“Do you think that I’m autistic anymore?”: Growing up with autism in Kamran Nazeer’s Send in the Idiots
One way I might describe Kamran Nazeer’s Send In the Idiots: Stories from the other side of autism is that it is a book by an author who has been “cured” or “recovered” from autism. The author himself does not use this language. His purpose in finding and speaking again to his former autism school classmates is this:
I want to understand how a life is different it when it lacks these elements [of intuition or empathy] or when they’re not fully formed. So much of what animates our lives–conversation, thought, creativity, friendship, politics—draws on understanding the world of other people, and yet autistic people may only be able to rely on one autos, their own.(p. 7).
What, Nazeer asks, is “the nature of the world that lies beyond their reach” (p. 7)?
What stands out to me in his question is his use of the third-person pronoun “their.” The word refers to “autistic people” as a whole and, more specifically, to the classmates whose stories Nazeer tells in his book. But also included in “their” is Nazeer himself, even though he does not write of “the nature of the world that lies beyond my reach.” Nazeer’s presentation of growing up with autism is different from an outwardly “neurodiverse” account because he refrains from statements like “autistic and proud of it” and even “I am autistic.” His book is not a straightforward “celebration of autistic difference.” I would rather characterize the view of growing up with autism in Send In the Idiots as bittersweet, because of that “something beyond their reach.”
“There are certain things missing from the lives of autistic individuals,” Nazeer writes (p. 7). He notes that his classmates and his own “autism eased, in each case, because of other people, our parents, friends, and our teachers, of course” (p. 229). And, in the last chapter of Send In the Idiots, after travelling around the United States to meet André in Boston, Randall in Chicago, Elizabeth’s parents Sheila and Henry in Los Angeles, and Craig in New York City, Nazeer meets Ira and Rebecca, the director and the teacher from the small school for autistic children in New York that he attended in the 1980s.
To prepare to meet these two women together, Nazeer has recalled a set of tapes of “Tom and Maureen” (p. 74, 179) that he and his classmates used to listen to, to learn to talk about people’s feelings. Writes Nazeer,
I thought that this would be a funny opening and that it’d show how much sharper my insight into other people’s feelings had become. It was also an odd opening, though. Did I want to be rediagnosed? (p. 179)
Note that Nazeer’s question is whether his former teacher and clinician—-the professionals who taught him as a child—still think he is autistic. Again, while Nazeer talks about growing up with autism and relates his memories of disliking to be touched and having temper tantrums (p. 62) and of learning to play, to understand other’s feelings, and to converse (p.68-70), he does not include a statement such as “I am autistic” in his book. That is, he does not go out of his way to identify himself as autistic, unlike an organization attended by his friend Craig in New York:
According to this heterodoxy, autism was not a developmental disorder. People who were autistic suffered no lack; their symptoms were not shortcomings, but simply the characteristic of the autistic individual, and the way of life and the style of thought of the autistic individual were as valid as what clinicians defined as “normal.” (pp. 208-209)
The organization referred to here is not named (it sounds similar to this group). Nazeer makes the point that it is
….arrogant to believe that I am better because I was autistic; perhaps it did equip me well for certain things, perhaps some of these were not trivial…..I had only reached the threshold beyond which I could even have this discussion with them [Ira and Rebecca] thanks, surely, to professional help, their professional help, and a lot of consideration, and work, and care. (pp. 216-217)
His friend Craig is a talented speech writer not because of some “innate” ability to write, but because he has worked at it (p. 229). Based on Nazeer’s conversational skills and his ability to interpret what Ira and Rebecca might be thinking—his displaying of “Theory of Mind,” the ability to “mind-read” and understand what another person is thinking (pp. 71-74)—both women assent that Nazeer is not autistic anymore. “‘You ran this conversation from start to finish. More or less,’” Rebecca notes and then asks “‘Is it important?’” (p. 216). Her question can be taken two ways: Is it important that Nazeer’s former teachers think he is no longer autistic? Or is it important to Nazeer that he is or is not autistic?
Here is his reponse:
I shook my head. It couldn’t be important. Or I couldn’t admit to them that it was important, but perhaps I’d think about it again later. (pp. 216-217)
Ira’s and Rebecca’s judgment is made not on the fact that Nazeer has attended college and graduate school, lives and travels on his own, works as a policy adviser for the British government, speaks on the radio. What they really mean, he notes later, is that he does not “display as many of the symptoms as when they last knew me, twenty years before, and I no longer had all the same limitations. I got better, to say it that way” (p. 227).
Nazeer’s use of the phrase “I got better” echoes the question Henry, Elizabeth’s father, asked him: “Why did you get better?” This is a “high-stakes question” (p. 169) for Henry as Elizabeth committed suicide and, it is implied, did not get better—-and I will continue to explore how Nazeer suggests he did in future post. Above and beyond notions of “curing” or “recovering” a child from autism, perhaps this question of “getting better” is the one to keep asking in regard to the education of autistic children. The point of educating an autistic child is not for them to “get better by not being autistic”; the point is how to help them grow up, as Nazeer himself has, with autism.
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POSTED IN: Adulthood, Autism Lit, Books, Diagnosis, Education, Language, Philosophy
30 opinions for “Do you think that I’m autistic anymore?”: Growing up with autism in Kamran Nazeer’s Send in the Idiots
Jannalou
Jul 28, 2006 at 10:06 am
Yes.
Julie
Jul 28, 2006 at 2:59 pm
I liked this book. I think the reason Nazeer uses “they/their” rather than “we/our” is because throughout the book he removes himself and his own experience as much as possible, and I don’t think it’s necessarily to dissociate himself from autism and his former classmates. I think he’s just trying to draw on his former observations and observe and remark on a group of people as they are now in comparison, and it’s hard to do that objectively when you’re including yourself in the given population. I liked that approach, although I’d have liked to have read more about his experience throughout the novel.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 28, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Thanks for the observations, Julie and Jannlou—– On rereading, Nazeer does say more than I had thought about himself—-I see the book as something of a memoir or autobiography. He very gently inserts himself and memories of himself into his accounts of his former classmates. And there is something in his style that is distinctive, to me, as far as the way he presents himself and interweaves explanations of theories of autism etc..
Ballastexistenz
Jul 28, 2006 at 6:36 pm
That book reads like the sort of thing that will one day be archaic. It reminds me of a short story I read in an anthology of early-1900s German lesbian writing.
It’s hard to describe. The story was about a lesbian couple, but it was presented in a highly pathologized light, this is from the era when bad mothering was still one of the theories for why people became lesbians. The ending had the main character saying something to her mother like, “Why can’t you just accept that I love her? Can’t you see that you drove me into her arms?”
The tone of the story was the same as that book. And they’re both interesting but dated — dated in a bad way.
Ballastexistenz
Jul 28, 2006 at 6:38 pm
What I mean by “dated”, is that even though everything’s tied to the ideas of its time period, these are heavily tied to some particular ideas, of a particular kind, that really OUGHT to just plain not be there.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 28, 2006 at 6:39 pm
What were the intentions of the writer in writing the German short story?
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 28, 2006 at 6:45 pm
It is hard to figure out what the author’s exact understanding of “what autism is” in the book—-he’s not very clear about the “particular ideas” he is drawing on regarding autism.
Ballastexistenz
Jul 28, 2006 at 8:09 pm
The writer was a lesbian in Germany during that time period. I don’t know her exact intentions, and I seem to have lost the book in a move. The viewpoint of lesbianism that she gave in the short story, though, was heavily medicalized, distorted by psychoanalytic theory, and tragic even when being semi-”accepting” (in that case the “acceptance” was only there because there was “nothing to be done” about the woman’s upbringing now that she was older). The viewpoint about autism that Nazeer gave in the book had the same feel to it — it was distorted, it was inadequate, it was based on force-fitting reality to theories, it was tragic, it was medicalized, and it distorted the lives it chronicled in a way far more reminiscent of some really bad writing I’ve seen in books by parents, than most books by auties.
Ballastexistenz
Jul 28, 2006 at 8:15 pm
By the way I’m sure that a formal scholar in disability studies could come up with an exact name for what I’m seeing. I just don’t have that, because I’m not a formal scholar in disability studies (or anything else). It’s something that carries a lot of very bad assumptions behind it and reinforces a lot of very bad but very standard prejudices. I’m sure there’s a word for it, or several words, or a cute phrase, but I don’t know it.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 28, 2006 at 8:25 pm
The term “reinforcing stereotypes” comes to mind but I think you’re thinking about something else—absorbing and becoming stereotypes, perhaps?
Ballastexistenz
Jul 29, 2006 at 9:45 am
I mean, I think they’d have a name for the exact pattern of stereotypes being absorbed/reinforced/etc.
Ballastexistenz
Jul 29, 2006 at 9:54 am
By the way, nearly every book I’ve ever read that “follows” autistic people into adulthood, or that discusses autistic adults, and is not written by an autistic person, has a particular tone to it that’s like that. I just don’t know how to say what “like that” is.
I do find it telling, though, that someone who’s largely rejected his connection to the concept of being autistic, would have chosen to write about other autistic people in this style. I have never read a book by an autistic person that is so thoroughly written in this style before, and I’ve only seen one or two (besides this) that even incorporate this style at all. That’s out of over a hundred.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 29, 2006 at 4:18 pm
I’m thinking more on his tone—not like Temple Grandin’s (I think).
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 29, 2006 at 5:04 pm
From my reading, Nazeer “ducks” as far as his own connection to being autistic—he doesn’t really answer the question about whether he self-identifies as autistic or not.
I would say, having spent the past week writing about child psychiatry professor like Stanley Greenspan, that Nazeer does not sound like him—he does not have Greenspan’s presumptive, even condescending tone.
Ballastexistenz
Jul 29, 2006 at 7:25 pm
He depicts autistic people as not having a complete personhood, but rather as people with pieces missing.
I’ve rarely seen an “insider” account do that before. Most autistic people know better.
There was also a telling moment when describing Temple Grandin’s squeeze machine:
“The Hug Box disturbs me, though. I don’t like to think of autistic children climbing into this contraption and self-medicating with hugs. It seems unwise to encourage them in seeking enclosure.”
I’ve seen a lot of autistic people’s responses to the squeeze machine, both positive and negative. I’ve never seen that one. It seems eerily similar to Grandin’s own advisors in school and so forth who viewed her desire to build such a thing as pathological and obsessive and sick.
Additionally, the sentence he’s using doesn’t even make semantic sense. “Self-medicating” is a usually-pejorative buzzword, but it doesn’t even make sense in this context. What he’s saying is utterly alien to anything I’ve ever heard an autistic person say.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 29, 2006 at 7:45 pm
I have been puzzling over that passage too. Certainly I have seen my own son have a huge need, and relief, in deep pressure (and sometimes, too, a negative response).
Do you think he is not autistic—-or not purposefully self-identifying as autistic?
Ballastexistenz
Jul 29, 2006 at 10:12 pm
I’m going under the assumption that he’s autistic. But heavily identified with some perspectives on autism that are primarily held by non-autistic people. And I still can’t seem to figure out how to articulate what those perspectives are, beyond disturbing.
Another passage I found inconsistent, by the way, was when he described his friend’s encounters with some sort of neurodiversity group.
He started off with describing the group as believing that autistic people were just as good as non-autistic people. (Note “just as good as”, as in “equal”.)
Then he went on to explain why autistic people are not better than non-autistic people, and considered this to be the same as saying that autistic people are not just as good as non-autistic people.
The equating of “We’re just as good as you” with “We’re better than you” is one that I usually see among people who are invested in the inequality to begin with, viewing it as really neutral and equal.
If you view it as neutral and equal that Group A is inferior to Group B, then when Group A moves up to “equality”, that move up looks like a move up from neutrality, which looks like “Group A thinks it’s better than Group B.”
It’s a twisted line of logic but I’ve seen it over and over, not just with autistic people either.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 30, 2006 at 6:55 am
I’ve still been thinking over his views on the group—he ends up making the point that Craig’s and other autistic people’s abilities is not “because” of their being autistic, but because they’ve worked at it, and he seems to be making this argument for himself and his own abilities, too. (Nazeer also seems to be making the familiar argument that Craig and other autistic people have achieved what they have “despite” their being autistic, but he is not as forthright about this.)
I don’t think the words “deficit” and “disability” occur very much in Send in the Idiots. But he does state that being autistic means that one “misses” out on things—that one’s life has something missing from it due to being autistic.
Ballastexistenz
Jul 30, 2006 at 8:04 am
It’s not really what he says (like “deficit” etc) in a way that can be word-counted, it’s the pattern of what he says and what he leaves out.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 30, 2006 at 8:49 am
Yes—–might it be possible to have a diversity of ways to write about being autistic?
Autism Vox
Jul 30, 2006 at 10:32 am
[…] I find this an odd yet intriguing ending, and not only because of the notion of an “autistic ark.” The “ark” image itself recalls to me Noah’s arc, not so much for that fabelled ship carrying two of each of all the earth’s species, as for its saving some of the denizens of a soon-to-be-washed-away world to live in a new one. Further, Nazeer’s tone here is different from that in most of the book, as I noted in a previous post. He sounds a bit (if I may say so) goofy here, even light-hearted, in describing a bus outfitted with beds and equipment (how do you barbeque on a moving vehicle?). […]
Ballastexistenz
Jul 30, 2006 at 11:32 am
Your question doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either.
There already is a diversity of ways to write about being autistic. It doesn’t mean that every way is accurate. This way is at least somewhat dehumanizing.
Ballastexistenz
Jul 30, 2006 at 11:33 am
(and I should add, is dehumanizing no matter what kind of person writes it, autistic, parent, professional, journalist, whatever)
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 30, 2006 at 6:30 pm
I’m thinking about this in regard to your most recent post, especially your writing:
During some of my worst periods of self-hatred, to see another person who reminded me of myself (being autistic or something similar) created an instant sense of hostility and revulsion. I’ve seen autistic people trying to distance themselves from Those Other Autistic People, too. If these are more or less conscious attitudes, what are our unconscious reactions?
I’m thinking about this in regard to how Nazeer uses the third-person pronoun (”their,” quoted early in my post) and how he writes about “autistic people” at a distance (it seems) from himself, and in the third-person. That is why I have been wondering at his final image of the autistic ark.
Autism Vox » The Refrigerator Mother and the Puppets
Jul 31, 2006 at 8:17 am
[…] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Related Posts: Remembering “Refrigerator Mothers” onMother’s Day…Out of the icebox…Caveat lector…I’m Not Afraid To Be Wrong…Genetics, Excuses, and Myths…The Alligator Clip and Echolalia: Local Coherence in Kamran Nazeer’s Send in the Idiots…We Need To Get Beyond the Blame… […]
Phil Schwarz
Aug 1, 2006 at 8:46 pm
I haven’t read the book yet, but all the excerpts from it that I have seen so far bespeak a curious kind of self-hatred — something iatrogenic, perhaps distilled from what the author thinks the mainstream world thinks of him and his kind. Superficially ambivalent and dithering, but at the core quite malignant.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Aug 2, 2006 at 5:34 am
Phil, I’d much like to know what you think of the book—-iatrogenic self-hatred is something to think on…
rashreflection
Jul 29, 2008 at 6:08 pm
I think it is relevant to point out that Nazeer works in politics for a living.
Every day, he is fully immersed in the mainstream world, so it should not be too surprising that he views certain quirks negatively.
Additionally, if the book is any indication, he appears to be something of a centrist liberal (ala the Clintons) - the sort of person who is generally tolerant but shies away from radical concepts such as legalization of marijuana, universal health care, or, indeed, neurodiversity. Some are legitimately opposed to these things, while others simply consider them impractical.
rashreflection
Jul 29, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Just wanted to add something!
Mr. Nazeer, if by chance you read this, please by all means correct me if my assumptions here are off! I realize the universal health care in particular was probably a bad example - I was thinking of the American perspective when writing that.
Regan
Jul 29, 2008 at 7:42 pm
I thought these additional comments by Mr. Nazeer might be interesting.
Interview with Kamran Nazeer (5 parts)
DIRECTORY
Seth’s blog 4/11/08
Memoir Offers and Inside Look at Autism
Weekend Edition Sun May 7, 2006 (7 min 18 sec)
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