Enter the Librarian, a Review by Josh HanagarneNeuroTribes by Steven SilbermanA week ago in the libr
Enter the Librarian, a Review by Josh HanagarneNeuroTribes by Steven SilbermanA week ago in the library where I work, I recognized a tall silhouette that I hadn’t seen in nearly ten years. “Alex, is that you?” I said. He turned and looked me in the eye. We are both 6’7”. A young woman who turned out to be his sister was at his side. She asked if we knew each other. I had worked at a school for people with myriad disabilities in Salt Lake City years earlier. Alex had been my first personal experience–that I know of–with autism. When she told her brother that I had been in his class, he looked at me and smiled. “December first, nineteen seventy seven,” he said. That’s the day I was born. I obviously told him at some point, but there are days when I can barely remember my birthday. But it doesn’t look like he’ll ever forget. These are the sorts of quirks/gifts many people think of when they hear the word Autism. Rain Man. Temple Grandin. The socially inept. Good grief, speculating that someone who is socially awkward is “On the spectrum” is the new black. Autism is a peculiar disorder with a massive array of manifestations. But thanks to NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, it is less inscrutable. The best way I can describe NeuroTribes is that it is to autism what The Emperor of All Maladies is to cancer, or The Noonday Demon is to depression. It intends to be a comprehensive history of autism, and it almost entirely succeeds. I say almost because there is still much work to be done and no perfect understanding of autism can exist. Autism was notoriously hard to diagnose. The condition had no name of its own and many of its symptoms overlapped with other conditions. Now there is a spectrum. Then there was not. Science begins with counting, and in the earliest days of autism research, there just wasn’t much consensus on what to count or how to name things. Today it’s common to think of the film Rain Man or Temple Grandin or Jenny McCarthy and vaccination controversies when autism comes to mind. But in the forties no one knew what they were looking at. The study was made more difficult by the fact that the beginnings of autism research, for one of its pioneers, had their origins in Nazi Germany at the height of the eugenics movement. It was the worst possible time to be Jewish, black, gay, dark-haired, annoying, autistic, etc. It was hard to report data on fascinating cases whose subjects appeared to have what would later be called autism, because it could lead to the patients being singled out for abuse. The creation of the perfect Aryan race did not include people whose symptoms could prevent them from talking, being “useful” to society, and so on. So a landmark research project was started, and then forgotten for decades. A fantastic sidenote: Hans Asperger, after whom Asperger’s syndrome is named, had a thesis adviser named Franz Hamburger. Hans and Franz. Asperger and Hamburger. Neurotribes then leaves the horrors of the eugenics period to examine all of the medical infighting and fascinating case studies and anti-vaccination wars that have circled autism as long as there’s been a name for it. The book has a huge cast of characters and spans a century. But the conversation about autism is just beginning. The chapter on adults with autism forming their own communities might make you cry. The willful stubbornness of the anti-vaccination crowd will probably (and should) make you grind your teeth in frustration. One mother’s crusade to make sure her autistic son has as many green straws–his ultimate self-soothing device–will make you cheer. All of it should fascinate readers, particularly if you have someone with autism in your life, or if you have autism. There’s so much more to say. NeuroTribes is a special book. It is an easy, if long, read, with hard science made easily accessible to a layman like me. Autism is part of the world, and there is no downside to increasing our understanding of the condition. Also: the author told me that, besides himself and his editor, I’m the only one who’s read it twice. And remember: Hans Asperger and Franz Hamburger. Say it out loud and try not to smile. -- source link
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