Recovery: More reflections on autism semantics
“Recovery from autism is different from recovery from everything else, and one can split hairs endlessly,” writes Christina Adams towards the end of A Real Boy, in which she tells the “true story” of how she recovered her son Jonah from autism. She explains, in careful detail, how her son is not autistic anymore, due to interventions ranging from a special diet to 1:1 speech and behavioral therapies.
If Jonah has ADHD traits, some social weaknesses, some adult-type interests, can he really have recovered from autism? If he has to take medicine and be on a diet to stay healthy is that recovery? I wil give a qualified, partial yes. Can one even recover from autism entirely? If we stick with diagnostic critiera, Jonah no longer meets the criteria for autism or PDD. Asperger’s syndrome? He wouldn’t meet the criteria in in a formal diagnostic setting, but he does have elements of the syndrome: choosy eye contact, a certain awkwardness with spoken language along with an excellent voacabulary. (p. 309)
Recovery is a fighting word in autism circles. Recovery from autism is a big business, in the form of treatments (biomedical, educational, and otherwise) that parents constantly encounter. But rather than noting, as Adams does, that recovery from autism is “different from recovery from everything else,” my thought in being the mother of an autistic child for the past nine years is that “recovery from autism” is not the question that needs to be asked or researched. But how to teach my son to live a good life and to the best of his potential—-those are questions I ask myself everyday, and try to do the best with.
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POSTED IN: Autism Lit, Books, Diagnosis, Language, Rhetoric, Treatment
4 opinions for Recovery: More reflections on autism semantics
Phil Schwarz
Aug 13, 2006 at 8:09 pm
I want, like the Zen master Joshu in the famous koan, to be able to *unask* the question of “recovery”.
If “recovery” were only irrelevant, that would be one thing. But it is more malignant than that: it distracts from the *real* issue for folks on the spectrum and their families and friends, which is *enablement*. How to mitigate, accommodate, or otherwise overcome the factors that handicap us — both intrinsic and extrinsic.
Ever since Bettelheim, the “autism community” of parents and professionals and clinicians (almost all of them non-autistic) has insisted on continuing to shoot at the moon in the hopes of “cure” and “recovery”, when what is needed is simply to work matter-of-factly to dismantle handicaps, one by one, individual by individual, to yield better qualities of life.
It’s less cathartic, less sexy, less glamorous, less *powerful feeling* to refocus in that direction, though.
I can’t think of any other reason doing so has been so thoroughly rejected for 40 years and counting though.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Aug 13, 2006 at 8:36 pm
To unask the question of recovery….. Phil, that is how I would describe my “project” in writing about Charlie.
It can be cathartic; it is certainly neither sexy nor glamorous. But it must be said. (Dicendem est.)
Ashley Morgan
Aug 16, 2006 at 5:33 am
I second your comment Kristina, about potential, and Phil, about enablement. We all want the same thing I think, as parents. I know Ms. Adams does too, for her child and any fellow ASD child out there.
Natalie
Oct 11, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I sincerely wish more people could hear THIS message:
“…my thought in being the mother of an autistic child for the past nine years is that “recovery from autism” is not the question that needs to be asked or researched. But how to teach my son to live a good life and to the best of his potential—-those are questions I ask myself everyday, and try to do the best with.”
while voices like Ms. Adams and Ms. McCarthy could be silenced.
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