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.

Monday 14 October 2019

Mythical Hope 4 - Life is hard: so mourn for us?

In the decade and a bit that I’ve been blogging on autism and classical myth a lot has changed from the ‘classical’ side, not least due to the rise in interest in classical reception, including, how classics is received for and by children. I mentioned this side of things a couple of postings back. Here I want to switch the focus to developments from the other ‘side’ – not that there really are sides, hence the inverted commas. I want to look at how perceptions of autism have moved on over the past decade. Much of what I’ll look at predates this time, so it’s not that everything I discuss is very recent – it’s more that voices that were once heard in a limited way are increasingly being listened to.

The first of the three themes for the Our Mythical Childhood project – under whose mythical and magical aegis I’m developing myth-themed activities for autistic children - was Hope (followed by History; and next, starting soon, we’ll turn to Nature). Hope was the focus of our conference at Warsaw in 2017. In preparation for this event, I began thinking about what ‘hope’ might mean in relation to autism, and whether a source of hope might be something mythological. I'm current revisiting where I stand in relation to autism and hope.

Our title for the conference in 2017 (Our Mythical Hope in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture... The (In)efficacy of Ancient Myths in Overcoming the Hardships of Life) pointed to how Hope can help children deal with the “hardships of life.” Hope has often been seen as something especially needed where autistic children are concerned, because their experiences of the “hardships of life” might be felt to be especially acute. This sense of autism as involving hardships is often expressed by those seeking to help autistic children – by parents for instance and by teachers and therapists. In this regard, the list of an autistic child is often seen as so painfully difficult, so beset with hardships, that any hope for them is going to be slender. Jim Sinclair put this really well in an address from as long ago as 1993. I find it a bit constricting to give little terms for who people are – ‘the historian such-and-such’ etc. – but I can see that it’s helpful to do this, though it does pin people down to one specific field… I’d describe Jim, I suppose, as the autism rights activist.’[1]

In this 1993 address, Jim sets out how, on learning that their child is autistic, parents often respond with grief - grief at the loss of all their hopes for the child, and regard the only source of hope to be in a possible cure.[2] It’s from this address that I take the ‘Mourn for us’ in the title of this posting. These sentiments bear comparison with those set out in the introduction to a 2014 film about an autistic young woman (here’s me pinning down another person… I hope adequately), Sue Rubin. When she was a child, Sue “did not give her parents much hope. She hit herself. Pulled hair. Bit her own arms and hands. She could not speak.”[3] I’m currently reading Ron Suskind’s Life, Animated where he outlines his quest to be the best parent possible for his autistic son. Here, too, Ron says a lot about hope: the hopes he had before Owen, his son’s, diagnosis and the hopes for a future that might accommodate Owen. Let me finish reading the book – then I’ll reference, and perhaps blog on – this.

As phrased in the literature on autism from diagnostic perspectives, for professionals and parents, autistic children may well find life hard –significantly harder than other children. They may well find it difficult, for example, to know what to say or do in social situations, or to respond to the subtle cues that other children learn more easily. It can be especially hard for an autistic child to do the kind of things that are, or come to be, innate for others, for instance how to initiate or maintain a conversation. Autistic children may find it harder than their peers to read body language or facial expressions, or any form of non-verbal conversation. Interpreting things like tone of voice could prove more difficult too than for other children. Also, developing any rapport with others could be a challenge, let alone to develop friendships.[4] Autistic children might find it hard, too, to gauge what others are thinking or feeling. 

There is more. As often described, difficulties with communication could be compounded by difficulties over processing information. Autistic children might find it hard to think beyond the present and they might well find it hard to understand that the present can turn into the future. They might find it difficult to understand the “bigger picture” in any given scenario, preferring instead to focus on particular details. Autistic children also may well find it hard to deal with changes in routine, preferring instead set and repetitive patterns of behaviour. Added to this, they could experience heightened sensory perceptions such an acute reaction to noise or smell.

These difficulties were articulated in the “triad of impairments” identified by the pioneering British psychiatrist (again I hope this summary is adequate!) Lorna Wing – as involving difficulties and lack: difficulties in social and emotional understanding, difficulties in all aspects of communication, and a lack of flexibility in thinking and behaviour.[5] In the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5), again the focus is on what is difficult. Here, autism spectrum disorders are categorised in terms of “communication problems,” “difficulty relating to people, things and events,” and “repetitive body movements or behaviors.”[6]

Thus, the life of an autistic child is often seen as one characterised by hardships. And, so, this group of children might be considered to benefit especially from hope – to enable them to develop empathy for instance, or to develop a theory of mind, or to improve their central coherence, or to help them interact with their parents or their peers, or to show that they are able to follow what someone is saying to them.

However, there is another way of looking at what it is to be autistic, and to have (a chance of) hope. I plan in the next posting to I ask how far it should be the role of someone working with autistic people to attempt to deal with the supposed hardships of their lives. I’ll ask what it even means to think of an autistic person’s life as a hard one.

 




[1] On Jim Sinclair, see the website for Autism Network International: http://www.autreat.com/ (accessed October 14, 2019)/ See further Silberman, Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter about People Who Think Differently, London: Allen and Unwin, 2015, 432–441, 445–449.
[2] Jim Sinclair, “Don’t Mourn for Us,” Autism Network International (ANI) website: http://www.autreat.com/dont_mourn.html (accessed July 21, 2019; originally published in Our Voice 1.3, 1993). On the quest to cure autism, see Silbermam, Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism, 261–237.
[3] Sue Rubin and Julianna Margulies, Autism is a World, San Francisco: Kanopy Streaming, 2014.
[4] See e.g. Alis Rowe’s description of finding friendships in The Girl with the Curly Hair – Asperger’s and Me, London: Lonely Mind 2013: 25-28, 45-48.
[5] See, esp., Lorna Wing, “Autistic Spectrum Disorders,”  312.7027,  The Autistic Spectrum: A Guide for Parents and Professionals, London: Robinson 2002 (updated edition – first edition: 1996).
[6] American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5) 2013, online at https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/autism/what-is-autism-spectrum-disorder (accessed July 21, 2019).

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