The Art of Manliness - #269： The Forgotten History of Autism

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well in the past

00:00:18.600 decade autism has gotten more attention by the media and the wider culture and you probably

00:00:22.960 know someone with autism or has a child with autism and some of you listening probably have

00:00:27.480 a child with autism yet despite the spotlight autism has gotten in recent years several myths

00:00:32.160 and misconceptions about it pervade the popular culture but understanding the history of how our

00:00:37.320 conception of autism that we have today developed can go a long way in shedding light on these myths

00:00:42.040 well my guest today has written what is probably the most extensive history of autism research out

00:00:46.360 there his name is steve silverman and his book is neurotribes the legacy of autism and the future of

00:00:51.120 neurodiversity today on the show steve and i discuss the forgotten history of autism research and some

00:00:55.960 of the popular myths that we have about autism out there such as it being caused by cold refrigerator

00:01:00.460 moms certain foods vaccines etc theories as to why autism even exists how parents should approach

00:01:06.660 raising a child on the spectrum and advice on how to connect with your autistic friends and colleagues

00:01:10.720 really fascinating show highlights a lot of things that i didn't know about after the show's over make

00:01:15.180 sure you check out the show notes at aom.is slash neurotribes where you can find links to research

00:01:19.760 where you can delve deeper into this topic steve silverman welcome to the show thank you so much

00:01:30.720 it's great to be here uh so your book is called neurotribes it's a history of of autism research

00:01:37.640 and you talk and we talk later about with this idea of neurodiversity and what you mean by neurotribes

00:01:43.040 but i'm curious why did you feel like this book had to be written a history of the development of

00:01:50.140 the autism spectrum as we know it today i mean why is it important for people to understand that

00:01:54.380 if they really want to understand how we really want to understand autism well here's the thing

00:02:00.760 there were so many sort of bad things happening in the world because people did not know the history

00:02:08.460 and that had been bothering me for years i'm sure we'll talk about how i first wrote about autism

00:02:14.280 back in 2001 for wired but after that article came out i saw that uh families were struggling with

00:02:22.980 uh lack of support and resources for their kids autistic people were struggling with lack of employment

00:02:29.720 and yet almost the uh entire social conversation around autism was whether or not vaccines cause autism

00:02:37.900 and and what that comes from is the fact that no one had ever explained the undeniably steep rise in

00:02:47.100 diagnoses that began in the uh early 1990s and so you know if you read a new york times story about

00:02:54.760 autism and you know the new york times is you know the paper of record and very serious they would

00:02:59.840 always say that the reason for that uh spike in diagnoses was a mystery an enigma a puzzle and you know

00:03:07.660 so that went on for years and years and meanwhile i'm tracking all these news items about autism

00:03:12.920 i thought really why is it still a puzzle why don't we know this and so uh you know that was really

00:03:19.380 what convinced me that i needed to uh start digging back into autism history and sort of see where things

00:03:26.060 went awry in a way and so what kick-started your interest in autism research uh you talked you mentioned

00:03:31.780 that wired article you wrote back in 2001 why did why did you start going down this um this path of

00:03:37.980 researching autism well i've been writing for uh about science uh for wired for a while by then and um

00:03:46.840 i actually came into the autism world in a very unusual way that pretty much the first question

00:03:53.100 almost everybody asked me when they hear that i wrote this book is you know do you have an autistic kid

00:03:58.480 and the answer is no and you know if they're really hip they say like are you on the spectrum

00:04:04.460 yourself and actually i'm not i'm neurotypical but uh what happened was back in 2000 i was on a boat

00:04:12.320 in alaska with more than 100 computer programmers and um the occasion for that uh unusual gathering

00:04:19.920 was something called a geek cruise so it was some guy's idea to uh have like tech conferences

00:04:26.820 in more interesting places than holiday inns in pittsburgh and so we were on this big cruise

00:04:32.740 ship going up the alaskan panhandle and um i noticed that the you know my fellow shipmates on

00:04:39.480 the cruise who were mostly really high level programmers were very industrious you could say

00:04:46.240 like as we were pulling out of vancouver they started uh unpacking routers and stuff from their

00:04:52.400 luggage to upgrade the ship's communication systems and they eventually asked the captain to give them

00:04:58.220 a tour of the engine room and so there were people who like to understand how things work

00:05:02.760 and make them work better and uh sort of the star of the cruise was this guy larry wall

00:05:08.820 who invented a programming language called pearl that is so useful that pearl uh programmers call it

00:05:16.680 the duct tape of the internet and stuff like amazon and and craigslist and even microsoft uh software

00:05:24.120 would not have been possible to build without pearl so as we were coming back into port i asked larry

00:05:30.880 if i could interview him at home uh and he said yeah sure i should tell you we have an autistic daughter

00:05:37.900 and at that point like almost everyone including most clinicians uh i thought that autism was a very

00:05:45.480 very rare condition and in fact uh teachers back then if they you know got an autistic kid in their

00:05:51.340 special ed class would be told uh you know really observe this kid closely because you'll never see

00:05:57.580 another one you know it's so rare and uh so you know when he said that it registered but you know i

00:06:04.300 didn't make much of it until a couple months later i was writing another story for wired about another

00:06:09.940 technologically very adept family in silicon valley the patriarch of the family had

00:06:15.340 built the first computer in the middle east way back in the 1940s and i asked the sister-in-law of

00:06:21.160 the woman i was profiling if i could interview her at home and she said yeah sure by the way we have

00:06:26.160 an autistic daughter and i thought god what a funny coincidence i thought autism was rare and so i was

00:06:32.660 telling that exact story to a friend of mine in my neighborhood cafe here in san francisco and a woman

00:06:39.060 at the next table suddenly interrupted and said oh my god do you realize what's going on and i said

00:06:46.260 what's going on and she said i'm a special education teacher in silicon valley there's a there's an

00:06:52.420 epidemic of autism in silicon valley something terrible is happening to our children so you know

00:06:59.420 i like got the chills it was like a really heavy moment uh but because i was a science writer i thought

00:07:04.860 well you know i'm not only you know we'll get the chills but i can actually look into this

00:07:09.540 and see if it's true so i ended up writing an article uh for wired called the geek syndrome

00:07:15.280 and it was about uh genetics actually and how geneticists had noted that um people who have

00:07:23.640 autistic kids often have autistic traits themselves and are often uh rather gifted in certain fields of

00:07:30.280 science and technology so um you know i pursued that in 2001 with the geek syndrome but it was

00:07:37.340 really the emails that i got for almost well 10 years after that article came out which is very very

00:07:44.560 unusual for a magazine article where i became aware of the really serious problems that autistic

00:07:50.900 people and their families were facing in day-to-day life while meanwhile the whole world was talking

00:07:56.580 about jenny mccarthy and vaccines and dr andrew wakefield and do vaccines cause autism and you

00:08:04.360 know i'd written about big pharma so i knew that the pharma industry is not necessarily our friend and

00:08:09.400 you know they're perfectly capable of doing a huge cover-up of terrible things but as i dug into uh

00:08:16.100 autism history i came to believe that that was not at all the case okay so i think i think this idea

00:08:22.320 the the your geek syndrome that kind of goes back to the neurodiversity thing we'll get back to that

00:08:26.360 later on but let's start let's start with this question um what how do we define the autism spectrum

00:08:32.940 today um and then we can take from there then we can work forward to look back to see how we got to

00:08:39.380 this point sure well uh remember that the autism spectrum is incredibly broad it encompasses people who

00:08:48.220 uh may never learn to speak uh may require almost continuous 24 7 assistance to get through their

00:08:57.140 daily lives so that's one uh part of autism another part of autism is say the cto of a well-known

00:09:05.680 silicon valley company who i've actually met who is you know quite autistic and yet very successful

00:09:13.080 uh in his job his corporate job so it is an incredibly broad range of people in fact an autistic

00:09:21.080 person once said to me that autistic people are more unlike each other than neurotypical or non-autistic

00:09:27.260 people are and in a way that's really true there's a wider range of behavior but there is a certain sort

00:09:33.080 of core constellation of uh challenges that people on the autism spectrum face no matter if they're you know

00:09:41.480 cto's or or people uh you know who can't live without daily assistance and that is um they struggle with

00:09:49.300 reciprocal social interactions they have a hard time reading the body language of uh particularly

00:09:56.220 people who are not autistic uh and they also tend to have very very consuming interests uh you know in

00:10:04.680 psychological terms it's often called obsessions but you know they're sort of very deep and narrow

00:10:10.660 interests so if like somebody's really into trains they'll find out everything about the local train

00:10:18.520 service in fact i have an autistic friend who was uh absolutely thrilled to go to the opening of the

00:10:25.160 new second avenue subway in new york uh the other day you know took uh facebook live videos you know so

00:10:32.880 people with autism tend to get very very deeply interested in the things they're interested in

00:10:38.960 whether it's disney movies or physics uh and they also struggle to do reciprocal social social

00:10:46.260 interactions like they have a hard time making sense of the little signals that non-autistic people

00:10:51.820 constantly send each other with body language and facial expressions and tone of voice uh and many

00:10:58.480 autistic people i mean this is not necessarily part of the official diagnosis but many autistic people also

00:11:04.620 struggle with chronic anxiety um and uh several other things as well but really the core constellation

00:11:11.840 is uh trouble with reciprocal social interactions and very deep and consuming interests okay so let's

00:11:19.940 talk about autism before autism was autism um because it really wasn't until the 1930s that um there was a

00:11:28.540 name put to it or that people started psychologists started recognizing it so before that time i mean how

00:11:33.740 were individuals who showed these traits these constellations of traits you just mentioned

00:11:37.520 how are they labeled or treated well you know they were labeled uh lots of many different things

00:11:45.260 because nobody knew exactly what it was and nobody had sort of described uh autism as a distinct condition

00:11:53.020 um there was a psychologist in moscow uh in the very early 20th century who wrote about a bunch of

00:12:00.940 teenagers who we would now say have asperger syndrome they uh were uh quite intelligent uh but they

00:12:08.920 had they had trouble in social interactions um they were often doing badly in school because they

00:12:15.540 needed kinds of support that hadn't been invented yet um and this woman speculated that they might have

00:12:21.620 some kind of schizophrenia um but she noticed that unlike uh people with schizophrenia if you gave them

00:12:29.720 certain forms of support they would do really really well whereas sometimes um particularly before the

00:12:36.240 invention of medication uh people with schizophrenia you know would not do so well um so there was

00:12:43.940 speculation in the early uh 20th century that you know maybe there was this kind of schizophrenia and

00:12:49.600 you know one of the labels that were slapped on particularly autistic people of color uh quite often and

00:12:57.040 probably it still is applied to them is uh you know what used to be called mental retardation and is

00:13:03.680 now called intellectual disability um there was sort of a class dynamic going on between who got an

00:13:10.680 autism diagnosis and who got a diagnosis of intellectual disability which was considered a sort of poor

00:13:16.980 people diagnosis but there were many many different labels that autistic people were hidden behind

00:13:23.220 before uh not only the formulation of the autism diagnosis but the popularization of the diagnosis

00:13:30.680 which didn't really happen until the 80s and 90s as we'll talk about later yeah and i thought it was

00:13:36.620 interesting too you know people talk about there's been this uptick of autism but you know i know

00:13:41.320 people like don't like doing the historical um psychological analysis on people but you mentioned a few

00:13:47.120 examples from history where people look at the the the diaries and sort of the interactions people had

00:13:53.640 or the record of these individuals and they can be like yeah that person probably had asperger's maybe

00:13:57.900 right i try to be a little bit careful about that because um pop culture has gone a little bit wild

00:14:06.000 with that you know so it's like you know jerry seinfeld goes to see curious instances of the dog in the

00:14:12.760 nighttime on broadway and he comes out saying like hmm i think i'm on the spectrum well you know if

00:14:18.840 the problem with that is i mean he may have autistic traits uh autistic traits turn out to be extremely

00:14:25.480 common you know but the thing is i mean let's face it jerry seinfeld is a multi-millionaire and he's

00:14:30.720 been incredibly successful and you know jerry seinfeld and mark zuckerberg for that matter should not uh

00:14:37.500 you know define what autism is because most people who are on the spectrum have significant uh more

00:14:44.980 serious challenges in their daily lives than that but the whole key to why where you draw the line

00:14:52.800 on the spectrum between autism and non-autism is so tricky is because the spectrum shades

00:14:59.720 imperceptibly into eccentric normality as the woman who came up with the uh word you know the

00:15:07.380 phrase autism spectrum lorna wing uh told me so in other words there's no bright line between autism

00:15:13.980 and non-autism there are people who should not get a diagnosis of autism who have autistic traits

00:15:20.520 and really the bottom line is is the person struggling in their daily life and if they are

00:15:26.500 um which can take you know subtle forms uh they should probably get a diagnosis but you know i'm not

00:15:34.440 into like slapping you know i mean i've met bill gates um he did have a lot of autistic traits when

00:15:40.880 he was younger he's obviously doing very well people say that steve jobs had autism i met steve jobs i would

00:15:48.080 say he did not have autism uh he was a you know an unusual and and sometimes disagreeable man i would say

00:15:55.300 uh also absolutely brilliant i'm looking at an apple magazine right now but you know i don't think he had

00:16:02.440 autism so i think it's possible for people to go a little bit too far in saying that oh everybody's

00:16:08.720 kind of on the spectrum well if everybody's on the spectrum then nobody needs help right you know and

00:16:13.620 that's wrong so um so there we have this spectrum um idea of autism now but it all wasn't always that

00:16:22.760 way um in the early 1940s this is where the history really picks up um two austrian researches austria was

00:16:30.060 like the the motherland of psychology and psychiatry they were working independently from each other

00:16:35.820 they both published papers um describing autism one was hans asperger and the other was leo canner

00:16:43.720 um or i think is that how you pronounce his last name canner it's connor actually okay um in fact

00:16:49.480 what's kind of amusing is that even though he was jewish and from eastern europe for a while when

00:16:54.240 he worked in the psychiatric hospital the patients would call him father o'connor

00:16:58.640 so let's talk about uh connor first because in his conception of autism because that really set the

00:17:06.340 tone for autism research in the 20th century yeah it sure did so what was connor's background and how

00:17:11.500 did that background influence his description of autism so here's the deal leo connor uh you know

00:17:19.460 sort of went down in history uh at least until my book was published as the as the discoverer of

00:17:26.360 autism like you know that's what it said in wikipedia that's what it said in thousands of

00:17:31.180 textbooks uh and that's because in 1943 leo connor published a paper where he described 11 uh of his

00:17:39.840 young patients who uh had you know trouble with reciprocal social interactions didn't even seem to

00:17:46.320 want to know their own parents would uh you know could play on the floor with a pot lid for hours

00:17:53.040 uh didn't seem to want to be interrupted didn't even even seem to care about their parents leo connor's

00:18:00.200 descriptions of autism were very very vivid and one of the reasons why they were so vivid

00:18:05.680 was because when he was a young man growing up in eastern europe he was a poet and so he was

00:18:11.760 he was an excellent writer um and he eventually uh came to the u.s um and he you know worked in

00:18:21.240 psychiatric hospitals and ended up uh getting a job at johns hopkins um and so there uh he published his

00:18:29.500 paper on autism here's the problem though uh even though he sort of took credit for discovering autism

00:18:37.900 what i found out was that he had a connection to a guy who had been virtually forgotten uh except for

00:18:45.940 his last name hans asperger hans asperger uh was working in vienna in the 1930s in a clinic that was

00:18:54.940 a very unusually progressive place for instance um they the patients would do art together they would put

00:19:03.840 on plays together the the clinic was not what we normally think of as like a place where a kid gets

00:19:10.820 dropped off for a couple of hours for a round of diagnostic tests it was a place where the kids

00:19:15.760 would live and these kids were sort of at the end of their rope in a way like they were often put there

00:19:22.080 after being expelled from many schools their parents considered them very very difficult some of them

00:19:28.360 would end up there uh sort of at the behest of the juvenile courts so the kids would stay there for

00:19:35.560 a month or more and while they were there they not only were observed continuously while they you know

00:19:42.840 took tests while they slept while they played with each other or not um but they also had like phys ed

00:19:49.520 classes set to music in the morning uh asperger would read poetry to the kids so it was a very humane

00:19:56.760 environment and the idea was that um the kids would sort of relearn how to become functioning uh members

00:20:06.120 of society uh by creating sort of a model humane compassionate society in the clinic and um what

00:20:14.600 asperger knew was that kids with even pretty profound autism could succeed in life if they were given the

00:20:23.560 right kinds of support and i'll give you an example one of asperger's patients was a young kid who when

00:20:30.040 he was like about two years old started to draw triangles and circles in the sand and eventually

00:20:36.680 became obsessed with astronomy and instead of his mother treating that as just this kind of annoying

00:20:42.920 obsession she supported his interest in uh sorry in geometry actually she supported his interest in

00:20:50.280 geometry so um he then went on to middle school where his teachers thought that he was too intellectually

00:20:56.920 disabled to get advanced tutoring in math he badgered them into it they did it and he eventually went on

00:21:04.440 to become an assistant professor of astronomy at a university by detecting an error in one of isaac

00:21:11.400 newton's proofs in his first year at university so he was a very gifted guy but he was also very

00:21:19.080 autistic like if people would uh if people he knew would walk past him on the street he wouldn't

00:21:25.160 recognize them because uh often autistic people have trouble recognizing faces something called

00:21:31.320 prosopagnosia so uh asperger knew that autistic people were capable of great success but only if they

00:21:39.560 got tons of support from parents from teachers from the local community um asperger also believed that

00:21:47.160 autism was very common that it was a very old thing that uh autistic traits were widespread he said

00:21:55.240 once you learn to recognize the distinctive traits of autism you see them everywhere so what happened to

00:22:01.960 this guy why did his very uh broad model of autism which indeed you know anticipates what we now call

00:22:11.320 the autism spectrum why did that become lost knowledge for most of the 20th century well it's because

00:22:19.160 in 1938 the nazis marched in from uh germany over the mountains to annex austria for the fatherland

00:22:27.720 and they immediately passed uh eugenics laws to purge forms of hereditary disability from uh the human

00:22:37.320 gene pool in accordance with nazi eugenics uh theory and so the kids in asperger's clinic became a target

00:22:47.320 of a secret extermination program that the nazis were running that became the practice run for the

00:22:53.800 holocaust so the nazis actually developed methods of mass killing and disposal of bodies by practicing on

00:23:03.320 disabled children so this was a horrible thing and at the same time of course they were targeting the jews

00:23:11.160 and what happened was two of asperger's closest colleagues were george frankl and ani vice uh they were both

00:23:21.240 wonderfully uh progressive uh people working in asperger's clinic they had to leave the country or die

00:23:27.560 in the holocaust and um what happened was this guy leo connor being eastern european himself now

00:23:36.520 safely installed at johns hopkins uh connor and his wife decided to rescue jewish clinicians

00:23:44.680 from the holocaust and two of the people that he rescued were george frankl and ani vice

00:23:50.520 um asperger's work sort of wound down uh at the height of world war ii he was actually um sent away

00:23:58.920 from the clinic to become an ambulance driver in croatia uh the clinic was bombed by us because the

00:24:06.360 university of vienna had been turned into a nazi propaganda machine instead of the great uh you know

00:24:13.800 highly jewish university that it had been in the early 30s um and so connor saved the lives of

00:24:23.800 frankl and vice and they were both uh in his social circle and frankl was working with him directly

00:24:30.760 when connor quote-unquote discovered autism so you know by the time that connor was working for uh by

00:24:39.160 the time that frankl was working for connor he'd already seen dozens uh of autistic uh people um at

00:24:46.840 all levels of ability from uh people who could not survive outside of institutions to uh you know

00:24:53.480 that kid who became an astronomy professor so frankl knew very well that uh what autism looked like and

00:25:00.760 in 1938 connor's first autistic patient a guy named donald triplett showed up at johns hopkins

00:25:08.520 connor didn't know what to make of him in his notes he wrote schizophrenia which is exactly what

00:25:14.440 you know a clinician would have thought who didn't know about autism um and uh but it was connor's uh

00:25:22.760 the problem was that connor developed a model of autism uh after frankl and vice left because uh

00:25:31.000 connor was unfortunately unable to get a job for uh frankl and vice at johns hopkins so they sort of

00:25:37.880 disappear over the horizon and then connor wrote this famous paper in 1943 that described autism but

00:25:45.800 connor in a you know in a truly unfortunate turn of events um proposed that autism was very very rare

00:25:54.440 and when i was researching his past i noticed that he had done that in his very first paper as well

00:26:02.200 which was about uh syphilis among native americans and he insisted that syphilis was very very rare

00:26:09.800 among native americans well it turns out not so it turns out that native americans did not get very

00:26:15.480 good health care and they distrusted white doctors so in fact connor sort of hyped his discovery of this

00:26:23.960 uh native american with syphilis and in this using exactly the same language that he would later hype

00:26:31.400 autism as this exceptionally rare condition so yeah so connor uh he just said it was also it was very

00:26:39.000 rare where asperger says it was actually very common and the other difference too i noted too in in your

00:26:43.560 book was that connor had a very like very narrow narrow defined traits that someone had to show in order

00:26:49.720 to him to be able to say you're autistic whereas asperger had the more broader range spectrum yes

00:26:55.880 that's exactly true and you know there are it's not like leo connor you know was a terribly evil man

00:27:02.120 or anything he was probably a very good man but um this was the this was the distinction between the

00:27:09.560 mission of asperger and connor that proved to be so uh faithful um connor was trying to establish child

00:27:18.680 psychiatry as a viable field in america he was one of the first child psychiatrists in america

00:27:25.640 so for him to discover a condition that was as he called it a form of psychosis which it isn't but

00:27:34.200 uh you know for him to discover a form of psychosis that was endemic to childhood that would be sort of a

00:27:41.320 big scoop for child psychiatry in america so he tried to draw the diagnosis very

00:27:48.280 uh you know sort of selectively and specifically and he ended up in fact focusing on um sort of

00:27:56.600 super ambitious academic families uh well you know who was in connor's social network super

00:28:03.800 ambitious academic families like several of the uh parents in uh connor's first paper were you know

00:28:12.360 psychologists or psychiatrists themselves so you know it turns out that what was rare was having

00:28:18.840 access to leo connor's office at johns hopkins and he once said in the 50s i believe they had only seen

00:28:27.320 150 true cases of autism in his lifetime and that was because as he bragged to another clinician

00:28:34.520 he turned nine out of ten kids referred to him worldwide for a diagnosis of autism

00:28:42.840 by other clinicians away without giving them an autism diagnosis so he would rule out kids who had

00:28:49.160 seizures now we know that seizures are very common in autism he had this uh mistaken belief that autistic

00:28:55.800 kids are exceptionally beautiful well some of them are but some of them look more like me um you know

00:29:02.600 uh he would not give an autism diagnosis to a kid who had profound intellectual disability

00:29:09.320 now we know that intellectual disability and autism can overlap a lot he he tended to only write about

00:29:15.160 white people now we know that uh in fact you know people of color also get autism at equal rates

00:29:21.800 so connor had a way of like ruling out so many people that it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy

00:29:28.440 that autism was rare and the problem was that for whatever reason he had connor pretty much buried

00:29:37.400 autism uh research by asperger in history he never mentioned asperger's name uh until i did find the

00:29:46.200 one place where he mentioned it was in the 1970s so uh you know pretty much decades of damage had been

00:29:53.000 done and what he said was oh yes asperger what that person discovered was at best a 42nd cousin of my

00:30:00.840 syndrome and has already received serious intention serious attention from investigators that's wrong

00:30:07.480 in fact uh asperger's paper had not even been uh translated into english by that point so asperger was

00:30:16.120 virtually unknown now i asked myself and certainly the first thing i would ask leo connor if he were

00:30:22.520 to appear to me in a dream or something i would say why did you not mention asperger's work you know

00:30:28.840 it was like the one other paper that was published virtually at the same time as yours um you know

00:30:34.680 people say like well it was published in german that was connor's native language if people say well

00:30:40.120 it was published in this obscure german medical journal one that leo connor cited all the time in

00:30:45.720 his papers you know so the notion that like connor somehow overlooked asperger's paper is ridiculous

00:30:53.160 what i think happened probably is that let's not forget that at least you know certainly after 1938

00:31:00.680 and even before that asperger was working for nazis the nazis took over the university of vienna

00:31:07.560 so i suspect that uh connor probably associated asperger with nazis even though he refused to join the

00:31:14.680 party was a member of a christian youth group that opposed the nazis and was eventually banned but i

00:31:20.680 think you know connor basically said forget that guy you know he was working for nazis i'm going to

00:31:27.000 be the sole discoverer of autism but the problem was his model was so narrow that uh people didn't even

00:31:33.800 research autism because they thought it was not a promising career uh because it was so rare such a rare

00:31:40.040 syndrome and you know connor already has it covered in fact people called it connor's syndrome um so we

00:31:47.080 see the problem that happened between connor's burial of asperger and frankel and everybody else

00:31:55.560 who was associated with asperger in history the burial of you know really what was a an early

00:32:01.560 recognition of the autism spectrum as meanwhile connor goes for decades insisting that it's rare

00:32:07.800 rare well so how did that idea of autism being rare um how did that influence how we as a society

00:32:15.640 think about and approach us autism today well uh it it still has a huge effect in fact if you think

00:32:23.560 about what i already mentioned is the first question that almost everybody asked me about my book

00:32:28.920 what you know why did you write it do you have a kid on the spectrum it's like i'm a science writer you

00:32:33.480 know it's like what you know it's as if they're saying no one would write about autism unless they

00:32:39.800 were forced to by circumstances in a sense uh and i think that's an unconscious echo of the belief that

00:32:47.720 autism is rare if autism is common as it indeed is and we now recognize that um then why wouldn't a

00:32:55.880 science writer write about autism but you know so i think it tends to segregate people who are interested

00:33:04.120 in autism into this sort of ghetto you know where only people who are personally affected by autism

00:33:10.200 would be interested in it that's not true everybody should be interested in it it's a very common

00:33:15.240 condition um we have tended to under invest in research designed to improve the lives and uh

00:33:25.480 happiness and security of autistic people in their families instead uh mainly because of the

00:33:32.760 terrible and mistaken idea that vaccines cause autism we've invested millions and millions of dollars

00:33:39.320 in searching for the cause of autism um you know is that interesting science yes uh but we're doing

00:33:48.360 that at the same time that we're basically leaving uh autistic people in their families to twist in the

00:33:54.120 wind without things like programs to help autistic high school students transition into the workplace

00:34:03.320 they're basically non-existent people ask me you know where can i find a program for my kid he's

00:34:09.560 very bright he's very motivated but you know i don't know where he could learn the skills that would

00:34:15.880 enable him to get a good job and thus as a result many many autistic people who would love to be

00:34:22.440 working and who are very capable of brilliant work are unemployed and living on you know disability and

00:34:29.320 and and really poor i mean like you know they're they struggle to buy groceries every day and this is a

00:34:36.120 terrible uh situation and it's specifically because autism was mistakenly believed to be so rare for decades

00:34:44.920 connor also he put out ideas for like what caused autism and like you know put out and researchers

00:34:51.320 that followed in connor's path kind of tried to come up with cures for for autism i remember you

00:34:56.360 mentioned that the frigid mother uh cause of autism yeah that was connor's idea yeah i think it's funny

00:35:01.880 because i collect i collect vintage magazines and that's that's that was a common article in the 1950s

00:35:07.160 was a refrigerator mom yeah absolutely and in fact connor and his disciple leon eisenberg did not only

00:35:14.760 single out mothers it's somewhat of a kind of a sexist dynamic that made it about only mothers uh

00:35:20.440 eisenberg in particular was equally down on the fathers of autistic kids but uh yeah it was you know

00:35:27.000 basically it was a really interesting situation when connor initially came out with his paper he

00:35:34.120 speculated that it was pro that autism was probably inborn thus genetic but if you think about it

00:35:41.240 that would tend to limit um the role of the child psychiatrist because what can a child psychiatrist do

00:35:49.240 about a condition that's genetic well virtually nothing but if but if it's you know psychological

00:35:56.040 instead of genetic or genetic and psychological then the child psychiatrist can sweep in and say actually

00:36:03.960 we know what to do with your child and what was often done with um autistic children for decades

00:36:11.320 for most of the 20th century was that they were put in institutions because of this mistaken idea

00:36:18.200 initially developed by connor and then sort of popularized turned into an almost a pop culture craze

00:36:25.640 by this guy named bruno bevelheim who wrote a bestseller called uh the empty fortress that said that

00:36:31.960 refrigerator mothers in fact he compared the mothers of autistic kids to concentration camp

00:36:38.200 commandants and because he was a concentration camp survivor himself nobody challenged him like

00:36:44.920 who would say that you know he a holocaust survivor was lying but he was lying his entire career was

00:36:51.800 was a hoax more or less he invented degrees that he didn't have um he got tons of money from the

00:36:57.960 rockefeller foundation for allegedly curing autistic kids uh he didn't um so you know betelheim was

00:37:07.240 totally bogus but he blew connor's uh notion of the refrigerator mother up into this enormous uh thing

00:37:16.440 and what was terrible about that was that you know there are significant challenges associated with raising

00:37:23.160 an autistic kid you know it's hard enough what if you are also being blamed not just by your you know

00:37:31.000 therapist uh and your pediatrician uh but by your neighbors for making your kid autistic and that's

00:37:38.520 what happened to the parents of autistic kids uh for for decades you know really through the uh through

00:37:45.720 the 60s actually and in fact i spoke with uh the parent of uh one of the first kids to get the

00:37:53.480 diagnosis uh this woman gloria rimland uh whose husband bernard ended up helping to launch the

00:38:00.200 autism parents movement uh and to demolish the notion of refrigerator mothers but she told me that she and

00:38:06.440 bernard um uh you know had basically been trapped at home for years trying to raise their son who was

00:38:13.000 very self-injurious they couldn't find a babysitter um so you know one night they go out for dinner with

00:38:19.480 another couple for the first time in years and you know they're having a glass of wine they're having

00:38:24.600 a good time and suddenly the wife of the other couple turns to gloria and says you know you just don't

00:38:30.680 seem like that kind of person and gloria says what kind of person and the woman says who would do that

00:38:36.680 to your child so you can imagine the you know the burden of grief and guilt and shame uh that was uh

00:38:46.600 piled on to the parents of autistic kids and it also kept them from talking to each other because to

00:38:53.880 admit that you had an autistic kid was tantamount to admitting that you were mentally ill you know that

00:38:59.320 you didn't love your child that you didn't show your child affection so much so that they withdrew you

00:39:06.280 you know intentionally into you know what used to be called the autistic shell you know and so um

00:39:14.120 it was a terrible thing to do to parents it interfered with science it was a terrible thing

00:39:19.240 to do to autistic people because in the institutions they weren't you know these they weren't going to

00:39:24.920 luxurious autism wards they were going to psych wards you know lockdown wards with adult psychotics

00:39:33.560 where they were subjected to every wacky treatment from lobotomy to uh there was a woman at um bellevue

00:39:42.440 she was the head of psychiatry at bellevue and so she had no oversight you know it's not like she even

00:39:47.560 had to submit her experiments to an ethics board it didn't happen um she gave a bunch of uh autistic kids

00:39:54.840 lsd every day for up to nine months in some cases until she discovered that it was making them more

00:40:03.320 anxious well you know if i took lsd every day for nine months i'd be out you know out of my mind

00:40:09.800 basically so uh anyway uh it was really a blot on the history of uh psychiatry and psychology

00:40:20.680 psychology that uh autistic people were not only so misunderstood that their families were

00:40:26.520 misunderstood and demonized and that autistic people were subjected to these horrible experimental

00:40:33.080 treatments and i also think the idea that you can cure it right i'm sure like these parents would

00:40:37.400 just like they'd spend tons of money do anything go to enormous lengths to like i want to cure my

00:40:42.280 child of this and it was probably just frustrating they think i'm the blame for this so i got to do

00:40:47.240 whatever i can to fix it and i'm sure it was just like kicking against the pricks and i just made

00:40:51.640 them that just devastated them even more right well you know the cure thing really uh you know in a

00:40:59.640 sense took off i would say more in the 1990s and that was when um unfortunately bernard rimland actually

00:41:09.720 got got very into the idea that uh autistic kids could be cured with dietary interventions or

00:41:16.920 experimental drugs like secretin and so bernard rimland was so turned off to mainstream uh medicine

00:41:25.720 really by the refrigerator mother stuff that he sort of became rogue and you know went off on his own

00:41:32.840 to do his own autism research and uh you know i think he had very very good intentions like a kind of

00:41:40.120 kind of a theme running through my book is people with good intentions who try to do good things and

00:41:45.320 then you know end up making bad decisions that then cast a shadow over autistic people and their

00:41:50.920 families and so rimland popularized the notion that kids could be quote unquote recovered from autism

00:41:57.800 through dietary interventions it is true that you know if if an autistic kid is having some kind of

00:42:04.040 digestive upset that if you change their diet you know maybe they're gluten sensitive or have celiac disease

00:42:11.160 if you remove gluten from the diet of a kid who has celiac disease yes they will you know very

00:42:16.360 definitely uh improve their uh digestive symptoms and then their behavior will improve but the problem

00:42:24.280 is that this was all confused with curing autism which it isn't uh some kids do lose their diagnoses

00:42:32.040 over time in that sense they grow out of the diagnosis but there was actually just a major article the

00:42:39.080 other day that many of those kids who lose the autism diagnosis are then diagnosed with adhd or chronic

00:42:46.600 anxiety or chronic depression so what's clear is that people who are autistic are born with different

00:42:55.240 wiring and you know if they meet the diagnostic criteria for autism when they're young they'll get

00:43:00.520 diagnosed with autism they may lose that diagnosis eventually but they still need help and support their

00:43:06.600 whole lives so asperger was ignored for most of the 20th century um yeah connor's idea of autism was

00:43:14.280 sort of ascendant how did that transition go from autism being rare and having these very specific

00:43:20.600 traits you had to meet in order to be um diagnosed as being autistic how did they go from there to the

00:43:27.000 spectrum that we know today well uh the uh you know sort of the avatar of this change was a wonderful

00:43:34.520 cognitive psychiatrist in london named lorna wing and unfortunately lorna is no longer with us

00:43:40.600 i had the uh really great honor of doing one of the last uh in-depth interviews with her at her office

00:43:47.320 uh before she died um but what happened was lorna herself was the mother of a profoundly disabled

00:43:56.200 autistic girl named suzy and so lorna didn't have any problems with uh suzy uh meeting the criteria for

00:44:05.320 you know what was then called connor syndrome she was a classic connor kid in a way um but at some

00:44:12.520 point she was asked by a public health official because you know britain has nationalized health care

00:44:19.160 which tends to get called socialist here in america um but uh so this public health official

00:44:26.680 asked her to estimate how many autistic kids were in a london suburb called camberwell so that they

00:44:34.360 could allocate the appropriate amount of resources for them and so instead of waiting for autistic kids

00:44:40.600 to come to her office like leo connor uh had done she and a colleague named judith gould went out into

00:44:48.120 the streets of camberwell and looked everywhere they looked in uh school records they looked in

00:44:54.440 hospital records they looked in uh clinic records trying to find uh kids with autism everywhere they

00:45:01.320 could and what they found was that there were many many more autistic kids than leo connor's model

00:45:10.040 would have predicted but not all of them would have met connor's very strict and narrow criteria

00:45:17.320 for instance connor wrote about kids who didn't even seem to want to know their own parents

00:45:23.080 whereas lorna and judith would see like a kid who clearly loved their mom helped her do the dishes

00:45:29.640 and then would retire into their rooms to listen to their favorite record 25 times over so it was as

00:45:37.000 if these kids had bits and pieces of connor syndrome but perhaps not to uh not enough to meet the full

00:45:45.320 criteria but boy were there ever a lot of them you know like more than connor's model would have

00:45:50.520 predicted so lorna did not know what to make of this data like she originally thought maybe connor is

00:45:58.360 like completely wrong you know his conception of autism is wrong but then she came across a reference

00:46:04.600 to this paper by this guy who no one had heard of named hans asperger and it was you know in german

00:46:12.600 luckily her husband john who was a schizophrenia researcher spoke german so he translated it for

00:46:19.000 her and when she read asperger's paper and you know this was now you know oh more than 30 years

00:46:25.720 after it was written and forgotten um she said this is it this is exactly what we're seeing in camberwell

00:46:33.160 you know so then lorna sort of went behind the scenes with the editors of the so-called bibles of

00:46:40.040 psychiatry the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders and the international classification

00:46:45.960 of diseases and said you know like hey the criteria for autism are too narrow and restrictive

00:46:53.640 um it it's a spectrum it's not just this monolithic syndrome where all the people are basically the

00:47:00.120 same in fact you know people thought to them are really different from one another and so her

00:47:05.960 changes to the dsm and the international classification of diseases went uh went to

00:47:12.200 print you know in the late 80s and early 1990s and almost immediately the number of diagnoses started

00:47:19.960 to soar just as lorna not only intended but indeed hoped would happen because she knew how hard it was

00:47:29.720 to uh either be autistic and you know have the wrong diagnosis or to raise an autistic kid without help

00:47:37.640 without special education so it was exactly what she wanted to happen but then this you know bogus

00:47:43.640 guy named andrew wayfield came along and blamed the rise in diagnoses on vaccines yeah that's where

00:47:50.040 that came from they found out they later proved that his studies were bogus somehow right oh yeah

00:47:55.240 absolutely no they've they haven't been replicated and you know the the problem is all right here's

00:48:00.680 the thing when i started researching neurotribes i thought well maybe andrew wakefield is a true

00:48:07.320 believer you know he was on to something he ran a study the study was no good there were a lot of

00:48:12.920 ethical problems with it like you know he in his press conferences he would really sound the alarm about

00:48:19.480 vaccines vaccine uptake rates started falling over the world all over the world uh diseases like

00:48:26.680 measles and mumps started coming back strong after being uh kept down for years by by vaccination

00:48:32.920 programs um i thought you know maybe he thought he was on to something and you know he had good

00:48:37.720 intentions no um the more research i did the more i realized that he was just a liar who lies about

00:48:45.880 autism history he insists that autism never existed before leo connor wrote about it well one of the

00:48:52.760 people who would have disagreed with him was leo connor uh leo connor didn't think he was discovering

00:48:57.880 something new under the sun he just thought it had never been adequately described um in the clinical

00:49:04.120 literature and in fact one of the very first uh one of the founding fathers of british psychiatry

00:49:11.400 this guy jay langdon down who named down syndrome wrote about kids who would lose speech uh suddenly

00:49:19.000 you know and dramatically and disturbingly in their early childhood so andrew wakefield said you know

00:49:25.560 losing speech is caused by vaccines you know that's a new form of autism that has never been seen before

00:49:32.520 called regressive autism and of course parents uh you know would believe such a thing because uh it's

00:49:40.520 actually not that uncommon for a kid to seem to be developing normally for a couple of years and

00:49:45.720 then suddenly they seem to lose skills well jay langdon down had had uh noticed that you know more than

00:49:52.920 a hundred years before but andrew wakefield insisted that regressive autism didn't exist before the

00:49:59.080 mmr it's you know he's he's a liar uh but unfortunately a lot of parents still believe him because he told a

00:50:06.360 very simple very emotionally resonant story about what caused the dramatic increase in autism and no

00:50:14.520 one else had ever provided parents with uh you know a true version of history and so that's why i wrote

00:50:21.560 my book to try to uh show what actually happened so this brings us to this idea of neurodiversity um

00:50:29.800 um and i mean autism exists so it's it's probably inborn you've shown you showed that your your

00:50:36.920 article the geek syndrome that parents who are computer program computer programmers engineers

00:50:42.040 often have children with autism not all of them but you know many do um so do geneticists they

00:50:49.800 understand like why autism exists because i i think this goes to your neurodiversity idea because i remember

00:50:55.960 reading a book about depression and like they think that well reason why depression exists it's there's

00:51:01.240 sort of an adaptive quality to it it um provides these you know allows you to have depressive realism

00:51:07.480 um and there's sort of some benefits to it as well or otherwise it wouldn't exist so is there any

00:51:11.720 theories like that about autism as well yeah sure absolutely i mean think about it it's like we know in

00:51:18.120 a rainforest that there are many different kinds of trees right and that actually the diversity in a

00:51:24.760 uh biological community like a rainforest in fact adds to the resilience of that community in the in the

00:51:30.920 face of changing climate you know for instance um why do we think that there's only one type of

00:51:38.360 quote-unquote normal human brain you know it's if you think about it just in very basic terms it's kind

00:51:45.720 of a naive idea you know but it came from sort of the ascendance of uh psychiatry in the 20th century

00:51:52.200 where you know there's this normal kind of brain and this guy you know a psychiatrist is going to

00:51:58.600 help you get there if you're not quite there or well adjusted what's that you want to be well

00:52:03.880 adjusted that's what they're trying right you want to be well adjusted and you know eventually they

00:52:08.040 came along with uh you know psychopharmaceuticals if you know if you have a serotonin uptake problem

00:52:13.960 in your brain which by the way has never been proven scientifically you'll take antidepressants you know

00:52:19.800 the truth is antidepressants do you know work for a lot of people but we still don't know why you

00:52:25.480 know so the notion that you know if your brain if you have depression or if you have anxiety

00:52:30.760 there's something wrong with your brain because there's really only one kind of well-adjusted human

00:52:35.240 brain it's a very naive idea you know but uh autism is another sort of avenue towards that understanding

00:52:42.840 and the word neurodiversity came from a sociology student named judy singer in australia who was

00:52:49.080 part of one of the very first online communities for autistic adults uh in the um in the 1990s

00:52:58.440 and uh you know the internet came along right when the diagnosis started going up and one of the things

00:53:05.400 that lorna did by changing the criteria was that she made the diagnosis available to adults for the

00:53:11.880 first time and so i went back and looked at uh some of the very first online conversations had by

00:53:19.320 autistic people uh and one of the questions that kept coming up is can connor's syndrome which was

00:53:26.680 considered you know a form of childhood psychosis can it persist into adulthood because i was diagnosed

00:53:33.960 with connor's syndrome when i was young you know i'm an adult and i still think i'm kind of weird you

00:53:37.960 know somehow and so the people who were in these early online communities literally had to figure

00:53:44.440 out that they were autistic adults because the mainstream uh uh you know textbooks didn't support

00:53:51.400 that idea so anyway so uh judy was learning about something called the social model of disability

00:54:00.040 there are a couple of different ways of looking at disability one is that you're disabled there's

00:54:05.160 something wrong with you it should be fixed you know the other way to look at disability is to say

00:54:11.080 well maybe if you say you're really disabled maybe there are things that society could do

00:54:17.800 to help you you know lead a satisfying life so it's like if you're in a wheelchair and there are no

00:54:24.040 wheelchair ramps or no accessible classrooms or you know there's just stairs you're really disabled you

00:54:31.240 know but if you live in a town with you know good disability access and and uh you know accessible

00:54:37.080 movie theaters and accessible public transit you can get around and so judy started to think about

00:54:44.280 um autism in a disability context and particularly in the context of the social model of disability

00:54:51.960 and autism had been defined as just sort of a checklist of deficits and impairments for decades you can't do

00:54:59.480 this you can't do that you're not good at this you're not good at that well you know it turns out

00:55:04.200 that a lot of autistic people are good at something you know they're not all geniuses you know they can't

00:55:09.640 all uh you know count toothpicks fall under the floor like rain man they're not all savants but you

00:55:16.280 know a lot of autistic people are good at something particularly in their area of special interests

00:55:21.240 why do we you know judy started asking herself why do we only talk about ourselves in terms of

00:55:27.080 deficits and impairments so she came up with this word neurodiversity based on the word biodiversity

00:55:34.840 which we all know is a good thing so that autistic people and people with other conditions like adhd

00:55:41.320 and dyslexia uh could talk about themselves without sort of automatically putting themselves down

00:55:48.840 in a medical way and she hoped that the word neurodiversity would spread through the online

00:55:54.120 community in the same way that slogans like black is beautiful or gay is good had spread through

00:56:00.280 other marginalized and stigmatized communities in the 60s she hoped that the word neurodiversity

00:56:06.360 would do the same thing for uh people with autism and these other forms of cognitive disability and it

00:56:12.680 worked it went viral so with that in mind you know i'm sure there's people who are listening to this

00:56:19.240 their parents maybe they just found out their child um has autism is on the autism spectrum

00:56:24.520 and for many parents uh you know finding out that out can be devastating um because you know it doesn't

00:56:29.160 fit the plan right that they they have for their kids yeah so i mean any advice for parents out there

00:56:34.200 who are listening you know just found out their child's on the spectrum like what's the mindset they

00:56:37.880 should approach with what you just said this history of autism just given us like what is the best mindset

00:56:42.200 to go about and raising a child on the spectrum sure that's a very important question um the first

00:56:48.360 thing i would say is you know many of the messages that uh parents get when their kid is diagnosed uh

00:56:55.160 even sometimes from their friends you know they're very dire like you know they tend to go like your

00:57:01.720 kid will never get married your kid will never be able to go to college you know it's as if people

00:57:06.920 are trying to prevent them from having unreasonable hopes the truth of matter is you have no idea what

00:57:13.720 what your kid might be capable of when they grow up and uh the really the arc of autistic people's

00:57:20.520 lives particularly in the last 20 years or so uh has shown that autistic people are capable of

00:57:26.600 astonishing spurts of development even in middle age so you have no idea what your kid will be capable of

00:57:34.040 and i'll give you an example from today's news um there was a kid uh named i think jody unfortunately

00:57:42.040 i don't have his name on the tip of my tongue but he was basically non-verbal uh when he was a kid he

00:57:48.600 was he was growing up in england um you know many bad predictions were made about him but he had a

00:57:54.600 curious interest in birds he loved to watch birds through the window and it turns out that one of the

00:58:00.360 reasons why he loved to watch birds was because they could quickly fly away and escape you know unpleasant

00:58:06.520 surroundings which is what what he wished he could do well his kid you know instead of like saying

00:58:12.520 we you know will you stop staring out the window at birds all the time they got him a bird you know

00:58:18.200 and the kid the kid named bird and you know it's like one of the first things that he said and um

00:58:24.440 the kid got really into birds and by studying uh the science of birds he ended up becoming interested in

00:58:31.080 science in general anyway that kid is about to go to oxford as a road scholar and he was you know

00:58:39.480 he was basically non-verbal when he was young and by supporting the kid's special interest like

00:58:46.840 another of the bad theories that leo connor had was that autistic special interests were inherently

00:58:52.840 pathological like he one of connor's patients was a kid who could identify 18 symphonies after hearing

00:59:00.520 only a few bars before he turned two like you would hear a few bars and say beethoven you know and

00:59:07.320 connor thought it was very bad because kids couldn't possibly be interested in beethoven they're obviously

00:59:13.160 just trying to earn love from their unloving parents that's wrong you know the kid was really

00:59:18.760 into beethoven and other classical composers so autistic special interests as they're often called

00:59:26.680 are actually the basis for a future pathway into a successful life and that's something that

00:59:33.400 asperger knew like that kid with you know drawing the geometric figures in the sand who went on to

00:59:38.600 become an assistant professor of astronomy so autistic minds learn but in their own way like for many

00:59:47.320 decades it was assumed that autistic kids were incapable of learning well that's because they were in

00:59:52.200 institutions where there was no education going on you know so what i would say to parents is you know

00:59:59.160 obviously not every autistic kid is going to turn out to be some kind of a genius and uh the kid will

01:00:04.760 need definitely need you know many many different forms of support that will change over time and you

01:00:11.880 know if you're a parent you need to become a very powerful advocate uh with your kids school boards and

01:00:18.040 with practically everything uh in order to ensure that your kid leads a successful life but i would

01:00:25.160 also send parents of a newly diagnosed kid to see a relatively recent film called life animated which is

01:00:32.600 a story of how a uh it's a real life story of how a uh journalist named ron suskind had a kid who lost

01:00:39.960 speech uh suddenly they thought you know his life was basically over more or less they thought he'd have to

01:00:45.720 live in an institution and they used the kid's interest in disney movies to establish communication

01:00:52.440 with him again and that kid is now living on his own in his own apartment and he's a very charming young man

01:00:59.080 so what i would say to parents is don't despair um try to find good sources of information uh you know my book

01:01:08.520 can give you the history but for uh a parent i would suggest another book called barry presents uniquely human

01:01:14.600 um there's also a book called the real experts which is an anthology of writing by autistic adults

01:01:21.720 uh reflecting on what experiences help them get through life it's really important that

01:01:27.960 that autistic kids get role models of autism in adulthood um and you know they'll see that it's not

01:01:35.160 a hopeless situation which is the message that unfortunately many parents get when their kid is first diagnosed

01:01:42.120 don't lose hope right and i love that and what about for those of us who might not have autistic family

01:01:46.920 members but work or interact with individuals who are autistic i mean you're a non-autistic person who's

01:01:52.360 i'm sure talked to thousands of autistic people i mean i think a lot of people want to befriend and

01:01:57.720 help these people feel comfortable but they're not sure about what's the best approach i mean any advice

01:02:02.200 there yeah let them lead you know in a sense it's like uh don't you know i remember i had a very

01:02:10.440 important lesson uh actually because an autistic guy um who was really hilarious online um sort of got

01:02:18.920 in touch with me wanted to have coffee i went to meet him for coffee the whole time he was sitting there

01:02:23.880 i thought he was having the worst time he was like frowning at me he seemed very tense i thought oh god this

01:02:29.960 is terrible you know like this isn't working at all i'm not coming off as charming you know and uh

01:02:36.040 then you know i i thought it was you know not a good interaction then i got home and he was like

01:02:40.600 that was great you know when can we do this again so it's like it turns out that non-autistic people

01:02:47.320 have as much trouble parsing the body language and facial expressions and social signals of autistic

01:02:53.640 people as much as they have trouble parsing hours so don't assume that autistic person will respond

01:03:01.960 in uh you know non-autistic or neurotypical ways to your you know your little jokes or whatever they

01:03:07.720 may not get them uh they may have a very highly developed sense of humor and sarcasm but you know

01:03:13.720 they may miss a you know an ironic comment that you make or whatever just sort of let the autistic

01:03:19.160 person establish what level of communication they're comfortable with what methods of communication

01:03:26.440 they're comfortable with um if an autistic person looks away from you it doesn't mean that they're

01:03:32.120 bored or not listening or hostile it could mean that they're uh having trouble processing your

01:03:38.520 facial expressions at the same time that they're listening to your words so you know let them look away

01:03:44.680 they may be they may be even more interested you know than you can possibly imagine in what you're

01:03:51.240 saying but i would say you know sort of let the autistic person lead rather than enforcing some kind of um

01:03:59.160 uh you know standard of normal behavior which is based on non-autistic behavior and there are

01:04:04.840 organizations you can go you know if you're curious uh particularly for parents there are organizations you

01:04:10.920 can get in touch with like there's a group called aane the autism and asperger's association of new

01:04:17.080 england they have meetings for both autistic people and parents you can meet autistic people get to know

01:04:23.240 them uh and thus get to know not only your own child better but what your child's potential is

01:04:30.600 awesome steve we covered a lot we did this is great thank you well steve silverman thank you so

01:04:36.440 us your time it's been an absolute pleasure thank you i'm it's a thrill for me to be here

01:04:42.520 my guest today was steve silverman he's the author of the book neurotribes the legacy of autism in the

01:04:46.840 future of neurodiversity it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere also check out our show

01:04:51.640 notes at aom.is slash neurotribes where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper

01:04:55.960 into this topic

01:05:12.440 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

01:05:16.440 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com our show is edited by creative

01:05:20.760 audio lab here in tulsa oklahoma if you have any audio editing needs or audio production needs check

01:05:24.760 them out at creativeaudiolab.com we appreciate your support reviews on itunes this teacher helps

01:05:29.240 out a lot and as always until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - January 12, 2017

#269： The Forgotten History of Autism

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