Autism as Self-Preservation

Autism is ironic. First, the term itself suggests that an autistic person has an over-abundance of personal autonomy. This is exactly what autistic persons DON"T have: a full-fledge dynamic autonomy. Dynamic autonomy is what is required to remain cognitively assertive in the face of normal dynamic stressors---especially social stressors. These stressors are what normal human life is actually made of, and what provokes growth.

Second, the term 'autistic' is merely a behavioral description, like calling blindness 'fumbling-about', or calling a left-arm amputation 'extreme right-handedness'.

Stage fright is a common case in normal persons of an oppressed personal autonomy in a social situation. Here are three other examples with varying degrees of social dimensionality:

1) 'I hate it when people read over my shoulder!"

2) "It has to be HIS idea, or he won't____it." (wife commenting on husband's unwillingness/inability to do or think certain things unless he happens to 'come up with it himself').

3) Trying to count a large set of objects, one by one, while someone whispers random numbers in your ear.
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In the Introduction to Neural Basis of Self and Other Representation in Autism: An fMRI Study of Self-Face Recognition, the authors write:

"It has been suggested that the core symptoms of autism may result from a lack of the fundamental appreciation of the commonality between self and others"

As an autistic individual, I think this is true. But, I think it may not be true in quite the simple way that its words suggest. My own attempts to articulate the nature of my own condition (so as to get help in life as a homeless adult with pdd-nos) run up against the same problem: the disparity---or ambiguous connection---between the facts on the one hand, and the language used to denote it on the other hand. Consider the following.

Imagine the U.S. Space Program unexpectedly finds outerspace suddenly monopolized by a race of extremely friendly star-hopping aliens. And, imagine that these aliens, despite their awesome technological knowledge and power, consistently fail to see just how comparatively flimsy are our own spacecraft. The damage we would suffer from their friendliness would make us head back to Earth and stay there. This is autism. At least in many cases. At least in my case. With one exception.

As I hope is seen in this analogy, autism may not be so much the disability as the 'place' of escape; the world of refuge. I like to think of autism as the heightened senses of blind persons: a neuro-plastic compensation for an underlying disability. Specifically, I like to think of it as a compensation of a type allowing a cognitive escape from the external context by which the disability manifests. In other words, that autism is a specific type of neurological response to a 'vacancy' in the ecology of the brain; a type which creates a whole inner world out of what is left intact in neurological function. Nature abhors a vacuum---or, in the words of a character in the Jurassic Park movies, 'Life finds a way.'

More specifically, my theory is that the disability which I imagine in every case underlies the behavior called 'autism' is a feebled dynamic autonomy. This would be why autistic persons have difficulty facing the normal dynamic stressors that the normal people take for granted. My own experience, at least, is well described in these terms. These stressors are what normal persons know as the substance of living; what stimulates growth and maturation, and what comprises the 'good stuff' of life itself. But, a person with a feebled dynamic autonomy lacks a well-formed, strong, dynamic sense of themselves as sensorily and socially independent from their environment. Many of them are unable to see themselves as differentiated persons in a socially neurotypical context. At least, I speak for myself here. Worse, it is why they (or at least me) must avoid social contact on a normal person's terms. In short, they are unable to negotiate with the too-powerful aliens in the analogy above. It is also why the Sally-Ann test does not, in fact, directly test for the autistic person's ability to know of, and about, other minds, and other, independent points of view: the test is conducted by these aliens, these 'gods', and there is often too much damage involved for the autistic person to make him willing to play along with the test. Besides, it takes no great energy for him to simply rocket back toward Earth and then let gravity pull him the rest of the way home.

But, now, here's the exception in my case. Imagine there were no Earth to head back to. The means of escape from the context by which the disability arises has vanished, yet the disability remains. The autism has vanished, but the disability remains. In other words, I have very little autism, but I'm being killed through the underlying disability.

While the incidence of autism is reportedly rather higher among boys than girls, the incidence of the underlying disability may not be so disparate between genders. I could not help but notice that many 'normal' women (and some men) have a hard time genuinely believing that they have a right to have their own needs; they're psychologically so focused on the needs, wishes, and opinions of others, that they are usually at other's mercy even regarding other's opinions about themselves.

Many autistic persons face a similar problem: the inability to stand up as their own persons under the pressure of the personal social autonomy of normal persons. Just like the U.S. Space Program in face of the genuinely friendly aliens, they cannot cope on a level which normal people take for granted. Many autistic persons may in fact be unable to afford to admit to 'gods' that they recognize themselves as differentiated persons. Because if they did, then these 'gods' would take too much for granted that being friendly will basically solve the problem.

While we want to reach the stars, there may be unexpected problems along the way that require us to act primarily in self-preservation, regardless of what those who already live out there may expect from us. In fact, when those star-people were born, just like us, they were very much awake, yet they do not remember it. They do not remember being born.

http://twoworldsofadam.blogspot.com/