The Science and Fiction of Autism

[lightreads]

The Science and Fiction of Autism by Laura Schreibman


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Researcher/clinician paints a pretty thorough but accessible picture of autism, from symptomology to history to treatment modalities, with one of the better breakdowns on clinically-verified treatments versus wild speculation that I've seen in a while.

There's only one huge, overwhelming problem: it's a book about autism that fails completely to be about autistic people. Clinicians talk a lot here, and neurologists, and parents, but not a single autistic person puts in a word. This book is pretty much the epitome of the medical model, and there isn't a blink of acknowledgement that there are other paradigms at play, that some persons with autism are rejecting full-time residential treatment and proclaiming their autonomy and rights to live as they are, just as an example. Writing a book about autism in the twenty-first century that never even mentions neurodiversity is pretty shocking to me.

It's a good book, for what it is, but you have to know what that is before reading it.

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Comments

[fuzzyboo03.livejournal.com]

I find the majority of the scientific opinion on autism spectrum disorders completely ignores actual autistics. Because clearly we don't know anything about what's going on in our heads. Between that and the assumption that the way we think is wrong, I pretty much reject any "expert" on the matter. We're people too.

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

There is a small but slowly growing number of autistic spectrum people going into neuroscience and autism research now, but that's a pretty new development. Otherwise, yeah, you're stuck with *points up* this sort of thing and Temple Grandin, who, I love her books, but a human neuroscientist she is not.