Here is the text of the paper I gave in Warsaw in May 2017 introducing my autism and classical mythology work and linking it to the conference theme, of Our Mythical Hope in children's and young adults' culture... the (in)efficacy of ancient myths in overcoming the hardships of life. Some of what I actually said in Warsaw differs from what is set out here - the paper, as delivered, used this text as a springboard for reflections around my project rather than anything like a strict script.
PART 1 – INTRODUCING MY HERCULEAN JOURNEY
A year ago, when we were gathered here in Warsaw to ‘Chase
Mythical Beasts,’ I gave some very initial information about the work I was –
then – getting ready to embark on concerning autism and classical mythology.
When photos taken at the conference were circulated shortly afterwards, and I
saw this one of myself setting out my plans, I was struck at how
intense I looked. This was, I think, because I was sharing how much this work
meant to me. Back then, we had several months still to go before the project,
enabled by ERC funding, would start. Indeed, we were still working out a number
of aspects of the project, including what the precise start date would be.
Then, in October 2016, the project got going officially. And, so, the dream I
had fostered for several years could finally come true, namely to investigate
the potential for using classical myth with autistic children.
I had learnt, back in 2008, that autistic children
often respond well to learning about classical myth. As a classicist interested
in classical myth, I was intrigued to find out why this might be the case. And
this led to an unexpected turn in my life towards becoming deeply interested in
autism and disability more broadly. Over this time, I thought about the topic
constantly, and began a blog to set out my ideas, but I was far from sure
whether it would ever turn into an actual project, much though I hoped it
would. But, now, I am able – indeed required – to conduct this work. And today
what I am going to do is discuss what stage I have currently reached, and where
I will be going next. I shall outline some of the principles guiding what I am
doing, and I shall talk about the particular topic that I have selected for the
first stage of my project, namely the development of resources for use by those
who work with autistic children around a particular mythical figure: Hercules.
This was not the initial figure I had planned to work on – so I shall seek to
convey what it is about Hercules that makes him suitable for the focus of my
work. I shall also mention a couple of occurrences that have confirmed me in my
thinking about the potential for using Hercules in this way, starting, now,
with the first of these. This was being put in touch, by Prof Marciniak,
with Dr Pecchini, my fellow panellist today, at a time when he, too, was
exploring the potential of myths of Hercules in his work as a clinical
psychologist.
The focus of this current conference, around ‘Our
Mythical Hope,’ is something that I have also taken heart from – in view of how
it points to the aspirational approach that, spurred on by Katarzyna, we are as
a team, taking towards the study of classical themes in children’s culture. I
have also taken inspiration from the conference’s focus on how classical myth
can play a part in mitigating the ‘hardships of life.’ In relation to my work
on autism, there is potential for using myth to deal with the challenges faced
by autistic people – notably the
‘triad of impairments’ that Lorna Wing identified some years ago now, as which are still used as guiding principles. These
are difficulties in: (1) social and emotional understanding, (2) all aspects of
communication, and (3) a lack of flexibility in thinking and behaviour. As Rita
Jordan – to whom I’ll return further soon – stresses,
educational
practice that only focuses in on one of the three might be inadequate – because
it is the ‘triad of impairments,’ Wing’s term, that is key here:
Communication difficulties, for
example, are apparent when the child has problems in understanding his or her
own and others’ emotions and social signals and when they have problems being
spontaneous and monitoring feedback to their own actions … ASDs are
transactional disorders, appearing in their interactions with others and not to
be understood without the contextualization from which special needs are
determined (p. 111).
But I also note the ‘in’ in brackets before the word
‘efficacy’ in the title for the conference. This allowance of the possible of
‘inefficacy’ alongside ‘efficacy’ signals something that, also, fits my
experiences over the past few months as the project has been getting going,
namely that classics, as it is received by children, might not always play the
transformative or reassuring or aspirational role that we might like it to.
Colleagues working on aspects of classics in children’s literature have told me
about some of the uncomfortable things that they are discovering, for example
that classical themes are sometimes used to perpetuate certain stereotypes, for
instance around gender. The ‘in’ also puts me in mind of certain of the
experiences I have had over the last few months, which have helped bring home
to me just what the responsibilities might be for me as I produce materials
that could be used in work with autistic children. I shall structure the remainder
of this paper around three of these experiences.
PART 2 – FACING HYDRAS
One experience was from a colleague, a librarian, who
has been very encouraging about the project. Chancing to learn that a visitor
to her library was the grandmother of an autistic young child, she told the
visitor about my work and mentioned that I am looking, particularly, at
Hercules. The visitor responded that she very much hoped that I wouldn’t be including
anything particularly violent, like the Hydra’s heads being cut off. Now: this
is precisely one of the features of Hercules’s adventures that I am planning to
work on – as one instance where Hercules, journeying into a fantasy land,
encounters hardships which he overcomes against the odds. (Conversely, in the
mundane world, he is often an outsider, who gets things wrong – because the
behaviour that is suitable in a fantasy realm is not such in the everyday
world.) In light of this comment from my colleague, I am aware that I need to
treat the episode with care, including because it is not necessarily possible
to control how someone will engage with any aspect of mythology presented to
them. For example, the encounter with the Hydra, which might appear an instance
of how to engage in problem solving to one person might be taken as
uncomfortably violent by someone else, especially perhaps if the user empathises
with the monster rather than the monster’s slayer. Stories of Hercules tend to
be presented form the perspective of the hero, but what if a participant in an
activity for autistic children identifies with the Hydra instead?
(There are various possible solutions here – for
instance, by problematising who it is who is the hero and who it is that is the
victim perhaps by focusing on how the Hydra deals with the violence of Hercules
by growing new heads – but I’ll start to address these further down the line
rather than currently).
Another experience that has got me thinking about my
practice is the following one – namely feedback I received from a participant
at an event at Roehampton where I introduced the work I am planning on autism
and classical myth during ERC Week in March. One of those who attended the
session was a therapist who has experience working with autistic clients. I
stated during my presentation that I would be developing materials that
teachers and other professionals could use with autistic children. When she
stressed to me after my paper the many challenges of working with autistic
clients, and also emphasised the potential for causing harm to clients if one
lacks sufficient training, I realised that she had thought that I was intending
to work directly with autistic children without any specialist present. This experience
has made me realise that I need to emphasise that this is not what I am intending,
and shown me yet again just how much expertise a practitioner needs in order to
work in an educational or therapeutic capacity with autistic children.
So – here is what I am doing currently. I am
developing resources around the adventures of Hercules – not the episode with
the Hydra – yet – but a particular episode that already has a history of use in
the education of the young. This is the ‘choice of Hercules’ between two paths,
one of hard work, the other of pleasure, which was popular in educational texts
in the 18th century. I shall focus in particular on the episode as
it is represented on a chimneypiece panel in Grove House, an eighteenth-century
villa in Roehampton. Once I have finished drafting the first set of activities,
I shall start liaising with professionals – and in light of their feedback, I
shall rework the materials. Ultimately, I’m hoping that the materials will have
a place in classroom activities - and I would be very interested in actually observing
them being used. And this is one of the aspects of my work for which I have gone through
the Ethics procedure at my institution.
Now I’ll turn to a third observation which is shaping
my approach.
PART 3 – NEURODIVERSITY AND SIDEKICKS
My third observation in relation to the focus of this
conference deals with overcoming the hardships of life from another angle,
namely how far it should, in fact, be the role of someone working with autistic
people to attempt to resolve the supposed hardships of their lives.
Since I began getting interested in autism in 2008,
there has been a shift in thinking about the condition away from autism as something
in need of a cure. As Jim Sinclair said ‘don’t mourn for us.’ Autism,
as activists present it, isn’t something to be pathologised as an impairment,
but it is a way of being. In place of trying to make someone autistic more like
‘us,’ for example by helping them make eye contact and by finding ways to
reduce repetitive actions, instead it might be timely to think about embodied
differences and also about possibly advantageous autistic behaviours. And there
is scope here for work on myth – including the myth of Hercules. One approach,
in line with what I was exploring back in 2008, would be to use myth to help
autistic people develop specific skills, for instance in communication. Another
approach would be to use myth to explore the its potential for speak to
different ways of thinking and behaving.
Indeed, the potential for myth as a gateway into the
wold of an autistic child is huge. This may be demonstrated by the experiences
of Ron Suskind, who – in his recent book Sidekicks – sets out his journey towards communicating with his son, Owen, via
Disney characters, including characters in Disney’s Hercules. Reading about
this process, and the place played by Hercules among an array of characters, has
further encouraged me in my thinking that it is worth developing resources
around the adventures of this figure.
Suskind’s experiences also put me in mind, however, of
one challenge that I am facing. Owen had already developed a love of the
stories and characters that his father was able to use as a gateway to
understanding him. But it could well be the case that those I am producing
materials for will not have any such existing knowledge of the stories – let
alone a love of them.
However, this potential problem is surmountable.
Indeed, it might not, even, be a problem I the first place – as I shall
consider in the next section.
PART 4 – HERCULES NOW
In my development of resources around episodes in the
adventures of Hercules, I am
following the approach developed by Grove and Park around the adventures of another hero, Odysseus. This is in their book,
Odyssey Now, which is comprised of a
set of activities for those working with those with profound disabilities, but which
can be adapted for use with other groups too. As they state in the book, they
developed resources around the adventures of a classical hero because rooting
activates in stories with such a heritage can open up cultural experiences to
those whose intellectual life is different from that of other people.
Like them, I have opted for a classical hero, Herakles,
whose struggles against the odds see him draw on skills associated with
strength and also cleverness that is akin to Odysseus. It doesn’t matter
whether those doing the activities have existing knowledge of the stories – indeed,
some of the users might find it hard, perhaps impossible, to understand the specifics
of the myths. Indeed, a challenge for me will be to make the materials I create
accessible to those with a range of abilities at communication.
In doing this, I shall be seeking to keep aware of the
potential that the stories might provide
for engaging autistic children, while
taking note of just how misguided it is to think in terms of some ideal
recipient of the resources – when each autistic person learns in distinctive
ways. This is something that is stressed, for example, by Rita Jordan in the practical advice she gives to those working with autistic people. For
one thing, she stresses that it is crucial to keep the focus on the individual
person, and to retain a sense of how each person learns differently: there
cannot ever be a recipe which sets out how autistic education should be done.
As a result, it is vital that practitioners should keep reflecting on their
practice and the principles that underpin it – and it is crucial too they
should reflect too both on their successes and failures as practitioners.
Jordan also stresses something that might be
especially challenging for a non-autistic person – this is that, while each
person learns differently, there is, all the same, a distinctly autistic way of
learning. This can be hard to grasp by those who don’t share autistic ways of
learning – I like putting it this way round, as it marks out the non-autist
here as the one who is deficient, rather than the autistic person. However, as
she also stresses, it is not necessarily helpful to divine autism into
subcategories. What’s more, there is rarely ever ‘pure’ autism – instead, autism
often intersects with other conditions, such as ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and
dyscalculia.
Jordan emphasises that autism education should keep a
focus not just on what autistics lack, but on autistic strengths and abilities.
She stresses that it is vital to set high expectations for each learner, while
providing plenty of support as well. And as she sets out, one challenge is
around enabling autistic people to pick up with others are able to do instinctively.
Autistic practice should be support distinctively autistic ways of thinking and
behaving, while finding ways for autistic people to operate in a ‘non-autistic
world.’
I’ll end by sketching out how the brief example of the
Choice of Hercules mentioned earlier can be informed by these
principles. There is potential for developing materials for those with
different levels of communication. I’m planning activities, for example, around
the complexities of eye contact between Hercules, the two women and also
various of the attributes in the image – this activity would be geared towards
those with more advanced levels of communication. For those with more basic
levels of communication, I am envisaging an activity based around the fruit in
the basket, potentially involving pictures or models of fruit. The children
could be encouraged to say things like ‘hungry’ and ‘pretty’ and they could be
encouraged to reach out and touch the fruit, or pretend to eat it.
PART 5 – HERCULES NEXT…
To conclude - life can be difficult for children and
young adults, just as Katarzyna Marciniak sets out beautifully in the conference booklet – but, as she points out, out of Night there comes a daughter, Hope. I
have tried to show some of the sources for Hope for autistic children as they
negotiate experiences on the road to adulthood. These include challenges common
to all including building identities and making choices. Yet, for autistic
children the challenges can be all the more acute as they find ways to make
sense of experiences, to develop imaginations, learn to plan for the future,
and try to make sense of where they fit within time and space.
I am driven by a conviction that classical myth can be
a source of support, and Hope, for autistic children as they negotiate these
challenges. I have only had time to sketch out very briefly what I shall be
doing to turn this conviction into something tangible, but I hope that I have
given a sense of the principles that are underlying what I am planning around
Hercules, his choices and his experiences. Over the next few months, I am going
to be drafting initial activities, and I’ll be contacting various practitioners
and seeking their advice, including perhaps some people in this room. It’s been
an honour to share my thinking to date – and I look forward to sharing my work
with you as it unfolds during Our Mythical Travels.
