Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism

Unstrange Minds brought up sides of autism I knew nothing about. It was published in 2007 which means it was written at least a year before, so some things may have changed. The author discusses the incidence of autism in several countries around the world. In a country like India with a large and very rich (and poor) population, there are very few child psychologists and autism is seldom diagnosed. In a way this is bad for the mothers raising autistic children, but in a way they are glad not to have this diagnosis (which they realize might have a genetic component) because a fear of an inherited disorder could cause not just the shame on the family that the diagnosis of retardation or madness might, but also would make it difficult to show more impossible for the rest of the children in the family to marry. Korea is the same or even worse. There are more psychologists and psychiatrists there but children are the pride of the family and a damaged child leaves the parents with nothing to be proud of. There is little treatment for autism, and even if it were offered, the parents would refuse. They don't want treatment that helps with symptoms, they want nothing less than a cure. When the author suggested that there are antidepressants or sleep aids that could help make the child better adjust to life, there is no request for them. In a culture that so values authority people often don't know what medication they take because until recently medicine bottles weren't even labeled.
Grinker describes the cut throat education system in Korea Children with autism may go to school, but they are sat by themselves and not assisted to learn. In fact, the culture as a whole expects children to go to school, but doesn't expect them to get much education there. The real education is by private classes that may continue until 1 in the morning, and autistic children are not welcome there. I shuddered at such a system until I reflected a little on what is going on in the US. Governors are gutting the public school system in order to balance state budgets. If our kids want to learn art, music, a foreign language, science, even PE they have to go to a private school or take outside classes. In my city 3 schools have even dropped their librarians in order to save money. So when Grinker talks about spending $50,000 to hire a lawyer to force his public school to hire a one on one aide for his daughter (at $20,000 a year) I wonder how public schools can possibly do best for all their students.
One last thing, Grinker talks about the damage done to families, parent to parent, parents and their children, in-law relationships by Bruno Bettelheim and his ilk all over the world who have blamed autism on the cold rejecting mother. Often the first thing families hear when an autism diagnosis is made is that the mother should quit her job. And France, lovely France is among the last of the countries to get over this concept of refrigerator mothers.
There was some hope in the book. Grinker talks about how the idea acceptance of diversity as a positive value works to improve the whole society of the US. In Korea standing out at all is discouraged, which makes getting help for autistic children very difficult. But here, accepting autism as another variation of human experience helps us accept our own humanity and the struggles we all face to find purpose and joy in life. show less

Cogently pulled together a lot of threads of autism theory without joining one camp or the other. Was interesting to learn about autism from an anthropological pov. & since we're from the same neck of the woods, I appreciated the personal narrative he sprinkled throughout the book. I feel I've run across some of the same characters and am gearing up for the same battles with the school system. I wish I had read this book first and avoided a lot of others!

An interesting history of the diagnostics of autism and autism-spectrum disorders, as well as a survey of perceptions in different countries.