Between Their World and Ours
Breakthroughs with Autistic Children
by Karen Zelan Because autism cannot be cured, and because psychoanalysis has been disastrously wrong about autism in the past, many people hesitate to send autists into psychotherapy. Zelan is a psychotherapist who believes that autists can benefit tremendously from psychotherapy. She feels that autists often feel badly about themselves due to knowing that they are autisic. Further, autists need help in discovering the differences between their worlds and the world at large: their identities are somewhat shaky. Having worked with 45 autists, Zelan feels that she is able to work with them and has tips for parents. Despite having met her first autists at Bettelheim's Orthogenic School, Zelan disagrees with his assertation that parents are to blame for autism. Zelan holds that autism drives parents away from positive interaction with their children, but that the lack of such interaction does not cause autism. Zelan also disagrees with the Theory of Mind theory of autism. She argues that differing scores on theory of mind tests is due not to inferior theory of mind in autists, but to a desire to please on the part of the normal children, and a creative intelligence on the part of autists. The children that Zelan talks about range from nonverbal to Asperger Syndrome on the spectrum. Zelan's chapters cover many topics without clear stops so that I got confused about which autist she was speaking of. The index let me know where she wrote of which subject, so that I could look back and remember what she'd already said. The book built on what it said cohesively, with the exception of one confusing chapter about a class of autists.
From reading merely the cover of this book, I could see that it would not be a one dimensional analysis of autism. The back cover tells me that Zelan has coauthored a book with Bruno Bettelheim, and the front cover bears a recommendation from Dawn Prince-Hughes. I was a little bit disappointed to find that the book does not live up to its subtitle: it is not primarily about breakthroughs, and in fact, only one dramatic breakthrough occurs in the entire book. Although Zelan defenitely knows that autism has a sensory component, she does not attribute any aspects of autism to it, even her claim that autists are both drawn to and repelled by human interaction. Zelan seems uncertain on the topic of whether or not autism should be cured, and recommends that autists be told about autist acheivers. The three she mentions to exclusion of all others are Donna Williams, Temple Grandin and Paul McDonnell. I wonder about this, as Dawn Prince-Hughes is a friend of Zelan's!
Enjoyable reading
