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Laurentius Rex
I am a researcher and activist in the field of Autism.
Unconventional and passionate about what I believe in, and what I am prepared to defend.
Recent Activity
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Laurentius commented on the article |Well to go back to the notion of collecting "things" it is a preoccupation that whether socially inherited, or genetically predisposed definately runs in our family.
My mum, amongst other things collected teddy bears, she knew that might seem childish to some, but she reckoned it was her right. When a doctor told her she should get rid of them because they harboured dust which exacerbated her asthma, she said she would prefer to keep them and have something to look at than live in a bare room.
I say (in common with John Stuart Mill) that if something is doing no harm to anybody else and you enjoy it, then what the heck, just do it.
I remember once going for a walk with my mum in my late twenties, and she suggested to me that I should climb a tree. I said I was not inclined to, but she said in return (herself becoming considerably physically incapacitated by that time) that one day I would no longer be able to do it physically and would look back on that.
An interesting lesson, as I walk through those same woods now, where I once did climb trees as a child, and regret not that my mind is too old to climb a tree now, but that my body is too old to do it.
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Laurentius commented on the article |
H'mm in a conversation with my brother in a pub the other day, he expressed a semi serious interest in starting a coal collection, yes a collection of lumps of coal, well alas he no longer has a brick collection.
I have a vast collection of printed carrier bags, so what the heck, if I wanted to start a collection of DVD covers that might be interesting too.
I have come to regret throwing so many things out, because I have such vivid memories of them, and though they grew to be irrelevant in time, they would definately be collectors items now, there are shows which trade in "ephemera" which includes anything from packaging to cinema tickets.
I really do need to sort out some junk that was associated with my Land Rover though as I have a Pajero now.
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Laurentius commented on the article |Or of course I could just plain admit that this bear of little brain found even that *simple* book too much for him and needs to go back to relearning a little old fashioned algebra and set theory and building from there. It really was more than thirty years ago that I gave up on it all, and my brain has probably got considerably more rusty in the interim.
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Laurentius commented on the article |
I have tracked down a copy, written in 1967 and published in 69 very much a piece of it's time with references to the I Ching and RD Laing :)
Not really what I was looking for though, it seems to be more about establishing mathematical expressions from first principles and although the author thinks he is being clear and explaining everything to the novice, he really is not, and assumes more background than he ought.
I think I shall just have to invent a way of expressing points, vectors and volumes in n dimensional segments of infinate dimensioned space, and hope it will do. I suppose that is what everyone else does, and if it passes muster, that's fine, if it doesn't then I shall just have to be content with my ranking among the pseudoscientists :)
The logic seemed fine, essentially he was saying "I can use *my* language to establish any kind of expression that will hold true in that particular world I have called into being, (having defined in the process what *he* means by call.
Philosophically and imaginatively it won't stand up, in that as a creature of his time he is not aware of how his neurology and our evolution bounds what he can express through that kind of symbolic logic, and his worst fault is assuming the particular world he conjures is capable of expressing all possible worlds, when in my conception of reality, all he is explaining is that he can express a limited way of describing all possible worlds that is not bounded in any platonic external, universal, meta-universal, and multi-universal reality at all because he simply lacks the equipment to envisage that any bendy or flexible alternative set of rules might not exist if the *rules* of physics, and human consciousness were alternately configured. Now that is something I can imagine, but of course I cannot prove it, except by using language to distort logic, because the system of language, being what it is, and how it works, can do that. I guess however even Charles Dodgson knew that. -
Laurentius commented on the article |
Indeed if one is taking a funtional model of severity then this is surely it, and is somewhat behavioral in its outlook allowing the notions of severity to be totally socially constructed by those who are least qualified to do so.
It's the perfect example of trying to make a medical model out of something that won't comply in an orderly way to that episteme.
I personally think they want to get shot of a lot of awkward people, whom they will accept (because you can't turn the research clock back) as autistic in one way or another, but not accept as people whom society has disadvantaged in an increasingly communication oriented economy.
It is going to end up as another meaningless compromise to be argued over for the next decade, whilst they hope for "holy grail" of biological markers to materialise, (which they will not in any form that they currently imagine they will, that I can guarantee ) -
Laurentius commented on the article |
Having now seen the somewhat ill thought out categories for severity I am inclined to relent on my earlier optimism: -
I can now see in relataion to the severity criteria where the reduction of the autistic domains to two can cause confusion, in that looking at myself and notions of clinical and sub clinical there arises an inevitable degree of confusion over ritualm for as someone diagnosed (presumably according to former criterion) of OCD then I automatically fill one .
As to communication and funtional communciation that raises minefields and ressurects the debates of Bernstein and Labov over elaborate and restrictive linguistic codes, class, ethnicity and a whole lot more that define communication given the possible educational disparities between clinician and patient, or patients family.
Sure I could converse fluently on topics of philosophy with a clinician, (and usually do) but can I turn round and say where it hurts, or ask for a cup of tea or to go to the bathroom, no I cannot. However in one domain the discursive style is valued and even necessary, to wit academia.
I wonder how much of this is caused by politicing, the recognition that not everyone sees the different cognitive styles as disability and the desire of clinicians to have a get out clause for the all the self diagnosing aspies out there.
I argue that it continues to be a disability and even failure to be accepted with the lable is itself as much as a socially defined disability as being granted it, for this is all very much medical model at the boundaries where medical model simply does not work -
Laurentius commented on the article |
Phil I think you have missed the point somewhat.
The Triad is dead, for how long now have we been saying that lack of imagination is not a symptom of anything but inability of the psychiatrist/clinician to have any when dealing with autism.
language and communication are intimately connected, if one considers what language is, (which is more than verbal)
Yep sensory needs to be dealt with, but really were we expecting Rocket science from DSM?
It is a book and researchers will continue in there own way despite of it anyway..
I would be interested to know what is happening on other fronts than the autism front, but I suspect that the book is just going throug a periodic re-alignment with practice rather than any radical new redefinition of anything. -
Laurentius commented on the article |
Well what it shows is that DSM is a political document that follows practice rather than defines it, in the sense that once again American Psychiatric Practice is finding that it cannot isolate itself from prevailing European clinical practice.
It happened before when the criteria where shotgunned into conformity with ICD10 and it is happening again since it has become somewhat more usual to dispense with the seperate monikers in the UK and other parts of Europe and simply lable everyone ASD.
Now all they need for complete common sense is a multiaxial analysis of "severity" and they will be completely there. But they won't will they, because that would be getting far too close to reality for the profession.
Meanwhile I shall go off and learn the maths to describe the space within spaces, and leave Psychiatry and Indiana Jones to sort out the space between spaces :) -
Laurentius commented on the article |More a question of when do social norms catch up with the global village.
The only difference between gossiping on the bus and twitter is that one is recorded and therefore stays until twitter and google go bust and the servers are sold off in a fire sale. -
Laurentius commented on the article |
Well in the world of may and mights, the Geiers and there allies take comfort.
I just think that we all can be as faulty as our adversaries when it comes to prefering a particular hunch.
I am probably as guilty as any for clouding my own judgement with more personal observations from what is immediate to me.
The difference is, that in my estimation of the various theries I am accepting of the limits of my own observational and deductive powers.
We all should be, because we cannot make deductions from observations that have yet to be made, and those are only the known unknowns as Rumsfeld put it. We cannot even imagine what the unknown unknowns are to even design experiments around them.
Make no mistake, I consider the Geiers and Wakefield as the lowest of the low when it comes to having a commercial interest in there findings that is sufficiecnt to corrupt any sense of humanity in them, nonetheless I do not hold the likes of Simon Baron Cohen, and Mike Rutter any less irresponsible in there dogged pursual of the extreme male fallacy which leads to all of this. It is indeed the one saving grace of Tony Atwood (despite the legitimate criticism of hisown murky associations) that he allows for the social construction and artificial nature of any thery predicated on the notion that because the majority of people diagnosed on the autistic spectrum are male, this establishes a fact, which it does not until one unravels all the associated problems of clinical and educational practice and social norms that have to be eliminated before one can make any definate judgement.
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