Book Read Free

The Siege

Page 29

by Clara Clairborne Park


  On all these tests, I adhered to the WISC directions. I felt that communication was adequate for die needs of the test situation. While I would not offer these results as a real measure of this child’s ability, I find it interesting that these disparities in accomplishment add up to a Performance IQ in the lower half of the ‘Normal’ range.

  Elly took this test in the tester’s own home, where she had already visited several times. One year later (as this book went to press) Elly was given the Stanford-Binet by her school psychologist, in the standard school testing situation. Whether because of the changed circumstances or the differences between the tests, it was not thought possible to assign her a meaningful score. The psychologist then attempted to give her the WISC of a year before, with no better success.

  Elly’s score on the Rimland Diagnostic Check List for Behaviour-Disturbed Children (Form E-1): 43 autistic responses to 4 schizophrenic responses.

  I am glad to be able to call attention here to an invaluable work which I came across too late to include in my book: Early Childhood Autism, edited by J. P. Wing, Pergamon Press, 1966. This compilation of articles is an indispensable guide to the condition and the most promising methods for its treatment. In particular, Dr Ivor Lovaas’s ‘Program for the Establishing of Speech in Psychotic Children’ is essential reading for every parent or teacher who must struggle with a mute or echolalic child. It provides a systematic, generally applicable, and effective programme for tackling the problems Elly and I found hardest, such as pronomial reversal and the inability to ask and answer questions; it even suggests ways of working towards spontaneous conversation. This is only one of the many helpful articles in Dr Wing’s collection.

  Примечания

  1

  Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1964.

  (<< back)

  2

  Karin Junker, The Child in the Glass Ball, Abingdon Press, 1964.

  (<< back)

  3

  Therapists in California are having their first success in dealing with severely autistic children by treatment in which violence and punishment play an important part. See Life, 7 May 1965, for an account of the work of Dr Ivoar Lovaas.

  (<< back)

  4

  Those who take the trouble to compare the recent edition of The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care with the first one will discover that Dr Spock has revolutionized his revolution.

  (<< back)

  5

  ‘Joey, a Mechanical Boy’, Scientific American, March 1959. Dr Bettelheim describes Joey at even greater length in The Empty Fortress (Free Press, 1967), where his impressive recovery is presented as typical of the possibilities for autistic children.

  (<< back)

  6

  Morrow and Loomis, describing a psychotic child (in many ways similar to Elly) remembered by its parents as an infant who was ‘not demanding’, add that ‘one may assume that this recollection reflects the likelihood that his demands were not appropriately met. By excessive anticipation of his needs, the parents denied him the right to demand.’ (‘Symbiotic Aspects of a Seven-Year-Old Psychotic’, in Gerald Caplan, editor, Emotional Problems of Early Childhood, Basic Books, 1955.)

  (<< back)

  7

  Letter, Scientific American, May 1959.

  (<< back)

  8

  Intensive Study and Treatment of Pre-school Children Who Show Marked Personality Deviations, or “Atypical Development”, and their Parents’, in Caplan, op. cit.

  (<< back)

  9

  ‘Early Ego Failure: Jean’, in Childhood and Society, W. W. Norton, 1950, pp. 1971 Jean sounds extraordinarily like a case of Kanner’s syndrome. She responded fitfully to Erikson’s therapy but did not recover.

  (<< back)

  10

  Kanner and L. Eisenberg, ‘Notes on the Follow-up Studies of Autistic Children’, in Psychopathology of Childhood, P. H. Hoch and J. Zubin, editors, Grune & Stratton, 1955.

  (<< back)

  11

  Rank, op. cit.

  (<< back)

  12

  Elly’s father adds: ‘A museum was a natural choice. An artist communicates with us, even over time, by being very careful and loving and honest, by revealing all he knows.’

  (<< back)

  13

  Kanner and Eisenberg, op. cit.

  (<< back)

  14

  Virginia Axline, Dibs, In Search of Self, Houghton Mifflin, 1965, also Penguin, 1972.

  (<< back)

  15

  For a suggestion of the range of therapeutic techniques (and nomenclature!), see Caplan, Emotional Problems of Early Childhood and Some Approaches to Teaching Autistic Children, ed. P. T. B. Weston, Pergamon Press, 1965.

  (<< back)

  16

  Rosalind Oppenheim, ‘They Said Our Child Was Hopeless’, Saturday Evening Post, 17 June 1961. Parents who consult this article will find help and comfort, as we did.

  (<< back)

  17

  For an impressive account of the achievement of untrained ‘teacher-moms’ working with severely disturbed children in an ordinary public-school situation, see Sol Nictern and George Donahue, Teaching the Troubled Child (Free Press, 1965). Donahue, however, does not believe that parents of disturbed children belong in his programme.

  (<< back)

  18

  A trained psychologist, writing in a highly specialized professional journal, solemnly records his anger when his new jacket was soiled by a small autistic patient, and explains that he chose an old one for the next session. Any mother of young children could have instructed him in this elementary principle.

  (<< back)

  19

  The most striking confirmation of her colour-intelligence occurred when she was six. I had brought several boxes of powder paint for her, and mixed small quantities on demand, so she could paint at home as well as at school. The colours, of course, came out pure — plain red, blue, black — and Elly seemed quite satisfied with them. When we returned to the store for more she asked for white, and we brought a box home and put it on the shelf with the others. A week later she asked for paint, and when I asked what colour replied ‘pink’, ‘light blue’ — colours she had never before requested. It was obvious to her that we could now make these colours, that white was the ingredient needed to produce pastels — something many normal six-year-olds have to be taught.

  (<< back)

  20

  For the record, I should say that Elly did not become conscious of third-person pronouns until she was nearly eight, when she spontaneously picked out ‘they’ from a pile of word-cards as the one she wanted to learn next. The same week added ‘he’ and ‘she’. But though she can recognize them, she has said them only once or twice, and is only beginning to comprehend them securely. Ultimately, it seems plain she will acquire them, but there is nothing natural about the process.

  (<< back)

  21

  We have other indications that she lacks the sense of what sounds carry the burden of communication. Soon after she learned ‘without’ she dropped the ‘with’; nothing will induce her to put it back. Her indistinct pronunciation drops essential indicators of meaning; she forms no plurals and inflects no verbs because she will not pronounce a final ‘s’ or ‘d.’

  (<< back)

  22

  Later I ran across some by chance. But this is the sort of thing a good counselling service would make available to parents.

  (<< back)

  23

  Her first use of the past tense came the summer she was eight. There have been few since. The two instances in which she has conveyed an idea of futurity are instructive: told I’d come in a minute, she said ‘Gi’ minute Mama come’; in autumn, as we speak of storm-windows, she says ‘Be winter, ha’ tor’ window.’ Her comprehension of tenses is limited; asked ‘Did you have your lunch?’ she will reply
‘Yes’ when she hasn’t, because she thinks I’ve asked ‘Do you want your lunch?’ Tense understanding requires situational understanding. ‘Sara little. Sara grow bigger’ can lead to ‘was’ and ‘grew’.

  (<< back)

  24

  The absence of this word has been called a specific symptom of infantile autism. Elly took three months to learn to use it. We would confront her with a situation to which she could be expected to respond positively and ask her to say ‘no’ or ‘yes’. ‘Elly, do you want ice cream? No or yes?’ She could echo the ‘yes’; at length she could use it spontaneously. Contrast her instant acquisition of ‘difficult’ words like ‘heptagon’.

  (<< back)

  25

  I was encouraged to continue with simple reading by watching the work of the teachers at Dr Carl Fenichel’s League School for Seriously Disturbed Children. The welcome I received there was a model to show what help skilled professionals can give to parents. I watched for a full day a classroom of children as remote as Elly, and came away with new strength and ideas for months of work. Without this experience, and without the encouragement of Elly’s psychiatrist, I do not think I would have presumed to teach Elly reading.

  (<< back)

  26

  As I typed these words, I received a call from the mother of an autistic child in a city half a continent away. She described the limits on her boy’s comprehension, how he could not reply if she said ‘Tell me’, but could respond if she said ‘Say the words’. The counsellor at the clinic she attended had overheard such an exchange and asked how she could expect the child to learn to talk if she herself talked such strange English to him. It is a natural response — to one who has not lived with the problem.

  (<< back)

  27

  She was helped in this by her pleasure in two books that I name because other parents may be able to use them: Phyllis Krasilovsky’s The Very Little Girl and The Very Little Boy (Doubleday, 1960, 1962). In these, a story so simple that even Elly can follow it traces by pictures the growth of a tiny child towards strength and adequacy. I would also urge all parents of defective children, especially those who do not draw, to photograph often the houses and people that constitute their child’s past.

  (<< back)

  28

  She began to paint in the English nursery school, at four and three-quarters, and painted daily in her American one. She also painted intermittently at home.

  (<< back)

  29

  When her paintings were unbalanced, they were unbalanced in an orderly way — for example, three shapes at the bottom of her paper, every day for a week.

  (<< back)

  30

  At seven and three-quarters she made, all on one day, a most interesting series of drawings that showed she well understood die process of visual abstraction from a human situation. She began with a picture of a birthday party, represented as a rectangle surrounded by recognizable heads — not the full figures she had drawn occasionally before. These she identified verbally as ‘girl, lady, boy, lady, boy’ around the table in strict order. A second picture showed the same rectangle, but the heads had turned to simple spots of colour, still identified by the same words. Later pictures in the series show members of her family, identified by name, as mere blocks of colour. But this series remains unique. It is no longer uncommon for her to draw members of the family, and she even labels them herself in writing. But only this once have human beings ever been hidden by abstractions - or, rather, not hidden, but represented, since the whole process was conscious and deliberate. It was also accompanied by considerable gaiety.

  (<< back)

  31

  The reader will by now have noted how many of my transcriptions of what Elly says carry exclamation points, and wonder why. To appreciate the tone of Elly’s speech, it is important to realize that (requests aside) it consists largely of assertions, made with varying degrees of emphasis ranging from simple underlining through enthusiasm to transported delight. A musing or inconclusive tone is rare. Anxiety almost always leads to a questioning rise in intonation, and question marks or exclamation points could really be put after almost everything she says. A ‘no’, for example, that she is sure will be honoured is ‘No.’ One that she suspects I may not accept but which is still important to her will be edged ‘No?’

  (<< back)

  32

  I can imagine one famous theoretician-therapist explaining to me how an autistic child takes hold of a symbolic representation to express its inner emptiness and despair, saying as clearly as it can that the only way it has found to defend itself against its destructive environment has been to make itself a cipher. I supply this interpretation to show that I can do it as well as another. But it was an analyst who warned me against constructs.

  (<< back)

  33

  I remember the question of a psychologist-friend who came to visit: ‘Did the psychiatrist say you could do that?’ I said I hadn’t asked him, but that when he saw Elly he seemed very pleased with her progress. ‘It certainly is an unusual arrangement,’ she said.

  (<< back)

  34

  Described in A Physician Looks at Psychiatry, John Day, 1958.

  (<< back)

  35

  Author of ‘They Said Our Child Was Hopeless’; in an unpublished letter to Dr Bernard Rimland.

  (<< back)

  36

  Cited by Rimland, Infantile Autism, p. 209, in a discussion that readers who are interested in this possibility will find extremely rewarding.

  (<< back)

  37

  Dr Bettelheim is by far the most optimistic of any writer on infantile autism. He reports that of the 40 autistic children treated at his school, all improved, 17 making a ‘fair’ adjustment and 15 a ‘good’ one. Although it is not made clear what the ‘adjustment’ consists of, the implication is strong that it includes normal or quasi-normal cognitive and affective functioning as an adult in a nonsheltered environment. Of the three cases around which the book is centred, however, only one recovered in this sense, and no follow-up data is given for the other 37. Moreover, it may be questioned how many of these cases would be accepted as autistic by other specialists. Rimland has developed a detailed questionnaire to facilitate a differential diagnosis between autism and childhood schizophrenia and to increase the likelihood that the growing number of people who discuss infantile autism are talking about the same condition. So far, Dr Bettelheim has been unwilling to furnish completed questionnaires on any of his cases.

  (<< back)

  38

  There is no additional evidence of this. The Institute neurologist thought that, at three and a half, she was clearly right-handed.

  (<< back)

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 095ea4e6-d642-496a-a412-a00374030c05

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 09 June 2012

  Created using: FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software

  Document authors :

  Indigo

  Tigra-du

  Document history:

  1. 0 — scan, OCR and conv by Indigo, spell-check by Tigra-du

  About

  This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.

 

‹ Prev