From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Tue Dec 03 2002 - 08:07:05 MST
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 08:32:45 -0600
From: Ian Pitchford <ian.pitchford@scientist.com>
To: psychiatry-research@yahoogroups.com,
evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [evol-psych] What's Normal? A Look at Asperger Syndrome
New York Times
December 3 2002
BOOKS ON HEALTH
What's Normal? A Look at Asperger Syndrome
By DAVID CORCORAN
It was an exciting moment for me - and, I imagine, for other parents of
children
with the baffling neurological disorder called Asperger syndrome - when The New
York Times Magazine published Lawrence Osborne's "Little Professor Syndrome" in
June 2000.
The title may have been condescending, but the article itself was terrific,
perhaps the best yet about Asperger's in a mainstream publication: a 4,500-word
exploration, in remarkably vivid and sympathetic language, of a world that few
readers had visited.
So it was doubly exciting when Mr. Osborne, a widely published health and
science journalist, expanded the article into a book, "American Normal,"
published last month.
Asperger's, as most readers probably still need to be told, is a lifelong
disorder of unknown origin that usually shows up around 18 months to 3 years.
Generally thought to be a form of autism, it is characterized by normal or
above-normal intelligence, social awkwardness, verbal rigidity and, most
conspicuously, a fixation with an obscure topic that can be learned by rote.
Full text
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/03/health/children/03BOOK.html
American Normal
by Lawrence Osborne
Hardcover: 224 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.93 x 9.50 x 6.42
Publisher: Copernicus Books; ISBN: 0387953078; (October 4, 2002)
AMAZON - US
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387953078/darwinanddarwini/
AMAZON - UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387953078/humannaturecom/
Editorial Reviews
>From Library Journal
This collection of portraits has that admirable goal of seeking to illuminate
what it's like to live with Asperger Syndrome (AS), one of the Autistic
Spectrum Disorders, but it falters on many counts. First, Osborne, a medical
writer for the New York Times Magazine, devotes too much space to historical
figures who were never diagnosed with AS and probably did not know about the
condition (e.g., Thomas Jefferson, pianist Glenn Gould). Second, he wrongly
identifies inventor and educator Temple Grandin as someone with AS. Since she
lacked speech until she was seven years old, she is always counted among those
with moderate to severe autism despite her current success. Third, his interest
in famous people who may have AS lacks clear value besides creating an Asperger
"hall of fame." By sometimes trivializing the experience of the people
featured, this book will not help those looking to assist someone with AS.
Though little is written in this field, a better title would be Liane Holliday
Willey's Pretending To Be Normal: Living with Asperger's Syndrome. Not
recommended owing to its inaccuracies and muddled definition of AS.
Corey Seeman, Univ. of Toledo Libs., OH
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Mel Levine, author of A MIND AT A TIME
AMERICAN NORMAL can and should have a major impact on the ways in which we
think about mental health.
Book Description
Thomas Jefferson may have had it. The pianist Glenn Gould almost certainly had
it. There are even those who insist (probably incorrectly) that Albert Einstein
had it. Whether it is called "geek syndrome," "high-functioning autism," or
simply "Asperger's," it is not just one of the most poorly understood of all
neurological disorders, but amazingly one of the fastest-growing of all
psychiatric diagnoses in America today. Some support organizations even claim
that as many as one in five hundred people in the general population suffers
from some aspect of the disease.
Basing his report on memoirs, clinical histories, poems and stories, and visits
with dozens of individuals afflicted with the disorder, journalist and essayist
Lawrence Osborne shows us what life with Asperger's is really like. Often
brilliant at math and able to perform savant-like feats of memory, those who
are afflicted with the syndrome -- some 80 percent are boys or men -- are also
wracked with bizarre obsessions. And strangely and characteristically, most of
them are unable to understand even the most simple expressions of the human
face. They may know everything there is to know about vacuum cleaners, the New
York City subway system, or industrial deep-fat fryers (or, for that matter, J.
S. Bach), but they are unable to hold a normal conversation about even the most
basic of their own feelings, or anyone else's. They are, in their own words,
the Mind Blind -- strange solitaires, anti-social loners -- in a world
dominated by the ordinary people they call "neurotypicals."
In this front-line report and very personal investigative journey, Osborne also
asks hard questions. Just how different from the so-called normal are those
with Asperger's, and is it possible that virtually all of us have a little of
the syndrome in ourselves? Setting aside the usual pieties of medicine and
rehabilitation, he embarks on a quest that casts a skeptical eye on American
psychiatric culture, with its tendency to over-diagnose, then over-medicate.
And even more, he ventures into the elusive but essential realm where one has
to ask what is the difference between eccentricity (with all its potential for
creativity, for enriching our society and ourselves) and normality, with its
undertones of blandness, averageness, and uniformity?
About the Author
Lawrence Osborne is the author of three previous books, ANIA MALINA, a novel,
the travel book PARIS DREAMBOOK, and THE POISONED EMBRACE, an essay on sexual
attitudes in Catholicism. A widely published journalist, he is a frequent
contributor to THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE and SALON. He lives in New York.
News in Brain and Behavioural Sciences - Issue 79 - 30th November, 2002
http://human-nature.com/nibbs/issue79.html
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