The number of autism The National Consultative Ethics Committee (CCNE), science section of life and health, has recently published its opinion No. 102, which deals with the attention to autism. This paper advances a series of figures obtained from a very broad category, admitting two thirds of cases, "atypical" would be 600000, a number that is expected to increase each year by 8000 units.
Where does this large and vague category? In epidemiological classifications, categories emerged from the clinic were dropped from the eighties, the benefit of others, trained in cognitive-behavioral perspective. Thus was built the category of autistic syndrome, the problem of cognitive ability. Result: the tenfold increase in the number of cases in twenty years. Wind panic. Forget that this category is based on assumptions that the last twenty five years have not confirmed in any way.
The CCNE thinks that the abandonment of the references inspired by clinical tradition is in the interests of families and science, as psychoanalysis would have "led to placing the case in the behavior of parents, and in particular the (...) mothers in the development of handicap. " The institutions thus far would parents of children. Annex evokes, however, the humanity of the hospital, which is the work inspired generations of psychiatrists in psychoanalysis.
Contrary to anticipate the opinion No. 102, not the psychoanalysts who first stressed the role of mothers of autistic subjects, but rather the inventor of autism, Dr. Kanner, after the first cases isolated. [...]
say that psychoanalysis is blamed families mix several levels. It is not psychoanalysis but his psychologizing leading to the criminalization of parental absence to the Ideal as a typology of failures of mothers and fathers. On the contrary, the Lacanian orientation prohibits any blame and is committed to updating structures and libidinal significant underlying psychosis and autism, the phenomena that generate and its own logic.
The psychoanalytic treatment of psychosis and autism are based on the address of the subject to another and seek to establish a "dialogue", even if particular. The film that Sandri Bonnaire has made about his sister, first introduced in the TV channel France 3 on 14 September 2007 bears witness to the brutal breakdown that occurs when the subject is confronted autistic rejection of his "go to Other "and shows the dramatic contrast beneficial effects that cause demand to host. Similarly Sortir de l'Autisme, Jacqueline book Berger, mother of twins affected, shows beautifully the need to accommodate the subject's head and not only educate autistic.
The testimonies of high-functioning autistics show us the uniqueness of this address. Temple Grandin says, "My way of thinking seemed to work a computer, and could explain the process, step by step." From an epileptic seizure at age four, Daniel Tammet became obsessed with the calculations, since only the numbers could assuage their suffering. On March 14, 2004, Einstein's birthday, 22,514 publicly listed decimal number π. Kamran Nazeer investigates four colleagues in a special school for autistic he had attended in 1982, then moved to Cambridge, now works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One of his former classmates is an analyst of political speeches in Washington, another systems engineer, a third is orderly, with itineraries very wise, real algorithms. Found autistic These solutions have enabled them to enter the world. Failure to have empathy is not only a "handicap" but free of any understanding. [...]
Cognitivism is pedagogical: it ignores the particularities of autistic address and takes charge of educating the subject. Families are transformed into teaching aids. This perspective becomes delusional in the method ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis ) the child is subjected to forty hours a week intensive exercise. This ideal teaching reveals exhausting and usually leads to impasses. Guilt can push parents to be educators to the limit of his strength. Mothers are especially desperate to even get to rub with your child. Some recent cases from the United States, testified about it. In this country the Queen cognitive perspective unmatched in the domain of autism. An article in the New York Times June 2006 presented a series of tragic cases that show the excesses leading cognitivism. These cases were chosen by the author of the article, she mother of an autistic child. Wanted, she says it, to protect parents from false hope to those who are released and can lead to tragedies.
No 102 The opinion deals with war being waged in France and in other countries, psychoanalysts and cognitive: we need to turn page to enter the modern Anglo-Saxon. Simplistic. The air is actually called Anglo-Saxon place of another war between cognitive scientists and environmentalists. The story of the founding Autism Speaks gives testimony. Created in 2004 by the President the NBC and Universal Studios Bob Wright, after the birth of his grandson was diagnosed with autism, the Foundation quickly raised a lot of funds that allowed him, between 2005 and 2007, funding research to test various hypotheses: genetic hypothesis, the hypothesis of poisoning by a synthetic mercury in vaccines, the hypothesis of dual causality by which a gene could be activated by mercury and other neurotoxins. As the grandson did not respond to behavioral therapies, mother, daughter of Bob and Suzanne Wright, firmly believes in the virtue of a purification diet and evacuation of metals from the body. He accused his parents and asked them to leave for a new generation. In June 2007 his parents distanced themselves from her daughter's virulent positions. She accused them of having personally attacked. Continue.
As you see, leave for the search for causes is not easy: the passions are unleashed, not excluded from being disclosed by the inquisition of the personalities on this occasion. A press war as well as families, are imprisoned in the field of victimizing competition between the associations of parents of children variously handicap. This is especially an opportunity for France to not rush into the wounds that we call modernity that extols the opinion No. 102.
subjects is pushed from one category to another, but their suffering remains very real. Autism hides a mysterious figure on which autistic subjects we come to speak and for us to listen. Dismantle the clinic, replacing it with a fragmented list of observable behaviors associated with cognitive deficits hypothesis, that will not, and continues to cause havoc. Sustain the dialogue with the autistic, define the spaces as possible to accompany him, help him build an "autism among many."
Eric Laurent - Psychoanalyst
Posted in Le Nouvel Âne No. 8, February 2008
Translation: Neus Carbonell
