“When did you first realize you were different?” I sometimes get asked this question. My answer invariably is, “I have always known.” Even the first time I was asked, I did not hesitate, so sure was I in this knowledge. Being apart from others is a fate that is thrust upon autistics by our neurology, …
March 2012 archive
Mar 18
Dilettantes Need Not Apply: Autistic Behaviors are Complex, but not Psychotic
One thing that struck me when I first began to grok what it means to be autistic was how very wrong were many of the “Freudian” explanations and bits of advice I had gotten over the years. I put the word in quotes to indicate I am using it in the vernacular sense of …
Mar 17
Autism is a Silver Car: The Story of Steve Jobs
Maybe, for me, learning that I am autistic was like buying a new car. A few years ago, I acquired a silver car. Suddenly, silver cars were everywhere! I never realized there were so many on the road until I tried to find mine in a parking lot. I have come to think of autism …
Mar 13
Article on Perspective Taking in the Workplace
Michelle Garcia Winner and Pamela Crooke have written an excellent book called Social Thinking At Work. In this article on the North River Press website, they explain in summary form the essential elements of perspective taking. Although they never use the word “autism” it is well-known that autistic people have difficulty learning perspective-taking. For me, the …
Mar 10
Vaccine Scandal is in the News Again
According to a report on MedPage Today, the High Court of Justice in London has cleared the name of one of the authors of the fraudulent vaccine-autism-link paper published in 1998 by Lancet (and formally retracted by that journal only recently). One of the other authors, Andrew Wakefield, remains under a cloud. It is amazing how much …
