Hardwired

2020 ◽  
pp. 108-132
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fein
Keyword(s):  
Support Groups ◽  
Neural Plasticity ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
The Self ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Clinical Ethnography ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Molecular Modulation

Sociologist Nikolas Rose has posited the emergence of a “neurochemical self” organized around the assumption that our personal characteristics, moods and desires arise from our brain chemicals, and are amenable to molecular modulation through psychiatric drugs. Drawing on clinical ethnography of a series of support groups run by and for individuals diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and other autism spectrum conditions, this chapter charts the emergence of a contrasting model of the “neurostructural” self, oriented around the concept of developmental disability and its presumption of fixed innateness and lifelong course. In rejecting the demands for flexibility and adaptation entailed in neurochemical selfhood, this counterdiscourse of hardwired genetic and synaptic brain structure functions as a form of resistance against the demand for constant fluidity and change that characterizes late modernity. However, its core assumptions of a self that is fixed and inalterable are increasingly threatened by the ascendance of neural plasticity as a new mode of both conceptualizing and intervening on the self.

The Sword in the Soul

2020 ◽  
pp. 214-238
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fein
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
The Self ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Neutral Form ◽  
Clinical Ethnography ◽  
A Value

This chapter focuses on how youth diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and related autism spectrum conditions make sense of their own condition and its contradictions. Drawing on clinical ethnography in spaces where youth on the spectrum engage in shared creative practices, the chapter argues that medicalized discourses of autism as either a pathogen-like disease or a value-neutral form of neurogenetic hardwiring are insufficient to conceptualize the experiences of these youth. Autism, as they describe it, feels both intimate and alien, brings both cherished strength and terrifying vulnerability, and constitutes their sense of identity while also profoundly disrupting it. But the dominant ways of talking about autism, grounded in medical understandings of the self as sharply bounded and continuous, separate these aspects of lived experience from each other, casting them as radically incompatible. Instead, these youth playfully reinvent their autobiographies through an alternative shared mythology of mutant antiheroes with permeable selves, drawn from fantasy media, video games, comic books and other speculative fiction. In doing so, they generate new ways of coming to terms with the complexities of their condition.

The Dilemma of Cure

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-213
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fein
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
The Self ◽  
Daily Activities ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Clinical Ethnography ◽  
Ethical Conflicts ◽  
Prevention And Cure

This chapter examines the ethical questions surrounding the cure and prevention of autism as they are negotiated by families affected by Asperger’s syndrome and related autism spectrum conditions. Through interviews with youth on the autism spectrum and their families, as part of a clinical ethnography of these families at home, in school, and within their communities, the chapter argues that the seemingly insoluble quality of ethical conflicts around neurodiversity is underpinned by individualization: a model of the self as sharply bounded and defined exclusively by internal traits. Within many of these families, autism was understood to shape the motivations, desires, interests, and daily activities that constituted the identities of these youth, making the removal of autism feel like an erasure of their personhood. At the same time, in a context where they are expected to win their social roles through such individual attributes, the lack of social support available to these youth put them at high risk for social abandonment and invisibility as adults, especially outside of their parental households. Prevention and cure thus come to feel like both a profound violation and an ethical necessity.

Problem behavior in autism spectrum disorders: A paradigmatic self-organized perspective of network structures

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucio Tonello ◽  
Luca Giacobbi ◽  
Alberto Pettenon ◽  
Alessandro Scuotto ◽  
Massimo Cocchi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Problem Behaviors ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
The Self ◽  
Network Structures ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Critical Equilibrium ◽  
Self Organized Criticality ◽  
Acute Agitation ◽  
Spectrum Disorders

AbstractAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) subjects can present temporary behaviors of acute agitation and aggressiveness, named problem behaviors. They have been shown to be consistent with the self-organized criticality (SOC), a model wherein occasionally occurring “catastrophic events” are necessary in order to maintain a self-organized “critical equilibrium.” The SOC can represent the psychopathology network structures and additionally suggests that they can be considered as self-organized systems.

Autism Spectrum Conditions - Enhancing Nurture and Development (ASCEND): An evaluation of intervention support groups for parents

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mini Pillay ◽  
Ben Alderson-Day ◽  
Barry Wright ◽  
Chris Williams ◽  
Bron Urwin
Keyword(s):  
Support Groups ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions

The Summer of Adventure

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-52
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fein
Keyword(s):  
Role Playing ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Weak Central Coherence ◽  
Central Coherence ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Interpersonal Coordination ◽  
Cognitive Characteristics ◽  
Clinical Ethnography ◽  
Alternative Culture ◽  
Live Action

This chapter chronicles a summer of clinical ethnography at a camp for youth with Asperger’s syndrome and related autism spectrum conditions, run by a close-knit community of live-action role-playing (LARP) gamers aiming to be inclusive of neurodiversity. Within this alternative culture with its alternative norms, the neurodevelopmental differences associated with Asperger’s took on new and valued meanings and manifestations. The chapter reviews predominant theories about cognition in autism (theory of mind, executive function, and weak central coherence), depicting these attributes not as individual deficits but as collaborative engagements with the physical, cultural, and symbolic materials of the surrounding world. Autism, the chapter proposes, is characterized by a heightened reliance on external systems of organization to create a sense of experiential coherence and to fend off existential threats of meaninglessness and chaos. LARP games offer one such system of organization through their framework of stable, shared narratives, and genre conventions. These resources support interpersonal coordination, bringing together people who share relevant cognitive characteristics into a tenuous but deeply valued community.

Living on the Spectrum

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fein
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Young People ◽  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Invasive Disease ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Disease States ◽  
Clinical Ethnography

Autism is a deeply contested condition. To some, it is a devastating invader, robbing families of their children and sufferers of their personhood. To others, it is a form of neurodiversity, a fundamental and often valued aspect of identity that is more similar to race or gender than to disease states. How do young people coming of age with an autism spectrum diagnosis make sense of this conflict in the context of their own developing identity? The book addresses this question through sustained ethnographic engagement, informed by both clinical psychology and anthropology, within communities where people on the autism spectrum come together to live, learn, work, love, and play. Using an approach known as clinical ethnography, the book tracks neuroscientific discourses as they are adopted, circulated, and transformed among those affected by Asperger’s syndrome and related autism spectrum conditions. Dominant ways of talking about autism, whether as invasive disease or as hardwired neurogenetic identity, share a fundamental presupposition: that the healthy self is sharply bounded and destroyed if it is altered. However, the subjective experiences of youth on the spectrum exceed the limitations of these medical models. Reaching beyond medicine for their narratives of difference and disorder, these youth draw instead on shared mythologies from popular culture and speculative fiction to conceptualize their experiences of discontinuous and permeable personhood. In doing so, they also pioneer more inclusive understandings of what makes us who we are.

Age of menarche in females with autism spectrum conditions

2006 ◽  
Vol 48 (12) ◽  
pp. 1007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca C Knickmeyer ◽  
Sally Wheelwright ◽  
Rosa Hoekstra ◽  
Simon Baron-Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Females With Autism ◽  
Age Of Menarche

NEUROTIC SYMPTOMATICS RELATED TO PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS IN YOUTH

2019 ◽  
pp. 2014-2019
Author(s):  
Milen Dimov
Keyword(s):  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Responsiveness ◽  
Training Process ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
School Year ◽  
Real Behavior ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
The Ideal

The present study traces the dynamics of personal characteristics in youth and the manifested neurotic symptoms in the training process. These facts are the reason for the low levels of school results in the context of the existing theoretical statements of the problem and the empirical research conducted among the trained teenagers. We suggest that the indicators of neurotic symptomatology in youth – aggression, anxiety, and neuroticism, are the most demonstrated, compared to the other studied indicators of neurotic symptomatology. Studies have proved that there is a difference in the act of neurotic symptoms when tested in different situations, both in terms of expression and content. At the beginning of the school year, neurotic symptoms, more demonstrated in some aspects of aggressiveness, while at the end of school year, psychotism is more demonstrated. The presented summarized results indicate that at the beginning of the school year, neurotic symptoms are strongly associated with aggression. There is a tendency towards a lower level of social responsiveness, both in the self-assessment of real behavior and in the ideal “I”-image of students in the last year of their studies. The neurotic symptomatology, more demonstrated due to specific conditions in the life of young people and in relation to the characteristics of age.

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