both in healthy and safe society. We cannot be everything to everyone: focus on our potential, be ok with and mindful abut limits, no one wants to feel like a failure.
This is a good article explaining that more often than not, we as parents might just lack some absent insight into reconnecting with what it was like to be very small.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/parenting-beyond-power/202307/13-reasons-why-your-child-doesnt-listen
That’s really more of a neurological-discussion, when we’re talking about sensitivities and processing; I believe that psychological-issues only really have a place in talk of comorbidity. Otherwise we risk conflating development/psychology/behaviour with the root-causes of autism, which as Ian pointed-out, was quite-decisively ruled out as a root-cause over-decades of scrutiny. There was a whole-wave of misery caused by the conflating of psychology with autism.
Excuse me for being pedantic - I am autistic after all - but did you mean psychodynamic theory rather than all-encompassing "psychology" ? I am very much a believer in a psycho-social model. Freud's archives were closed for a hundred years ofter his death. A lot of people suggest that when they are opened, much of his work will prove to be at best speculative. I believe that one could start with basic biology and chemistry and test neurological theory. I am not sure how one could falsify Freud's belief in the id, ego and superego by experiment. It is like belief in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; if you believe then it is truth that does not need proof.
Yeah.. I did mean psychology as a whole, which is not to say that or don’t believe in psychology, I just mean that it doesn’t come before neurology where autism is concerned. I do believe that live takes its toll and that nurturing occurs, but if you fail to consider that a person has a social impairment before looking at behaviours, you’re speculating at best. I mean ‘refrigerator mothering’ was a solid speculation, before you consider autism, but with autism you can see that parents can be cold or exploitative with their child in the face of odd and unrewarding behaviour. ‘Refrigerator mothering’ can be a factor in childhood development, at consequently the behaviour and psychology that one manifests, but it’s doesn’t play a role in the root causes of autism and as such I incomplete if conflated with neurology.
I think that first paragraph about bad parenting is rigid and extreme, its suggests that these parents aren’t sensible because they aren’t Christ, is ridiculous and it doesn’t mean they’re not being as sensible as is reasonable. This is a perfect example of what I mean by inferior rhetoric equals inferior logic, it’s difficult as times to not say things callously so I hope you’ll forgive that, it is late..
Arguably Creak was superseded by the work of Rutter and Wing. There is an interesting if rather long history by Evans, B (2013) " How Autism become autism" [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3757918/] which I need to work my way through, but which, at first sight, seems to put this discussion more cogently.
Whilst we are all entitled to our opinions, I like it if, when someone quotes an authority, they back it up with an actual reference. Freud wrote over forty books, which reflected the development of his thinking. Many of the other names we have mentioned had long careers, and their views changed.
Rhetoric is the most important of science to attain. If have a vocabulary and grammar that is better you can communicate better; if you can communicate better, you have better reason and logic; if you have better reason and logic you have better rhetoric. Rhetoric is the true crucible of understanding, it’s not a bad thing, it is essential to the integrity of everything that follows it. Therefore if someone has not defeated my rhetoric, it is reasonable to assume that their logic is either equal or inferior to mine.. I’m crudely stating that point but it doesn’t cheapen the idea..
Also you’re forgetting the final point: compositional technique.. also it is referring to the exploitation of language and the persuasiveness of one’s arguments; not the exploitation or persuasion of people..
Rhetoric - " the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques." [OED]
Hopefully we can share ideas without trying to persuade or exploit. There are many perspectives. I tell my students that there a lot of theoretical approaches. and there is not a single "right" answer. One advantage of being neurodivergent is we can often see the big picture. Every theory or perspective has limitations. We learn by considering new ideas, rejecting some and incorporating others into our world view.
I don't disagree, but I don't know what pretext you are referring to.
I agree juniper, this is a pretty chaotic thread, at this point. But ultimately if a point is made and then bolstered, then it could be considered a pretext and people can make a pretext to justify anything if they wish it enough.
What specifically about it.
In fact, re-read the OP and please let me know how this relates.
As I understand it creaks nine points are still a topic of interest today..
What argument exactly are you accusing of being tyrannical?
If you address one point at a time, I'm happy to have a genuine think about it and respond, but right now there's too much all over the place and it's unclear what you're asking. I can help with specifics but please don't accuse me of something that's speculation.
DeSpereaux said:that parents have a great deal to react to,
This is bad parenting. It's not my Role and Responsibility to be reactionary or offended. Yes, I can be exhausted and overwhelmed but that does not mean I cannot still treat my child as an independent human worth dignity and respect - even at a small age.
Next, a good read to solve the modern dance with Instinctual being is Kant, who had great reasoning solutions to temper ones instinct. Now, this may be difficult for someone with added intellectual impairment. But everywhere one can find practical ways to learn a bit of wisdom one step at a time.
The biggest problem is when we strip children of agency because they are autistic. We misalign what's important or a priority with our Ego and force them to do things to try and force a process. These are things I am concerned about addressing. However, it needs to start at Zero. If they're a teenager without added disabilities and it's mayhem, you've done it wrong for way too long and that's a great deal to undo.
It seems tyrannical to me to build an argument of this nature, and to use various academic-components to build a pretext, misusing this stuff as a means of bolstering a hypothesis hurts people in the long run. This is what I can feel here. I may be wrong, but I’m not seeing any convincing-rhetoric here, so I’m assuming that the superior-logic isn’t here either. I’ll continue to believe that until I am convinced.
Psychoanalysis is more akin to religion than science. There is no objective evidence for the holy trinity of id, ego and superego, if you have faith and believe, that is evidence enough. Kanner was spanning the non-scientific theories of Freud et al and the scientific ethological and neurological scientific approach to psychiatry. Psychiartry did lose its way, evidenced by the number of lobotomies and insulin treatments. Anti-psychiatry was the swing of the pendulum, with R D Laing and the therapeutic community model. Eugenics was a side-turning on the way to an understanding of biological psychiatry / pychology. Now it is easy and cheap to look at individual genomes, I suspect we are on the edge of a further leap forward ...
I don’t doubt it.. but I’m not so sure that people consider that, when they slap it into the middle of pretext they need, to make there rhetoric sound convincing..
I think it's a grave mistake for anyone to narrow their focus solely to 'Autism' studies. There is a great deal missed. Ethics, Phenomenology, branching even into modern thought around Left/Right brain thinking such as Ian McGhilchrist or the Science of Awe coming out of Berkeley. From Spinosa, Hume, Kant to Guattari's writings there is so much one can find which is game changing.
In fact, many of it is pointing directly to a mass population in desperate need of 'Autistic' thought - the kind unswayed by the populous and not out of a Neurotic-perverse need to rebel but the kind that simply exists on the margins and doesn't quite tap into the collective unconscious - the accidental sort who can see the cliff everyone is willingly jumping off and puzzled by it all, genuinely trying to help.
Knowing how the basic Freudian-Neurotic "design" of human is set up to function/dysfunction can help re-balance and address the nonsense. Kanner was probably ignored for the first part of his career - most likely because it would be in conflict with where psychoanalysis was headed to some degree - even though, yes, the anti-psychiatry movement was well needed. And while everyone and their dog were interested in Eugenics in the 20s, there is so many more social reasons that can come about the better we understand history.
The three-brain model is precisely that - a model. There may be lessons from evolutionary biology, but we are now recognising that our brains are far more complex than the three-brain model would account for. Whilst the role of the prefrontal cortex may be relevant in terms of neurodiversity, particularly ADHD, we are now seeing executive functioning as a far more complicated process than previously thought. The role of short-term memory for example.
Bettleheim may have got his hypothesis about autism being an attachment disorder, but how to you make the jump to Jung and seeing it as a tie to symbolic fantasy emanations? I am afraid I have lost you there ... please could you spell it out in baby steps?
No that stuff was the gold standard for decades.. creaks nine points were not fringe, nor was Bettelheim and Mahler’s work. I haven’t got a problem with parents treating their kids with respect, I do have a problem with not acknowledging that parents have a great deal to react to, in having to nurture autistic children, and that it’s a damn sight more complex to nurture the impaired than simply applying the word ‘sensible’. My point is that there is neurological issue, that is the bedrock of understanding the whole; then, you can consider what development/psychologies/ and behaviours have manifested..
Honestly I just found the ‘everyone shares a reptile brain stuff’, to be cutting past the sensitivities and impairments that separate the autistic from the neurotypical. The everybody is the same stuff, to-me, cheapens the suffering that is involved with being neurodiverse. And it gives off the vibe of behavioural-talk that everyone uses to undermine our support. Ultimately I FEEL that what you’re saying is a pretext for sidelining. And ultimately I FEEL that I don’t want to be sidelined, I’ve suffered enough, and I feel better and have done better under the pretext that I am neurologically different, as has the whole autistic community.
2. it's not my case. Neuroticism isn't a personality trait, it might lie under the personality, helping shape mechanisms which allow the NT to get along in a social collective, but the personality like the Big 5 or Introversion/Extroversion are what begin to make us unique. We can shape this further with Reason (reason vs instinct).
Mildred Creak's article was published in 1938 back when Kraeplin was proposing dementia praecox, before Leo Kanner's autism paper (1943). I think psychiatry and neurology have moved on ...
First, where are you getting this information? It would be Freud who first said "We're all al little neurotic". And then Lacan.
Most in philosophical academia now recognise the Neurotic state as the "normal" being (while a whole camp following Deleuze and Guattari's massive body of work can begin to see the differences, which might also be playing out in the 2 different traditions of Philosophy (Analytic/Continental).
I noticed that the cheap-shot didn’t go unreciprocated there.. .. you didn’t need it to make your point though, the prose and substance you’ve formulated speaks for itself..
iI have to say that I feel a little nervous when the discussion of medication come up though, because I just feel uneasy about the supplementation of healthy-lifestyle with pharmaceutical-crutches, though I don’t question that medication is reasonable in some situations..
As I say, psychodynamic theory is not one of my "special interests" but I do know that to Freud "neurosis" was linked to frustration during the psychosexual development of the infant. In other words, it is part of his belief system and is not scientifically falsifiable. I wonder what is the basis for your assertion that "most in philosophical academia now recognise the Neurotic state as the 'normal' being ... "
You ask where I am getting this information. I am not a psychologist, but I have studied psychology at postgraduate level in the context of child development and social work. Are you a psychotherapist? Your profile does not state your experience. You clearly have some academic background, so why are you reluctant to back up your opinions with citations?
A lot of what I have written can be found in any general undergraduate psychology text. As I say in my profile my interests are eclectic but very much more bio-psycho-social than psychodynamic. I am in favour of pragmatic approaches like Solution-Focussed and Egan's "Skilled Helper" model, because they have been proven effective. (NIHCE guidelines).
I was once at a lecture at the Tavistock, where a therapist said that a year of weekly psychotherapy was as effective in treating depression as Prozac. That is fine if you are in a position to take forty-plus half-days off work, and possibly pay for private treatment. My response was thank you, if I were depressed I would take the pills and get on with my life! To me, psychotherapy is a bit like theology, with everyone arguing about how many angels can dance on a pin, but the fundamental principle, that a Deity exists, is just assumed.