Simon Baron-Cohen on “Disorder,” “Cure,” and Autism
Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge University and director of the Autism Research Center in today’s Independent:
The word ‘disorder’ is too negative. I use the word “condition” – autism can be disabling, but not all of its features involve disability. Some of them are strengths.
The majority of people with autism have exceptional attention to detail. Sometimes that’s also expressed as a talent in drawing, music or in spotting patterns in mathematics. It’s important to value those aspects of autism that are special, which can sometimes give rise to talents.
The highlight of my career has been meeting students who I’m meant to be teaching, but they teach me just as much, if not more.
It worries me slightly when people talk about ‘curing’ autism or eradicating it. I am in favour of treatments that target the disabling aspects of autism. In the future, I hope we’ll have such well-designed methods for supporting people with autism that their strengths can blossom.
Whether autism is a “disease” or “disorder” or “difference” or “disability”—it’s a question that’s been considered here more than once before. Some might say these are just differences of semantics and language and PC-hand-wringing. But I think it really matters how we talk about autism and “what” we say it is, and no one’s taught me how much words matter down to the very last syllable, than Charlie.
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19 opinions for Simon Baron-Cohen on “Disorder,” “Cure,” and Autism
laurentius-rex
Sep 21, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Trouble is every time I talk to this geezer I wonder if he has Thery of Mind, as to what I am trying to communicate to him :)
navi
Sep 21, 2008 at 4:41 pm
This is not PC hand wringing. These words, though similar have very strong connotations.
‘with autism’ vs ‘is autistic’ is PC hand wringing.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Sep 21, 2008 at 4:56 pm
@l-r, have you ever spoken to him in person?
@navi, I understand the arguments for has/is but these “d” and “c” other words have a lot more potential to sting……
laurentius-rex
Sep 21, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Yeah, from time to time I have spoken with his double barrelled ness, it’s inevitable on the conference circuit.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Sep 21, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Was in the aisle across from him on a train after a conference a couple of years ago but at that point had no idea what to say to him.
Sarah
Sep 21, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Why can’t we have an epidemic of reason?
I saw the ARC website-they are doing some intriguing research-it looks like they are searching for genetic and environmental causation.
~Sarah
Marla
Sep 21, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I do think it is important how people communicate about Autism.
Larry
Sep 21, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Modern science declares that there is no known cause and no known cure for autism. There are no neurological or genetic or chemical tests for it. In fact, there is no way to even define it other than by an arbitrary constellation of symptoms. Therefore, it can fit into no known classification.
I propose that we, as guests on Kristina’s blog, choose an original classification term. Autism is no longer a disease, disability, disorder or any other known classification. Here is my suggestion:
From now on, autism should be classified as a whappadappa.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Sep 21, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Think I’ll stick to disability…….
Larry
Sep 22, 2008 at 1:51 am
Damn! Here I went to all the trouble to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race, but you’re sticking with the tired old “disability!” Well, what can I do. It’s your blog ;)
Phil Schwarz
Sep 22, 2008 at 1:54 am
Dr. Baron-Cohen seems to be inching closer and closer to a realization that I have been advocating for some 13 years and counting now: that to move forward — as parents, as professionals, as advocates, as self-advocates — we must make the distinction between autism per se and the handicaps secondary to autism.
Larry
Sep 22, 2008 at 2:00 am
That’s cool. It’s sort of giving up on understanding autism, but at least it’s a willingness to have an open mind.
Even so, modern science is too quick to ignore the contributions of psychoanalysis in this.
Autismville
Sep 22, 2008 at 9:18 am
“I am in favour of treatments that target the disabling aspects of autism.”
I second that.
RAJ
Sep 22, 2008 at 9:35 am
Baron-Cohen represents everything that is wrong with cognitive psychology trying to explain ‘autism’. Uta Frith and Baron-Cohen’s belief in Theory of Mind impairments as ‘the’ cognitive theory that explains all of autism fails to recognize that TOM impairments have been shown to exist in mental retardation (without autism) schizophrenia, stroke patients, elderly patients with Parkinson’s Disease (but not Alzheimer’s Disease).
eg:
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=14994194
Baron-Cohen and Frith also represents the worst of the overspecialization in medicine. He looks at autism but not other neurologically impaired populations who have the same cognitive impairments (but not autism).
His Autism Spectrum Quotient test is not a test for the presence of a developmental disability, but is rather a personality test, not surprising since cognitive psychology conceptualizes autism as a psychological disorder rather than a developmental disorder.
laurentius-rex
Sep 22, 2008 at 9:58 am
Cognitive models will ultimately prove right if there proponents catch on to the notion of complexity in dynamic systems that are constantly growing and adapting to differential rates of growth within there seperate modules.
(indeed some researchers do recognise this)
Psychoanalysis and psychodynamic explanations are dead, and RAJ is somewhat cognitively blinkered in failing to appreciate the cutting edge of it all right now. A quality he shares with SBC I might add, of being all too single minded and unprepared to consider just what pyschosocial and cognitive detours in there own makeup have to say about there personalities and approach to the subject)
(Not that I can say I am much better, but I am actually prepared to be wrong and that is how research should proceed, as falsifiable)
RAJ whether you know it or not, you are actually arguing for a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of the Kraepelinian paradigm, at which point my own needle becomes stuck
RAJ whether you know it or not, you are actually arguing for a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of the Kraepelinian paradigm, at which point my own needle becomes stuck
RAJ whether you know it or not, you are actually arguing for a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of the Kraepelinian paradigm, at which point my own needle becomes stuck
laurentius-rex
Sep 22, 2008 at 10:05 am
Larry, Autism is a phenomenon, (all things are phenomenal) a speculation and the result of some apparently deeply based human need for categorisation.
It is a phenomenon that can be viewed in a variety of ways, but above all since the impairments of autism are considered to be in the social realm I can cheerfully say it is probably the most socially constructed diagnosis of all.
Really it is about sub optimal adaptations in certain environments and the disability arises out of the systems capacity to adapt to the alternative episteme that autism represents.
I guess that is why the interface of ideas at various levels of explanation, ontological, rational, empirical, metaphysical all fascinate me.
No one ever gets behind the how’s and the what’s and the wheres of autism to the why’s
A cause is not a reason why, because why is the cause?
Emily
Sep 22, 2008 at 10:44 am
As annoying as I find cog-psych most of the time, I really like what SBC says here. In my opinion, he articulated it well. When I’ve talked about giving our sons “tools” for function rather than “curing” them, and I’ve said we’d do that whether they were “NT” or not, that’s what I mean. Everyone–and I mean EVERYONE–has some deficit, some area of disability that could use some help. Autism is no exception.
Larry
Sep 22, 2008 at 1:03 pm
“(Not that I can say I am much better, but I am actually prepared to be wrong and that is how research should proceed, as falsifiable)”
—-
Laurentius-rex:
If you stick with the criterion that something must be falsifiable, you are stuck with the superficial. If Freud is dead, Popper is deader:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/gardner_popper.html
If Popper is to be taken seriously, we can dismiss Darwin’s theories as psuedo-science.
There have to be valid alternate approaches to knowledge that don’t measure up to Popper’s stern criteria. Otherwise we would never have been able to retore dead languages or decipher secret codes. One way to do this is to make a model and be prepared to discard it the moment any evidence comes along that doesn’t fit. Then make another model. That’s how Darwin did it, and that’s how Freud did it.
Freud was always ready to abandon pet hypotheses. One of the big modern attacks on Freud had to do with the fact that he abandoned his seduction theory. And yet, when feminist ideologues tried to reintroduce it, an ignorant witch hunt ensued in which daycare providers all over America were falsely jailed for child abuse.
Regan
Sep 22, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Like S B-C, I might prefer “condition”; the “dis-” prefixes do put more emphasis on deficits and on otherness. Perhaps it’s semantics, but I believe that verbal behavior has great power of influence.
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