This is a slightly altered copy of an eMail I sent to on May 8, 2021, to the show’s staff and (excellent) host, Jenn White. Sadly, they chose to ignore my eMail—big shock. I waited for 3 weeks before initially posting the communique here.
In line with the blog’s title, this blog provides about 9 minutes of detail showing how autistics (like me) suffer the barbarism of modern psychology and, indeed, most of modern society. My second choice for a title, BTW, was: Autism in the Dark Ages. Meaning 2021.
And, just as a side note, whether or not you’re autistic is irrelevant. Read on, and you’ll discover how modern psychology also treats you. And your family.
EMAIL CONTENT:
I’m concerned that your May fifth discussion about how perceptions of autism are undergoing a sea change (my label) was mostly a call to change nothing. I’ll explain in a moment, but first think about statements made by you and your guests. (Unfortunately, I only heard 13 minutes of your show, assuming I could listen to the rest on your webpage, but your listen button didn’t work on May fifth, nor today on the eighth.)
From your web-page introduction: “society must help autistic people lead more fulfilling lives rather than treat the condition like [sic: as] an illness.” Two issues: Why do you think society must help autistics lead our lives more than society must help normals lead their lives? Why do you think of society—a representational construct, a virtual entity—as able to help anyone?
See the initial bias? (Who needs help?) See the second? (Who is this “society” who is doing the helping?)
You and your guests, each guest presented as an expert, described autism as a disability. Disability was the last word you used when you asked your panel—a neurotypical (a normal) and two autistics—to comment on the advancement represented by moving from autism awareness to autism acceptance. Yawn. (Oh, sorry!) In the next 9 minutes, I will show that this is less a sea change than a small wave lapping a small pond’s shore.
Guest Sara: “Autism is a disability.” This, from a supporter of improving life for autistics? But you bought it, right? Because Sara is a reporter, she couldn’t be biased, especially against a minority. But… are you kidding? A disability? How am I disabled?
(Here’s a fun challenge, not just for Sara, but for you and your researchers: prove that I, an autistic, am more disabled than are any of those who say I am disabled. And remember, you put up no fight against calling me and mine disabled, so this includes you. And your staff. Don’t just skip over the challenge. Accept it. Prove that I fit in your label-box, that I am disabled.)
Guest Eric, your token in-the-know normal, concurred with Sara: “Autism is a disability.” Ouch! Ouch! What could be greater proof that his book can’t be worth reading? Invite Eric back to your show to apologize to all the healthy autistics he so flippantly degraded.
Guest Steve, the most conscious of the three, said: “Autistics are just [sic] a variety of Human Being.” Thank you, Steve. I hope you someday understand that is true.
Your two autistics and your selected normal all understand more about autism than most people. But the three are as chained to the concept of autism-as-disability as are you, and thanks to the “education” introduced by your show, as are your listeners, who now feel they’ve been sensitized. (BTW, I enjoy your show and respect your choices of subjects and your handling of most of those subjects. Uh, will you autograph my teddy bear?)
Autism, opposing what your autism experts declared, is not a disability. Autism is a state of being, is a field of expressions tied to an alternative way the Human brain organizes. Are some autistics of lower-order abilities and deserving of help? Sure. But let me restate myself in terms that the average 2021 American can more easily understand, thanks in part to your (excellent) show: being black is not a disability. Being black doesn’t require a cure. Are you uncomfortable making the connection?
Fun challenge #2: Here is an empirical test. Compare the brain of an autistic to the brain of a normal, using the latest medical technology, an MRI for structure, and an fMRI for function. Focus the mapping on the corpus collosum—the brain’s connective tissue between hemispheres. Note variations.
You mentioned how the Cure Autism Now and Autism Speaks people are maturing to the point that they no longer support use of the word cure when discussing autism. Let me clear away a bit more of the confusion: Autistics are not sub-normals who need a cure any more than normals are sub-autistics who need a cure. Identifying diseases associated with specific brain impairments, and working to fix/cure them, without denigrating an entire variation in types of awareness, is a valid pursuit. Returning to my comparison in terms of 2021 thinkers: whites can’t cure being black, but they can help cure sickle cell anemia.
Want a sea change? Stop labeling autistics as disabled and diseased. We are neither. Clarification: autistics have disabilities and diseases precisely equal to the disabilities and diseases suffered by normals. Another poke at your show’s pseudo reality: I, a raging autistic, am more like you, an admirable normal, than are a billion or so normals.
How is that possible? In more ways than I can mention, given that we’re all unique, but start here: I, as an autistic adult, am more like you than is any normal baby.
Take that as far as you can: all of us are unique and all of us share common features. No exceptions. See the sea change? (I hope I’ve spent enough time preparing for this paragraph, but surely the greater progression of Human consciousness requires a book-length analysis.)
Be clear: no disabilities associate with variations of brain architecture, only with brain impairment. Somewhere over 90% of autistics are not neurologically impaired. And that sharing common features phrase in the above paragraph? Have you never heard of non-autistics drooling? Never heard of normals banging their heads against walls? Rocking their bodies in hopes of creating a shield of pain that can block the greater horrors of life?
Here’s some more reality: you, a high-function normal, are no more likely to help me, a high-function autistic, than I am likely to help you. Evidence: this eMail helps you more than your segment on autism helped me. Which is disappointing.
Autistics can and do help normals lead better lives. My favorite example is Einstein, but other favorites among the “genius class” that the cliché view of autistics allows for are: Ptolemy, Newton, Maxwell, Sagan… Big names, huh. But, they’re all dead.
What is a clear indication today that the way normals treat autistics is insane? (The word insane is more accurate than I will discuss here.) Normals at the highest levels of our psychology empire do not today—nor do they intend in the future—to improve Humanity’s mental health.
Wow. My obviously wrong statement needs documented proof, right? For that proof, first let the normals-in-charge speak for themselves and, second, in a moment I’ll give you The Key that can help you better grasp reality.
Read the few pages in DSM-5 that describe autistics. (The DSM is the psychologist’s bible. Along with its sister organization’s ICD version, the DSM tells its readers—every mental-health worker in the world—how they must think about autistic pathologies. And don’t fool yourself, any mental-health worker who turns in a diagnosis to an insurance company without the proper DSM codes does not get paid. Ergo, the fate of every diagnosed person—including all normals, including you, including your children—depends more on DSM coding than on who the patients are.
Awakened autistics read the DSM as a collection of horror stories, each written by misguided normals. As you read the APA’s views of autism, think of how the Human Beings who have most forwarded the lives and possibilities of Humanity are reflected in the descriptions of autistics.
Remember Einstein? Autistics, according to the DSM, can be rooted from their hiding spaces while still infants. Just look for kids who are obsessively involved in “restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities.” That, BTW, is the DSM’s Criterion B for assessing autistics and, of course, it applies as fully to adults. But consider. Einstein had his breakthrough moment when he was about 16, sitting in a German classroom, staring out the window. Einstein then showed “restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, [and] activities” for the rest of his life—until he died 60 years later, still working on aspects of his single perspective on how the universe works. Talk about obsessive. Next time you benefit from any technology beyond the light bulb, steam engine, and radio, thank Einstein’s autism.
When people who are not diagnosed as autistics display the intense focus shown by Einstein and other autistics, they are lauded as dedicated. Devoted. Steadfast. Engaged. Outside the autism spectrum, Criterion B identifies with heroes, with positive characteristics of successful people. Within the spectrum, Criterion B is a sentence to life in prison.
Think too about how only normals are allowed to describe autistics in the DSM. While you’re at it, think about how autistics would describe the disabilities of normals if we wrote the DSM.
You don’t recognize how demeaning your show was to the few who have opened eyes. Sadly, most autistics believe the propaganda distributed by normals who declare that they know us better than we know us. Most of us believe you normals—how can we not? Where are our role models? We believe that we are less-than. We are told in many ways, every day of our lives, that we are less-than. We are told we are less-than by the same normals who we can, and do, help.
Earlier, I mentioned The Key. You can better read the dense and repetitive DSM-5 with a guide, and I know you are too busy to do the fieldwork, so I’ll give you The Key. You might grasp the implications of what I’m about to tell you, but giving you The Key, rather than you discovering The Key by reading the DSM on your own, leaves me hesitant. But since your schedule means you won’t likely understand the pathology of normals generally and the psychology empire’s leadership specifically without help, I think what I’m doing is right.
The DSM was written by dark-age thinkers. That sounds like another overstatement, but again, focus on The Key. To accept this clarification of the reality you’re expected to ignore is to take your first step toward understanding the implications of DSM-thinkers. The Key: nowhere does the DSM mention making people healthier.
Impossible, right? The APA bible doesn’t so much as mention making people healthier? I’m lying, right? And yet, let the APA speak for itself. Read their words. From DSM-5’s introduction…
Page 14: “Mental disorders are defined in relation to cultural, social, and familial norms.” I.e. not defined relative to mental health, but defined relative to normality.
Page 14: “Diagnostic assessment must therefore consider whether an individual’s experiences, symptoms, and behaviors differ from sociocultural norms.”
Page 14: “The boundaries between normality and pathology” [Hear me scream!] As though normality isn’t severely pathological. Where is their evidence? Show me one supportive study that indicates that normals aren’t severely pathological! The DSM doesn’t even recognize the possibility of pathology as a characteristic of normality.
Page 14: “The judgment that a given behavior is abnormal and requires clinical attention depends on cultural norms.”
Page 19: When the normals-in-charge lay out how they approach their formulations, they refer to “normal functioning” and “normal ranges.” Can you read their subtext? Be-like-us… or be afraid.
Page 19: Even scarier? Read this, in context, in the last paragraph:
“…the range of genetic/ environmental interactions over the course of human development affecting cognitive, emotional and behavioral function is virtually limitless. As a result, it is impossible to capture the full range of psychopathology in the categorical diagnostic categories that we are now using. Hence, it is also necessary to include ‘other specified/ unspecified’ disorder options for presentations that do not fit exactly into the diagnostic boundaries of disorders…”
Interpreted from the gibberish, we might end up with: be-like-us or we gonna getcha. Understanding those 69 words should keep you from sleep, should help you see what the normals-in-charge can, without additional effort, do to you, to your children.
Fun challenge #3: Commit yourself to a mental institution and be confrontational. Declare to the normals-in-charge that you refuse to be normal.
Page 21: Scarier still, under the terrifying heading “Criterion for Clinical Significance,” the normals-in-charge write: “it has not been possible to completely separate normal and [sic: from] pathological symptom expressions.” Those who awaken themselves to the APA’s de-communication never separate normals from pathology. But the moment’s question isn’t why they separate normality from pathology. The question is why you do.
In the same scary paragraph:
a generic diagnostic criterion requiring distress or disability has been used to establish disorder thresholds [my italics], usually worded “the disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”
Note how the above applies to autism. Remember that the normals-in-charge have decreed autism is a disorder. They’re not preaching that autism manifests as a disorder among brain-damaged persons nor anything else less persuasive: for them, autism is the disorder. All that remains is to discover whether the autism threshold is clinically significant when engaging in activities with normals.
Please check dictionary.apa.org for the APA definition of clinical significance, and try to apply it to the above-quoted use. I wonder if you’ll agree with me that the APA doesn’t have an objective definition of clinical significance. Using their words and the definitions behind them, decide if their perspective of Humanity means your potentially autistic child will be safe when going to a psychologist for an evaluation. Remember too that without DSM-5 codes, your expert in diagnosing diseases and disabilities can’t get paid. How can an honest practitioner be unbiased and still have a job? That’s your son being diagnosed. Given that the DSM controls all insurance company payments—research it—what’s the probability that your son, who you’re concerned might be autistic, won’t turn out to be autistic? Looking back at the APA definition, does their definition of clinical significance even relate to your son? To you? It relates to the psychologist’s wallet, but does it help… anybody? A question you might have missed: who decides whether “a study result is judged to be meaningful?” Surely not the dollar-dependent APA.
Here is the first of two reasons to consider dumping both the DSM-5 and the APA. Without an objective definition of clinical significance, what is the clinical significance of anything in the DSM?
Fun challenge #4: What is the proof that being normal doesn’t qualify as a disorder? What if normal is the greater disorder and autism the lesser disorder? What is one shred of evidence that normals are nearer to healthy than are autistics? Don’t compare our most damaged to your least damaged. Apples to apples. Remember, I too am autistic, not just my brothers and sisters who drool and bang their heads. Unquestionably, nothing in the APA bible supports normal as a synonym for healthy, and yet that is the demanded perception by the normals-in-charge, and every mental health worker whose wallet depends on the APA.
Reminder: find anywhere in the DSM where the APA sets mental health as a goal.
Take the challenge. Read their bible. Find evidence that the APA has ever moved Humanity toward healthier mental states. Find evidence that the APA intends to move Humanity toward healthier mental states in the future. I tried. There is no supportive evidence; only proof that it isn’t true, proof that the normals-in-charge want everybody to be normal.
That is The Key. The world’s largest organization affiliated with mental health, the APA, never has nor ever will strive toward expanding mental health. Prove it to yourself.
Fun challenge #5: Name 3 organizations that are more biased than is the APA, as evidenced in their bible. Be-normal-or-else. Be-normal-or-be-treated. That is their intent. Make everybody normal. Note that, throughout the DSM, (I’ve only read from DSM-IV and DSM-5) in the many places where you find the term mental health, not one instance of its use promotes mental health. If memory serves, the term mental health is most often used as part of a title; e.g. The Mental Health Institute of Gerbils and Marmots. Mental health is never presented as a goal.
My apologies for being blunt, but welcome to reality.
Exercise your skepticism. Doubt me. Buy the official DSM-5 eBook at the APA site, appi.org for $128. As an eBook, you can quickly search through its 900+ pages for the word health. Note that they never use the word health to imply that psychology as a “science” nor psychologists as a group intend to help Humanity become more healthy. Only more normal.
Given time, of which I have little, I can prove to anyone who is semiconscious that the most significant mental disorder among Human Beings is normality. But that’s for another time.
To the degree that you are awake, to that degree you are recognizing, for the first time, the difference between normality and health. Are you comfortable?
But I’m overstating all of this, right? The reality is that the psychology movement, power-started by Freud in the late 1800s, has been highly helpful for over a century. Right?
Here is the second reason to consider dumping the DSM-5 and the APA.
Fun challenge #6: Before mentioning my reality checks, interview the APA’s highest ranking normals-in-charge. Casually ask for proof that they support Humanity’s mental health. Expect them to provide kind nods and wise words meant to assure you that improving Humanity’s mental health is, gosh darn it, their only objective, and that they are exuberantly proud of their continuing success. Smiles. Condescending verbal snippets.
Let them provide their standard answers while you nod reassuringly. Don’t interrupt.
Once they are certain that you’re asleep, query whether psychology came into its own by at least the 1950s, and whether its popularity, effectiveness, and influence have since grown continuously. That’s some seventy years. (With me?)
Before your radio audience drowses, bring out The Big Knife. Given their 70 years of stated progress, a progression codified in the pages of the DSM… what evidence can they provide that people in the 2020s are healthier than were people in the 1950s? Prediction: if you are face to face, you will watch their smugness evaporate.
Read DSM-5 with opened eyes. Discover for yourself that yes, kiddies, there is a monster under our beds, and it has already consumed us.
Finally, to everyone working at the1A.org, thank you for your efforts. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Live a vital day,
Steve
