The Pied Piper of Autism
Has it ever happened to you that you’ve met some individual, some therapist or teacher, who seemed to be the one person who could connect with your child, help him or her to talk or make some great gain? Some one person who seemed to have some almost, magical, miraculous skill to help your child?
Portia Iversen in her just-released book, Strange Son: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism, indeed describes Soma Mukhopadhyay as such a person. Psychiatrists in England, Iversen notes, said that Tito was one in one million; Iversen speculates, might not it be Tito’s mother who is one in one million, for being able to teach Tito to communicate, despite his being severely autistic?
Towards the latter part of her book, Iversen has taken Soma and Tito to the Carousel School, which Dov attends. Tito reads his poetry to the students in Dov’s class and shocks his teachers when he says, by pointing to the letters with Soma beside him, that he liked Tito’s poem “The Mind Tree” best. One of the other boys in Dov’s class goes to sit beside Soma and the other students are alike drawn to her, as Iversen writes. Soma starts training the teachers in her method, the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM). When Iversen attempts to have Soma formulate her teaching procedures and to write them out in book form, and to have RPM tested and replicated, a difference of opinion emerges. Soma, Iversen writes, insists on she herself working with “every autistic child”—which, Iversen acknowledges, is simply impossible. RPM appears to involve a certain amount of physical contact between the teacher and the student, with Soma sitting beside a child and touching the child’s knee or hand (sometimes rather forcefully) in a certain manner.
Iversen nonetheless describes Soma as the “pied piper of autism”—-but if you remember what happens to both the rats and the children who fall under the enchanting music of the Piper of Hamelin, you might want to think twice about this comparison.
Related Stories
POSTED IN: Autism Lit, Books, Education, India, Neuroscience, Poetry, Treatment
3 opinions for The Pied Piper of Autism
Autism Vox
Dec 31, 2006 at 5:23 am
[…] The Pied Piper of Autism By Kristina Chew, PhD | Related entries in Education, Treatment, Neuroscience, Books, Autism Lit, Poetry, India […]
Autism Vox » The Changling and the Pied Piper: Fairy Tales and Science in Strange Son
Jan 2, 2007 at 10:26 am
[…] Iversen continues to draw on references to fairy tales throughout Strange Son. I noted in a a post a few days ago that Iversen describes Soma Mukhopadhyay as the “pied piper of autism.” When Soma and Tito visit the Carousel School that Dov attends, the other autistic children are able to do things—even simply to sit still—in Some’s presence: “Soma seemed to hold some kind of magical spell over them; it was as if she were the Pied Piper of autism” (p. 349). […]
Autism Vox » What is autism and what is the movies?
Mar 29, 2007 at 3:33 am
[…] to fairy tales and myths, such as that of the changeling; Soma is compared to no one less than the pied piper (p. 349). Further, both Tito and Soma are often represented in such a way that their […]
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: