Key Questions
& Answers
about Autism

1

QUESTION:

What is the cause of autism?

ANSWER:

Autism comes from stopping the development of deep feelings within the first six months after birth.

2

QUESTION:

What are deep feelings?

ANSWER:

All feelings are separated into two very different sorts: surface and deep. Surface feelings are numbered in the hundreds and have a strong connection with the mind, thought and language. Deep feelings are less than 30 in number and have a strong connection with the body, disease and health.

3

QUESTION:

How does the growth of the deep feelings come to a stop?

ANSWER:

Two events put a stop to the development of deep feelings. The two events have to take place one after the other.

The first event (a deficit) takes place when no one makes deep-feeling contact with a baby in the first six weeks after birth. Still, no disease comes into being until the second event takes place.

The second event (an arrest) takes place when the baby has a very strong deep feeling and makes that deep feeling quiet all by himself or herself without any help from an outside person such as his or her mother or father.

4

QUESTION:

What is deep-feeling contact?

ANSWER:

Deep-feeling contact comes about when a mother or father (or another woman or man) lets her or his deep feelings get in touch with a baby's deep feelings. Body-to-body touching is not a necessary part of deep-feeling contact. Normally, deep-feeling contact takes place in the first six weeks after a baby's birth. Deep-feeling contact is much harder to do with a baby who is more than six weeks old.

5

QUESTION:

What is wrong with the deep feelings of my autistic son or daughter?

ANSWER:

There is nothing wrong with your son's or daughter's deep feelings. Their development simply came to a stop when your son or daughter was very young, that is, at some time between his or her birth and six months after that. So your boy or girl has very young deep feelings inside a body which is physically older than those deep feelings are.

6

QUESTION:

How far has the development of deep feelings gone in autism?

ANSWER:

If you have regular autism or childhood disintegrative disorder, then the growth of your deep feelings came to a stop before you were six months old. If you have high-functioning autism, then the growth of your deep feelings was stopped before you were two months old. And if you have Asperger's disorder, then the growth of your deep feelings came to a stop at or near your birth. So, from the viewpoint of deep-feeling development, Asperger's disorder is the worst form of autism.

7

QUESTION:

Why does it take so long to make autism better?

ANSWER:

Present-day care of autism does nothing with the autistic person's deep feelings. Because those deep feelings are kept unchanged and baby-like, they may get in the way of more complex acts such as learning, thought, designing events in the future or events at a distance, play, relations with others or using talk, hands, face and body as a unit to get ideas across. In addition, these more complex acts may get their start from deep feelings which then do not keep up with the acts' development and so are not old enough to give much support to these acts.

So the present-day care of autism is meager. That is, present-day care has a high price in time, work, money and danger but it gives back only a small profit in changed behavior of the autistic person. Candice Goldstein (1998 p 211) says this about the meager quality of present-day care for autism:

Considering the bright future Dr. H. had predicted, Ben's [her autistic son's] tiny gains in self-care, such as bringing his plate to the sink when he had finished eating, seemed inconsequential in the light of the effort and dollars poured into his training.

8

QUESTION:

Is it possible to get the growth of an autistic person's deep feelings started again?

ANSWER:

Yes. But that growth may put the autistic person in danger. He or she will have no way of quieting his or her deep feelings which are now much deeper, wider and stronger than they were before. So before we get the development of deep feelings started again, we have to put together living conditions that are helpful for quieting the autistic person's deep feelings and for keeping his or her behavior within safe limits.

9

QUESTION:

What makes changing autism so hard?

ANSWER:

From the viewpoint of deep feelings, at the heart of every autistic person, however old he or she may be physically, there is a baby who is less than six months old and who is sometimes much less than six months old. And that very young baby will get in the way of whatever you are attempting to do with the autistic person.

Marie Day (1998 p 77) says this about the very young inner part of her autistic son, Aaron:

During one visit to Aaron's psychiatrist, I made a statement in reference to having a child with the mind of toddler in the body of a 4-year-old. To my further dismay, the psychiatrist suggested I was overrating Aaron. He commented, "No, Aaron is much worse than a toddler. At least a toddler would respond when you spoke to him, but Aaron doesn't even do that." "Great," I thought, "he really knows how to lift a person's spirit."

Michael McCroskery says this about himself in his short bit of writing, Asperger's Syndrome: A Developmental Puzzle:

. . . My experiences as an adult recently diagnosed with Asperger's, together with my studies in child development, suggest that individuals with AS are like young children--stuck in time, so to speak, never able to advance beyond early stages in social, cognitive, and language development.

. . . They are, in essence, childlike beings attempting to live in an adult world, but without the support and understanding that children are afforded.

10

QUESTION:

As a mother or father, am I responsible for stopping the development of my son's or daughter's deep feelings?

ANSWER:

No way! Our society purposely keeps attention away from deep feelings. So our society never gave you the knowledge needed to make deep-feeling contact with your baby.

11

QUESTION:

What does genetics have to do with stopping the development of deep feelings?

ANSWER:

Very little. Because the growth of deep feelings gets stopped so near birth and because that stopped growth then goes unchanged for years and years, we take as true (that is, we assume) that the stopped growth is deeply rooted in the autistic person's biology and is, therefore, genetic from the start.

The Pevsner Laboratory of the Kennedy-Kreiger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland gives us this overview of the biology and genetics of autism:

Today, the diagnosis of autism and related pervasive developmental disorders such as Asperger's Syndrome is based upon clinical criteria. There are no known biological causes. There are very few proven neurochemical, genetic, neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, structural, metabolic, or other molecular differences between these patients and the normal population.

12

QUESTION:

Will genetics ever give us a way to overcome autism completely?

ANSWER:

I have my doubts. I am fearful that the most we will ever get from genetics is a mixed bag of processes which (1) make it simpler for a person to get autism (that is, predispositions to autism) and (2) make a person's autism worse (that is, exacerbations of autism). And nowhere among these processes will we get the true cause of autism or the knowledge of what autism is. So, waiting for genetics (1) to make autism clear or (2) to give us a way to make autism better is the same as Waiting for Godot.

13

QUESTION:

Where has my autistic son or daughter gone to?

ANSWER:

Almost all of the time, autistic persons are off in a trance and are living in their own private space, far away from everyone. Autistic persons keep their trance going (1) by narrowing their conscious attention, (2) by turning their conscious attention mostly inside themselves and (3) by keeping their conscious attention away from their difficult deep feelings.

14

QUESTION:

Will my son or daughter ever get over his or her autism completely?

ANSWER:

Getting completely over autism makes no sense to me because autism is based on having a bright mind starting at birth. And persons with bright minds have always seemed a bit strange to me. In fact, the brighter they are, the stranger they seem. So, is the destruction of a person's bright mind a necessary condition for his or her getting over autism completely?

The purpose of learning deep feelings is simply to have autistic persons living free and happy in the middle of society. Right now, almost all autistic persons are living dependent and undesired at the edges of society. And their bright and beautiful minds are going to waste.

15

QUESTION:

If no one makes deep-feeling contact with my autistic son or daughter, what will take place?

ANSWER:

Nothing much. And that's the trouble. An innermost part of your son or daughter, namely his or her deep feelings, keeps on being baby-like and, because their development was stopped so early (at six months or earlier, sometimes at much earlier than six months), these deep feelings will probably go on working against whatever you are attempting to do with your son or daughter.

Take note that the development of deep feelings never comes to a complete stop. But deep-feeling development does go into very slow motion. It may take years for your son's or daughter's deep feelings to get a week older.

So the young and nearly fixed condition of an autistic person's deep feelings gets in the way of other sorts of development. Teaching and learning the simplest things take so much time and work from everyone that the expansion of all sorts of knowledge is very slow.

The nearly fixed condition of an autistic person's deep feelings gives us the idea that genetics are the cause of that condition. And his or her slow learning gives us the idea that his or her mind is slow, in other words, that he or she is retarded.

But these two ideas are false. Not genetics and not mental retardation but the serious underdevelopment of deep feelings makes the autistic person slow at learning and slow at taking part in society. All the time, the autistic person's mind keeps on being quick and able.

16

QUESTION:

Do you have hope that, in the near future, medical science will come up with answers for the hard questions of autism and with help for our autistic boys and girls?

ANSWER:

I have no such hope. Present-day medical science seems locked onto the belief that genetics, and genetics only, will (1) someday make autism clear and (2) someday give us a way to make autism better. As I said before, waiting for genetics is the same as Waiting for Godot.

17

QUESTION:

If we are waiting to no purpose for medical science to get a clear idea about autism and to make autism better, what do we do now?

ANSWER:

Today, medical science is of no help. It is presently chained down by its fixed beliefs in genetics. And it is not probable that medical science will get itself free from its beliefs anytime in the near future.

You, the mothers and fathers of autistic boys and girls, have to become responsible for making your boys' and girls' autism better. Only you have the love necessary to keep on with the work of looking for new ideas about autism and testing them out. And you have to do all this while you are weighted down with caring for your autistic boy or girl. With your hard work will come hope. With today's medical science and genetics, there is no hope.

Hope

When the Sirens sing so sweetly from the shores of hope, it becomes difficult to remain tied to reality's mast. A handful of happy endings tends to drown out the voices of the tens of thousands who have not made it out of autism's black hole.

Schulze p 52

18

QUESTION:

What is today's chief theory of autism?

ANSWER:

Today's chief theory of autism is the geno-bio-behavioral theory. It took the place of two theories: (1) the psychodynamic-psychoanalytic theory and (2) the bio-psycho-social theory.

The geno-bio-behavioral theory says (1) that genetics, and genetics only, will someday give us the answers to all our questions about autism and will someday make autism a disease of the past; (2) nothing other than biology is important because all of autism's signs get their start from biology; and (3) presently, behaviorism is the only non-chemical way to make autism better but behaviorism does very little because genetics and biology have almost complete control over the autistic process in our sons and daughters.

19

QUESTION:

What is wrong with today's geno-bio-behavioral theory of autism?

ANSWER:

And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

from Suzanne,
a song by Leonard Cohen

When we make any observation about autism, that observation has to have a connection with some theory of autism. In other words, there are no facts that are theory-free. (". . . [D]ata cannot be theory neutral . . ." Please see Faust & Miner.) So we are forced to see autism by looking at it in the mirror (or in the framework) of some theory.

But we are not forced to see autism by looking at it in a bad mirror that is dirty, wavy and broken. The dirt, waves and cracks of the geno-bio-behavioral theory come from old and fixed beliefs that have been taken up by the theory over the years. These fixed beliefs are automatically and unconsciously seen as true facts and are never tested, questioned or even open to discussion. The worst of these fixed beliefs come from religion. Some of them are hundreds of years old. And one of them (gnosticism) is thousands of years old. To see a list of the fixed beliefs within the geno-bio-behavioral theory, make use of this connection.

20

QUESTION:

Is there a good way of looking at a theory of autism?

ANSWER:

Yes. A useful way of viewing a theory of autism is to see it as the CANVAS of a great circus tent. The space under the canvas is the division of science covered by the canvas. (The canvas is the theory.) The canvas lets the circus acts (namely, the workings of science) that take place under the tent go on in an orderly way and without being stopped by bright sunlight, heat, cold, wind, rain, snow or dust. The canvas keeps events inside the canvas (like science and clear thought) mostly free from events outside the canvas (like religion or political decisions).

However, the canvas does not keep itself up. The canvas has to be supported and stretched by uprights that are put in the middle of the space under the canvas. But these uprights may get in the way of the circus acts (namely, the work of science) taking place under the canvas. So it is best to have the smallest possible number of uprights. The uprights are the chief rules (axioms) that the canvas of a theory is dependent upon.

PARSIMONY IS IMPORTANT
Keep your number of chief rules (axioms) low
or, together,
they will make your theory narrow-minded.

21

QUESTION:

Do we have to make changes in our theory of autism?

ANSWER (Ironic & Sarcastic):

No. And because no changes are necessary, for the upcoming 25 years, you mothers and fathers of autistic boys and girls get to be unhappy while you are caring for your autistic offspring. And, for the upcoming 50 years, your autistic sons and daughters get to be unhappy while they are living unloved and undesired at the edges of society. Since unhappiness seems to be your heart's desire for yourselves and for your autistic sons and daughters, please keep up your belief in a theory that is based chiefly on ideas from old-time religion. Your theory is your church. Such a great number of persons are in agreement with today's theory of autism that the church formed by your great and beautiful theory has become the one true church. Never let it get into your mind that your church has given you a stone when your autistic sons and daughters were in need of bread.

Do let me give you the latest news: Dr. Gene Godot, the noted molecular biologist, and his group of experts are hard at work unlocking autism's secrets. Dr. Godot and his group have given us the suggestion that, in the near future, their knowledge and science will take away everyone's pain caused by autism. So keep your hopes high while you are waiting for Godot.