Why classical myth and autism?

Why classical myth and autism?

The idea for this project started to take shape at a meeting in 2008 with a special needs teacher, who mentioned that, in her experience and those of her colleagues, autistic children often enjoy classical myth. I began to wonder why this might be the case, and whether – as a classicist who researches, and loves, classical myth – there was anything I could contribute. I started this blog to report on my progress which was often sporadic until the launch of the Warsaw-based European Research Council-funded project Our Mythical Childhood (2016-22) to trace the role of classics in children’s culture.

My key contribution to the project is an exploration of classics in autistic children’s culture, above all by producing myth-themed activities for autistic children. This blog shares my progress, often along Herculean paths, including to a book of lessons for autistic children focusing on the Choice of Hercules between two very different paths in life. The image above, illustrating the homepage of this blog, is one of the drawings by Steve K. Simons, the book's illustrator, of a chimneypiece panel in a neoclassical villa at Roehampton in South West London. The lessons centre on this panel.

Wednesday, 2 October 2019

Mythical Hope 2 - Hercules: an autistic Hope-bearer?

Zbigniew Karazewski, Flora and Our Mythical Hope (2017)

 In my previous posting – of last week – I set out what I plan, or hope, to do on this blog during the course of the autumn. This is, on the one hand, to reflect on, why I started this blog a decade ago. On the other hand, this is to reflect how it has developed since I started it, especially how it has been nurtured under the aegis of the project Our Mythical Childhood... The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children’s andYoung Adults’ Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges. 

 This project was launched at the start of October 2016 – so three years ago. At that time, I marked the launch with a blog posting as myself and my fellow researchers embarked on “our new adventure.”  Now, three years on, I shall start to convey some of what has happened on this adventure to date. I’ll do this in relation to the project’s first theme: “Our Mythical Hope in Children’s and Young Adult’s Culture: The (In)efficiency of ancient myths in overcoming the hardships of life”  
Life can be difficult for children, as Katarzyna Marciniak sets out in the booklet from the 2017 conference on Mythical Hope:
Leaving aside the utopian view of childhood as a period uncontaminated by evil, we have to admit that it is often a time of both the most beautiful and the most terrible experiences – ones that are formative and provide or deprive us of a supply of Hope for the years to come (20).
As Katarzyna also states, out of the darkness of Night there might come a daughter, Hope. For the rest of this posting, I shall consider some of the sources for Hope for a particular group of children, autistic children, as they negotiate experiences on the road to adulthood. These include challenges common to all such as building identities and making choices, along with an array of others. For autistic young people, the challenges of childhood can be all the more acute as they find ways to make sense of experiences, develop imaginations, learn to plan for the future, and try to make sense of where they fit within time and space.[1]

 For around a decade, and especially since the October 2016 launch of Our Mythical Childhood, I have been exploring the potential for classical mythology to respond to some of these challenges by exploring ways to open up cultural experiences for autistic children. This has included making a hope-themed examination of this work, including an exploration of various ways in which hope has come to be understood in relation to autism.
To do this, I shall focus upon the particular topic that I have selected for the first stage of my research, one which resonates particularly with mythical Hope. This is the development of resources, for use by those who work with autistic children, around the adventures of Herakles – Hercules in Roman stories and many modern retellings, including the one that provides the focus for the first set of activities.

Mythical Hope conference participants beneath Hercules, Warsaw, May 2017
Hercules – I plan to switch from here on to the Roman spelling – has rich potential in an autistic classroom.[2] This includes because of his many, and difficult, journeys into fantasy lands and his comparably difficult experiences in the 'mundane' world, where he often remains an outsider. 

 Over the weeks, I shall try to show how, in creating these activities, I am drawing on the potential of Herculean stories in doing such things as: stimulating the imagination, extending experience, developing social and personal skills, giving a cultural experience, and aiding interaction with others.

 But I shall also be questioning what it means to seek to help autistic people deal with hardships, or to look for a “hope-bearer” for the future of an autistic child.

 When hope is expressed in relation to autism, it is often coming out of a notion of autism as a deficiency. Such a notion, as I shall explore, is out of step with ways of thinking about autism that have been finding a foothold in recent years. This turn in thinking about autism is in keeping with the move, in disability studies, from a medical model, whereby a disability is a disorder that affects a particular individual, to a social model, according to which disability is a social construction.[3] This move has come with a major shift in thinking, away from a concept of disabled people as individuals who need to make adjustments to fit in with society, towards a notion that it is, in fact, society that does the disabling. Looked at in these constructivist terms, is not autistic people who should need to change; rather it is society that needs to change in order to make provision for them.[4]

With this move to new ways of thinking about autism, beyond identifying and treating what is wrong with autistic people to seeking what is wrong with society, the key questions I am posing are these: Can myth help? and can myths of Hercules help? According to Alastair Blanshard, stories of Hercules resurface with such resonance at key cultural moments that they “do far more than just recount amazing exploits, they take us into the heart of the culture that celebrates them.”[5] 

 Over the weeks, I shall explore how far the potential of Hercules to express key concerns in a culture can be extended in relation to changing concepts of autism and changing views around how to work with autistic children. I shall do this particularly in relation to one of the recurrently popular stories, the Choice of Hercules between two divergent paths in life. This is a story with distinguished history of expressing contemporary concerns about children. I shall set out how it might be able to open up new cultural and intellectual opportunities for autistic children too.

 I shall begin – in the next posting - by explaining how this venture came about and its role as a “wing” of the Our Mythical Childhood project and where it sits in relation to the exploration of the overcoming of hardship and the quest for Hope. I shall then move on to explore the potential for classical myth in general, and of Hercules in particular, for use with autistic children – to help deal with hardships, but also as gateway to an understanding of autistic experiences.

More soon…





[1] I plan to deal with these and other challenges over the weeks, when I shall cite relevant scholarship. Here I shall start with one, recent, overview of what autistic children encounter, from Deborah Haythorne and Anna Seymour’s opening chapter to their recent edited book: “Dramatherapy and autism,” in the book of the same name, Abingdon: Routledge 2017, 4-15, esp. 8-9. The book details how dramatherapists can make interventions with autistic people, children included. For an autistic person’s perspective how childhood can be experienced by an autistic child, see the many books by Alis Rowe, staring perhaps with: The Girl with the Curly Hair: Asperger’s and Me, Lonely Mind: London  2013, esp. 23-66.
[2] For the debate between whether there should be a distinctively autistic classroom in the sense of a space that supports the learning of those diagnosed as autistic, or whether to support the move towards an inclusive classroom that supports the learning of all, autistic and otherwise, see Rita Jordan, “Autistic Spectrum Disorders,” in Ann Lewis and Brahm Norwich, eds., Special Teaching For Special Children? A Pedagogy for Inclusion, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2005, 110–120.
[3] See e.g. Thomas Campbell, Fernando Fontes, Laura Hemingway, Armineh Soorenian, and Chris Till, eds., Disability Studies: Emerging Insights and Perspectives, Leeds: The Disability Press, 2008; Angharad E. Beckett, “Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy and Disability: Possibilities and Challenges,” Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research 17.1, 2015, 76–94.
[4] Notable studies into the history and working of autism include Uta Frith, Autism: Explaining the Enigma, Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1989; Simon Baron-Cohen, Autism and Asperger Syndrome, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008; Steve Silberman, Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter about People Who Think Differently, London: Allen and Unwin, 2015.
[5] Alistair Blanshard, Hercules: A Heroic Life, London: Granta, 2005, xviii. Alistair has appeared previously in this blog, most recently here.
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