Learn about Edward Bernays, nephew of the very Sigmund Freud, and pioneer of a scientific technique for manipulating public opinion called - “engineering of consent“.  Sounds like something me and my family have already encountered from some doctors. And not exactly with our best intentions at heart either. More for their expediency and convenience, but that’s another blog entry.

He was a doctor too, of spin, promoting using propaganda to control and shape our opinions in politics, business, science, ?? art ??, and education. My oh my, education, what a surprise – NOT !! Called the ‘Father of public relations’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

Bernays helped the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) and other special interest groups to convince the American public that water fluoridation was safe and beneficial to human health. This was achieved by using the American Dental Association in a highly successful media campaign.

Beyond his contributions to these famous and powerful clients, Bernays revolutionized public relations by combining traditional press agentry with the techniques of psychology and sociology to create what one writer has called “the science of ballyhoo.”

Don’t you just love these Machiavellian types. This quote from Wikipedia and Edward Bernays ‘Propaganda’ -

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. … We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. … In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons … who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Turns out Nazi Germany was also interested in his ideas on propaganda. Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed. Bernays was Jewish  -  

In his autobiography, titled Biography of an Idea, Bernays recalls a dinner at his home in 1933 where

Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the best Weigand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. … Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.

http://www.answers.com/topic/diagnostic-and-statistical-manual-of-mental-disorders 

The DSM has seen criticisms through the years. A Columbia University team headed by Robert Spitzer, an editor of the DSM, acknowledges a concern about the DSM in their annual report of 2001, “Problems with the current DSM-IV categorical (present vs. absent) approach to the classification of personality disorders have long been recognized by clinicians and researchers.” Among the problems, they list “arbitrary distinction between normal personality, personality traits and personality disorder” and point out the fact that the most commonly diagnosed personality disorder is 301.9, Personality Disorder not Otherwise Specified. ^[5]

There have also been questions of potential bias of DSM authors who define psychiatric disorders. According to The Washington Post, an analysis published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics^[6] pointed out that “every psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic criteria for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia has had financial ties to drug companies that sell medications for those illnesses.”^[7] However, an important limitation of this study was that the analysis did not reveal the extent of their relationships with industry or whether those ties preceded or followed their work on the manual.

In the United States, health insurance typically will not pay for psychological or psychiatric services unless a DSM-IV mental disease diagnosis accompanies the insurance claim. The website of the DSM-V Prelude Project^[8] covers shortcomings of the DSM-IV that may be subject for improvements for the DSM-V.

http://dsm5.org/ 

Welcome to the DSM-V Prelude Project. Although the DSM-V revision process will not formally begin until 2006 or 2007 (see timeline), the American Psychiatric Association has created this web site in order to keep the public and professionals informed about the plans for DSM-V as well as the ongoing effort to enrich the research base in advance of starting formal work on DSM-V. In addition, this web site provides an opportunity for you to alert us to problems in the DSM-IV that you may have encountered and to provide your suggestions for DSM-V.

Oh  boy, do I ever have suggestions?

Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks
Religion is a light in the fog
I’m not aware of too many things
I know what I know, if you know what I meanWhat I am is what I am
Are you what you are or what?- Edie Brickell and New Bohemians

Have you heard of the book, and now the DVD, of Mozart and the Whale.

Here are some video clips and trailer …


watch video clips

watch trailer

what i am is one of the indie songs on the video. Absolutely love it! Just bought it on iTunes, couldn’t resist.

I seem to have some things in common with Isabelle. Although the math thing I have is more like Donald’s … I love numbers too. But I don’t think you have to be aspie to love numbers. A lot of accountants do as well, and they can’t all be aspie. Nor can all the mathematicians, although with them you’re clearly dealing with people who are at the very least eccentric. And yes, guilty as charged. I am eccentric. But does that make me and other people who love mathematics aspie? I once met this statistics student packing groceries and probably bored to death with the monotony, was saying that he liked numbers more than people, and I agreed with him. Me too. People are scary shit. As Donald says in the movie ‘Numbers, you can count on.’

And the animal thing, OK, so I notice that I’m much more attuned to animals than people, always have been. I’m a lot like Isabelle in that respect too. So is my daughter. Is that an exclusively aspie thing? Plenty of people even boast that they love animals more than people. People who love animals and have a rapport with them might become veterinarians or work in a zoo, or in animal rights. Do they all have aspergers? 

And the endless monologues. Maybe not the best thing to do when you’re driving a cab, but when you’re giving a lecture – heck, it’s even expected. Am I the only one who doesn’t get it? Maybe he could just learn to write his monologues, get it down on paper, or blog, or word. That’s what the rest of us do, aspie or otherwise, if we have a lot to say and people don’t always have the patience to listen to us or it’s not always the best time, we write.

And taking things too literally. Well, I got a surprise for these people. Anyone who’s terrified takes things too literally and out of context. Wish those boneheads who call themselves experts would do some studies on trauma and PTSD. There were some periods in my life when I was taking things very literally. There was this one time after I’d been raped and was going through PTSD. For a while, I had such a hard time making any sense of news headlines.  

And blurt out and shock. HAH! I’m thinking I’ll make it work for me too. Some people just have big mouths. It’s their personality. I’ve known many people with big mouths. They were usually outspoken Europeans or Jews. Were they all aspie?

Lack of social skills – sounds like a lot of people in my family. In fact, sounds like most of the kids at my daughter’s school, and their parents. School staff as well. Neighbors too. You have to ask yourself why a book like ‘How to win friends and influence people’ by Dale Carnegie is a classic. Is it because the
NTs - http://isnt.autistics.org/ are all so good socially?

There was this autistic woman who was asking for help because the mother of a friend of hers had just died and she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t like it when I told her that it’s a very common problem, even among
NTs . So common in fact that I found several pamphlets on the subject at a hospital, including how to respond to someone in grief, and how to help your child deal with loss. Considering what bullies and jerks some NTs are, I think the emotional dysfunction is more a problem on their side, but that’s just, like everything else on this blog, an opinion.

I believe Mozart and the Whale is more about a bunch of people who’ve been convinced that they have some difference that deserves to be pathologized. Donald was rejected by his family at a very young age. That’s bound to have been traumatic.

But here is the thing that I believe most people miss. That how we see ourselves can be greatly influenced by how others see us, especially when we’re young, helpless and dependent. If most everyone reacts to us badly, if especially our parents rejected us, and psychiatry wants to give us some label to pathologize what they think is the reason for that social rejection, then that’s how we’ll see ourselves. It can become our identity and overpower us. The word for it is internalization, i.e. becoming the label.

If you have it in your head all the time that you’re aspie, then regardless of what happens, you’ll always see yourself or your aspergers as being to blame. The other person may have been a total jerk with you, an asshole, but you’ll blame yourself, you’re at fault because you’re the aspie with the emotional dysfunction and lack of social skills. At least that’s what psychiatry keeps telling you. Why are people so easily misled? 

watch video

http://autismdiva.blogspot.com/2007/02/more-amanda-baggs-on-cnn.html

… generally, what I tell parents is not to believe most of what they read, particularly the stuff that says we have no understanding, and no connection to our families, and no anything, and are empty shells, and stolen fairy children, or whatever. Most of that is not true.

GUPTA: Just nonsense?

BAGGS (through voice synthesizer): Yes. A lot of it is just people reading us wrong and underestimating us.

The person making the post, and many of the people commenting, are ranting about not being party animals. Hate to break the news to these guys, but I don’t think it’s exclusively an aspie problem. Wonder if they even are aspie, considering all the parties they’re being invited to that they don’t want to attend!

Think Asperger’s, along with a host of other psychiatric disorders like ADHD and PDD-NOS, are being overdiagnosed. I don’t believe Asperger’s is a lack of social skills – there are plenty of socially awkward NTs out there, nor is it not enjoying parties – do they seriously believe all NTs enjoy parties? Extroverts may enjoy parties. But then there are the introverts, the shy, the socially phobic, inhibited, or inept, the highly sensitive, the geek or nerd, who try to avoid parties whenever they can. That is, if they even get invited to any parties to begin with.

Reminds me of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland who was convinced he was mad (crazy) because his behavior was the exact opposite of a dog’s. As he said to Alice when she asked him how he knew he was mad -

‘To begin with,’ said the Cat, `a dog’s not mad. You grant that?’

`I suppose so,’ said Alice.

`Well, then,’ the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.’

`I call it purring, not growling,’ said Alice.

`Call it what you like,’ said the Cat.

The problem with the Cheshire cat wasn’t that he didn’t behave like a dog, (regardless of what his psychiatrist might have told him). His problem was that he didn’t realize he was a cat, and it’s alright to behave like a cat when you’re a cat. His problem was that his identity had more to do with not being a dog than with being a cat. In fact, he was so out of touch with being a cat, that he didn’t even know or care what purring was. (Sounds a lot like psychiatry to me!) 

Asperger’s is not a disease, they say on the site and bravo for them! But I don’t believe what they’re describing warrants  any label either, except for perhaps allowing themselves to be misled by those unfortunate souls with psychiatry disorder, psychiatrists - http://isnt.autistics.org/dsn-psy.html

 (DSN-IV – Psychotic Disorders – 669.xx Psychiatry Disorder.

A. Delusional thought patterns, consisting of at least two of the following:

• (1) Patronization    
• (2) Responsibility    
• (3) Thought Decryption    
• (4) Stereotyping - This is the belief that large numbers of very different people may be grouped into pre-defined categories of “illness.” Virtually any unusual or deviant behavior may be classified as an “illness” in this way, and then these illness may then be “treated” (i.e., the person may be made “normal,” or like the presumed mode of the populations). Often, it is assumed that what is good for one person in a certain category will be good for all or most others, and that they may be treated as all the same.    
• (5) Pseudoscientific

Oops – sacred cow! You can click the above link to read more from the brilliant satire by Jared Blackburn. This part is my favourite.

In addition, most (athough not all) psychiatrists have an impairment of receptive communication. Often, they will not listen, or fail to listen closely. They will often misinterpret statements made to them in such a way as to “prove” their preexisting delusions or to label the speaker as “sick.” Further, they are often quite literal minded, frequently taking figurative sayings or metaphors as concrete statements (thus producing a belief that the speaker is delusional and/or hallucinating). Very frequently, psychiatrists will give stereotyped responses based on a category to which the patient is believed to belong, even if though they have nothing to do with what the patient said actually said. It is uncertain whether these communication deficits are specifically related to psychiatry, or to comorbid neurotypical disorder. Clinical experience, however, suggests these communication deficits may be especially common and severe among psychiatrists.

More to come. 

Snowcake (2006) - starring Sigourney Weaver as a high-functioning autistic, Carrie-Anne Moss and Alan Rickman, traumatized after an automobile accident. 

Tagline: Sometimes stopping is the most important part of the journey…

16,6 mb – long trailer

Their collaboration is wonderful and I believe will go far to shed some light on autism. It’s so unfortunate that their research findings threaten those who think they have to paint a very bleak picture of autism to convince the government to pay for services.  

The ‘odd couple’ of autism research: Dr Laurent Mottron and Michelle Dawson – Source: Toronto Globe and Mail, February 20, 2006 – found on Autism Connect

“The problem is that autistic intelligence is not measured accurately,” Dr Mottron said.

Simply put, the researchers believe that the standard IQ test — formally known as the Wechsler scales — does not accurately measure the intelligence of autistics. They think a more appropriate measure of intelligence is another accepted test, Raven’s Progressive Matrices.

The principal difference between the Wechsler test depends much more heavily on oral questions, which many autistic people struggle to complete. The Raven test, on the other hand, involves much more abstract reasoning, where people with autism can excel.

While this may appear to be merely an obtuse academic debate about testing methodology, Dr Mottron argues that it has enormous practical implications at a time when as many as one in every 200 children is considered autistic.

“If we classify children as intellectually deficient, then that is how they will be treated. They will be denied a host of opportunities,” he said.

Dr Mottron cites the example of one of the research subjects who scored so poorly on the Wechsler that he was deemed mentally retarded (IQ of less than 70), but on his Raven test he scored in the 94th percentile range — the intelligence level of a university student.

“What do we do with that intelligence? How do we let that person achieve his potential?” he asked.

Ms Dawson says that, traditionally, the abilities of autistic individuals, particularly those of idiot-savants – a classification both researchers dislike – have been dismissed as a meaningless form of intelligence, little more than mechanical trickery.

But all her research has challenged that idea, postulating that there are different forms of intelligence and that tests are skewed toward only one kind.

“It seems to me that intelligence should be about getting things done, not being like other people,” Ms Dawson said.

She points to her fellow researchers as a case in point. “I can’t do what they do with their ‘normal’ brains. But they can’t do what I do with my autistic brain. Does that make me less intelligent?”

The unusual partnership between Dr Mottron and Ms Dawson came about serendipitously, after the two were featured separately in a film about autism — he as the brilliant psychiatrist and she as an autistic woman struggling in the world. (She had just been fired from her job as a letter carrier, the start of a long legal saga and a whole other story.) After seeing the film, Dr Mottron felt pity for Ms Dawson: “I said to myself: ‘If I can’t help this poor woman, I’m useless.’ ”

But Ms Dawson didn’t want his help. Not only that, she dismissed his research and that of others, in particular a paper about how autistics perceive faces, one that was considered seminal at the time.

“Michelle was able to deconstruct and critique a major scientific paper, right down to the methodology. I was amazed,” Dr Mottron said. He asked her to look at his own research, and was again floored by the analysis.

“Because she sees things ‘upside down,’ not in a conventional way, she has caused a paradigm shift in my research,” Dr Mottron said.

In response to her legal battles with Canada Post, Ms Dawson immersed herself in the scientific literature about autism. When he first met her, Dr Mottron was floored by the extent of her knowledge.

He said that Ms Dawson knows the scientific literature as well as anyone, that she is a library in the field of autism and cognitive sciences.

But her inclusion on the research team — because of her legal situation she is an unpaid volunteer — is controversial.

“I put my career in jeopardy, my respectability,” Dr Mottron said. “It was perilous. But her intellectual contribution has been invaluable.”

Dr Mottron estimates that Ms Dawson contributes about 20 per cent of the final published research papers — a significant chunk, particularly for a high-school graduate working alongside PhDs. Her role is principally to critique study design and conclusions. While Ms Dawson’s approach can be unorthodox and her manner brusque (at best), Dr Mottron said scientists tended to be tolerant.

“Now, I make it clear, bigotry is about heirachy and I don’t do heirachy.

I don’t care how much abuse or prejudice or bigotry I received from Harry, Mary or Joe and I’ve written enough books on it to know what those things are.

I am not going to feel better by doing the same rubbish in reverse, in fact I’d lose my best friend if I did- me- because I wouldn’t love or relax with that person.

I do not define all non-autie people by those who mistreated me or a time when people were less enlightened or as ‘trapped with me’ as I was with them.

I needed people to get understanding, to find a place of equality opposite me.

But I did not need or want them to feel shame, guilt or to grovel to me or anyone like me.

Ivory towers are shaky, lonely, unstable structures.

I don’t fancy making one my special space. A corner will do me just fine. Corners are cosy.

I forgive people their misunderstandings and assumptions because I make those every day and I don’t care if those folks are autie, Aspie or non-autie, canine, feline, tree or tractor.

Every day I meet non-auties and respond and behave as though I don’t understand their system, values, reality, I misunderstand and assume.

And their are Aspie people who assume and misunderstand auties all the time- many of us don’t have a techie, engineering, scientist bone in our bodies and are geared for ARTism and surrealism, not science. Many of us are not visual thinkers, some of us are musical thinkers and many are kinesthetic with very very poor visual processing. Many of us are not ideas people who wonder, we are discovers who experience and it hasn’t occurred to us to wonder. So we have many in our own ranks making misunderstandings, assumptions, projections all the time.

Non-auties often are grand enough to chill-out about the ways autie spectrum people misunderstand them or assume an reality they don’t experience.

I can be grand enough to do the same when their version rubs me the wrong way.

I find diversity interesting- INCLUDING THEIRS.

When one hasn’t truly moved in their world, with trust and openness then they may all ‘look the same’, just as autie spectrum people may to them.

But they are actually wonderfully different from each other.

We have invited them to embark on the adventure of understanding our differences and our diversity.

But have we truly turned a new page to look at them on their own terms without judging them by our own?

I’m not one for the mainland. Peripheries and islands work for me.

But I’d hope that when I visit that mainland that I leave the old battle scars behind me.

If I’m big enough to do so.”

NYTimes.com - May 9, 2004 – NEURODIVERSITY FOREVER – The Disability Movement Turns to Brains – By AMY HARMON  - (my favourite excerpts)

“What all of our efforts in neuroscience are demonstrating is that you have many peculiar ways of arranging a human brain and there are all sorts of varieties of creative, successful human beings,” Dr. Damasio said. “For a while it is going to be a rather relentless process as there are more and more discoveries of people that have something that could be called a defect and yet have immense talents in one way or another.”For example, when adults with A.D.D. look at the word “yellow” written in blue and are asked what the color is and then what the word is, they use an entirely different part of the brain than a normal adult. And when people with Asperger’s look at faces, they use a part of the brain typically engaged when looking at objects.Dr. Damasio and others compare the shifting awareness about brain function to the broader conception of intelligence that has evolved over the last two decades, driven in part by the theory of Howard Gardner, a Harvard education professor, that children who don’t excel in “traditional” intelligence – the manipulation of words and numbers – may shine in other areas such as spatial reasoning or human relations….. For patients, being given a name and a biological basis for their difficulties represents a shift from a “moral diagnosis” that centers on shame, to a medical one, said Dr. Ratey, who is the author of “Shadow Syndromes,” which argues that virtually all people have brain differences they need to be aware of to help guide them through life.

But the most humane approach, some experts argue, may lie in redefining the expanding set of syndromes as differences rather than diagnoses.

“We’re doing a service on the one hand by describing many more of these conditions and inviting people to understand themselves better,” said Dr. Edward Hallowell, a leading authority on A.D.D. “But when we pathologize it we scare them and make them not want to have any part of it. I think of these as traits, not disorders.”

Knowing you are a mild depressive, for instance, could induce you to exercise often. A bipolar person could adapt their lives to fit their mood swings, or treat them with drugs if that works better. And a neurologically tolerant society would try to accommodate as well as understand behavior that remained aberrant.