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
Here’s a, cursory breakdown of OP, as requested, as I perceive it:
1 what does sensory-perception have to do with psychoanalysis. Also I’m not so sure that sensory-perception is included in autism but it is comorbid, I think that’s Sensory processing disorder.
2 I don’t see what language has to do with autism, when language impairment is an additional specifier to autism.
Honestly I’m trying to grip what I started with but it’s late.. I have described the points as I thought them in the thread though.. but I also remain unconvinced by the rhetoric. Is doesn’t supercede the reasoning I have already memorised and absorbed.. again it’s late and I think I’ve used the best rhetoric that I’m going to muster at this point..
Freuds original idea about the analysis into the Psyche (psycho-analysis) was summed in his phrase "The work of Spades" an analogy of an archeological dig where something at surface level which we can see is signalling something which we cannot (and cannot assume). Psychodynamics alludes to the 'iceberg'. However, instead of spades and shovels, the analyst uses verbal communication as the tool.
There are points here:
What is the motive/intent underlying the behaviour or words. what is at conflict. what are we unaware of? Ultimately the goal involved helping someone in a state of 'dysfunction' to operate more fluidity in life. Freud's patients at the beginning of his career were mostly from wealthier families, many of whom were sexually abused. As history tells us, he felt his work was incomplete, which was almost confiscated and destroyed by the Naxi party, and he continued until his death with his daughter carrying on her father's legacy. Now, there's been much contention around some of his concepts, but it might be easier to understand how they came about by cracking open a few books from his early career.
Even reading his abridged book On Dreams, it's difficult to dislike the "man behind the myth" and it makes it easier to correct others when he's taken out of context. The 'libido' can be far better understood now, having had an initial concept as this Drive when we look at the 'reward centre' of the brain. Here it's easy to see how a concept that was theorised under a certain influence and slight bias to make sense of a drive to dominate, then morphed into a better understanding the further neuroscience and Philosophy (Foucault, for instance) has expanded on it. We could accuse F. of using outdated language and attaching the wrong motive (sex) to the right mechanism (power).
The modern practice is currently seeped in Lacanian thought involving the mirroring theatrics of his petite 'a', and as a requirement, a good command of social fluidity with language and vocabulary, but often too myopic, overlooking peer critique which can help sift or differentiate the discovered understanding of widely accepted psychologies of being (and really, in classic form, being Neurotic). Lacan makes being neurotic look sexy.
Psychoanalysis branched from Philosophy (as did medicine and physics). So what do the Stoics or Nietzsche or Hume or Kant have to say about our nature and reasoning? And like archeology, a thing on the surface simply refers to everything submerged which we cannot see and might not be able to access. For some, Psychoanalysis became (or is) an indulgent process an expensive game of Mystery and the unknown. In fact, some individuals who love Lacanian thought such as Peter Rollins, get terribly wrapped up in what is unsaid, which 'carries more weight' than what is said. But the critique of Psychoanalysis is that it became too wrapped up in its theatre. (Guattari)
These concepts pre-date Thinking in Words or Thinking in Pictures (some in Formula). They predate understanding how the brain converts, processes and Sense-Perceives Sound, Gravity, Light and Images, Smell and so on. Most grounded researchers and scientists will make room for further understanding and openly state a theory subject to change by new discoveries in science. Jung had always been quick to state this in his volumes and this willingness to be wrong or in-process with a concept, can mark someone who isn't too quick to bias and thus, more trustworthy.
The emphasis on Language and its role in therapy or even hypnosis dating back to Franz Mesmer. And here is where it gets interesting. There is much to be said on how the brain which is catching social nuance and language and tapping in to the collective without much thought has been thought to be 'encoded' in desirable ways to suit the group... but I'll stop here for a second and follow up later.
Well what I’m getting from this, and I don’t mean to be insulting, but prolix, is that people understand that there are things we don’t know. I agree.
But from there onwards seems to be mystical in nature, I don’t believe that the secrets to the inner-workings of the brain, are going to be found or expanded upon in any great way by the unsealing of ‘secret notebooks’. Just as fighting a war before is has begun gets people hurt, latching onto a hypothetical-scenario and bolting statistics and science to it will also get people hurt, I like to draw my conclusion from what is known. It is interesting that some conversation were left unfinished, but speculation around those mysteries, is no ground to build the house of autism on.
Also I’d like to say that I wouldn’t be resisting like this, if you were agreeing with me, so it’s no slight on you that I’m taking my stance. I just feel this is a contradiction to what is good in the development of autism-research. What is good being what is proven, which is that psychological-disorder is comorbid to autism, because no all autists have the same psychological-disorders (if any) in common.
Sorry I meant unfinished in the sense of not having access to the entirety of a scholars works. I give probs to you for putting the efforts that you do in-discussion. I hope that I’ve not been too-much of a drag in stating my mind, it gets harder and harder to affectively-communicate, the more I narrow in on an argument that I am posing. I rarely consider and counter my lack of theory of mind in my encouragement..
It’s not deliberately unfinished. I also have a full time job, an adult kid (single mother) and life stuff that’s overwhelming and health to mind - I’m also not a prof lecturer so explaining a matter like this when no one else has actually read the material it’s a great deal of effort. There’s a great deal more to the non-spoken language of NT which was then discovered. But there’s enough here to start. When I have a moment to sort my thoughts I will.
In acknowledgement of my hypocrisy where communication is concerned, I bumped up a discussion in-which I tried to explore this, in ‘miscellaneous and chat’..