Does the thought of BEHAVIORAL treatment make you twitch?

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No. Re-read "Emergence". The squeeze machine was, in and of itself, a major obsession. As it happens, she has sensory integration dysfunction, so that she naturally wanted to find something that would help with it, and she ALSO became obsessed with the idea of doing this.

At first, as a young child, she thought it would be great to have a "magic machine" which would provide her with the deep pressure she craved, while at the same time allowing her to control its amount. Then she began coming up with various means to build it: an inflatable body suit; a small, narrow, well-heated chamber; a box shaped like a coffin, with a soft inflatable lining. By her admission, she was completely preoccupied with this, and kept thinking and daydreaming about it all the time.

'I would constantly daydream about the "magic machine", becoming utterly "fixated" on it' (the quote may be incorrect as I only have the book in Russian, so I am translating back into English)

Then, at last, when she visited her aunt's ranch and saw the cattle chutes, she realized how she could actually build the machine in reality, and did just that. You know the rest - she managed to create not only something that helped her, individually, but also came up with ways of drastically reducing the stress experienced by multitudes of animals.

Apart from the "magic machine", she also had other obsessions, of course, but the "magic machine" was always a huge one.



Generally speaking, Temple is known for black-and-white thinking, inaccuracies, projecting her own experience onto all autistic people, and hasty sweeping statements which she then takes years to amend (for instance, take her assertion that "all autistics, and only autistics, think in pictures"). But this is somewhat beside the point



That was my point too - just as long as there is no force involved (in whatever sense of the word). And if behavior modification allows to do this, then it's just fine.

Ixochiyo_yohuallan, we're talking in circles now. We were talking about how a dinosaur obsessions can lead to a Paleantology career. In this case, it was preventing a young boy from mainstreaming with his peers, he's being teased, other social issues. I've read all of Temple's works and I've never read that she obsessed over this to the degree that she could not focus or concentrate on anything else ad nauseum and it prevented her from functioning on a daily basis. Like I said, I have a golf obsession. It doesn't mean I can't do other things or get along with others or be successful. An obsession in and of itself is not bad. It's when that obsession gets in the way of your normal functioning and causes problems that prevent you from learning, interacting with others, being part of the real world, not making connections with your environment, and basically leading to other issues that's a problem. Sorry to put that in bold and underline it, but that's the issue that we're talking about. Anyone can obsess. We all have one obsession or another. Again, when the obsession won't let you live your life in a productive way or to its potential, that's when a behav mod program can help.



Ohhhhhhhh, I've heard this before. Read criticisms about her on the internet. I don't even bother to read that stuff anymore. And, I beg to differ. She is right on target and is probably one of the best voices out there speaking for Autism. Aspies may feel differently because many of them have not walked her path. But, some argue that she herself is closer to Aspie as this point in her life.



See there! We've been saying the same thing all along. I really want parents out there who aren't familiar with ABA to look into it for their Aspie kids. Even if they don't do it, at least do the legwork and inquiries and find out what it's about.

The thing is though, its not only about obsessions. I didnt have special interests, but I still had a lot of difficulty understanding the social world and other things such as mild dyspraxia.

Thanks you. I think we understand it's not just about obsessions. It was used as an example. Did you see the list of things behav mod. works on? That was a small list to boot.

The social skills element is one of the most important parts of behav mod. That alone I think could help many Aspie kids and maybe adults.