Foreword
After 13 years of working with people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) (including High Functioning Autism (HFA) and Asperger Syndrome (AS)), I have arrived at a place where I feel I am able, and where I need, to make a contribution.
There are two specific areas that, in my view, are not well supported either in current practice or literature, and where I feel my small contribution may be useful. The first applies to individuals who provide invaluable services to the community, in a range of capacities, and yet receive little or no training, and who often work for minimum wages, for instance, carers and classroom assistants. The second applies to professional practitioners who may be specialists, but whose training contains sparse information on ASD, such as, counsellors/psychotherapists, police, social workers, and many other practitioners providing a community service.
The content of this book is aimed primarily at those with ‘Asperger personalities’, and I use this title as a mark of respect for those individuals with whom I have been privileged to work, and who see themselves as different rather than disabled or impaired.
What seems to be missing in current literature, is an approach to language based support, that would help both parents and professionals. I believe a selection of practical strategies, presented in a way that everyone can use, could be extremely helpful.
My hope is that this book will begin to address this situation and will also provide information that is equally useful for the practitioner and the academic – not to re-train them, but to enable them to adapt their existing knowledge constructively to work in a way that is more effective and rewarding for everyone concerned.
‘When you try to apply psychodynamic theories to me and others with my disability I find it as offensive as when, a hundred years ago, people would look at, for instance, a mildly developmentally disabled boy and believe that he got that way because of excessive masturbation or believe that people with epilepsy were neurotic. Society’s view of the individual and abnormal behaviour sometimes seems to develop very slowly, sometimes extremely rapidly. Attitudes that we consider entirely outdated, may have been the prevailing ones until fairly recently. For example, in the 1970s, homosexuality was still considered a psychological illness and even in the 1980s, there were deaf individuals in psychiatric care whose underlying disability had not been uncovered. It is up to you to help us change the way autistic spectrum disorders are viewed.’
~ Gunilla Gerland 1998 Code of Good Practice ~
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