Facilitated communication and LFA's

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http://www.stateart.com/productions/dis ... nopsis.asp

I have been reading this article about a LFA woman who through facilitated communication. Managed to 'break out' of the mental prison she was in. I'm wondering if you have heard of similar stories involving LFA people.

Haven't, but thanks for sharing, that's truly fascinating. Watched the movie clips too. However looking up facilitated communication and it seems like it's kind of not very credible...

Hi Folks

Facilitated communication is claimed to allow apparently very low functioning or seriously physically impaired people to articulate their wants and needs through the mediation of another person. It was all the rage in the 1980s and early-1990s and there was a film made ["Annie's Coming Out"] about a multiply handicapped woman in St Nicholas Hospital [for profoundly impaired clients] in Victoria who, with the support of Rosemary Crossley, was supposedly found to be totally aware and high functioning, though physically impaired. Annie has supposedly completed university degrees based in her own intellectual abilities, but mediated by her carers.

The misuse of the technique led to many people working in the field being hurt as well as families being told their apparently disabled children were not! The results were often damaging, even terrible as, all of a sudden, people with long-term diagnoses as severely, even profoundly intellectually and physically impaired were miraculously found to be competent and claims of abuse and sexual assault were made agains carers and family members who were immediately suspended and/or investigated on the sole word of the mediators and their claimed competence in this wonderful new communication techinique. Subsequent objective examination of the reported abuse claims and the method itself found that gross injustices had been perpetrated against innocent workers/family by the communication mediators who appear to have projected their own meanings and interpretations into the behaviour of the multiply impaired people and then made outrageous claims. Examination of the method and those claiming to interpret or mediate led to the conclusion that there was little scientific validity and valid communication results could not be obtained when mediators were placed under scrutiny or other mediators worked with specific people.

Jim Crawford

But then there have been many people (including Sue Rubin) who were able to type independently and/or learn to speak, both of which validated their previous communication. Also there have been people who, after enough practice, were able to pass the same testing that people failed in studies. Anne MacDonald, that original woman with CP, was one person who did pass testing. (In addition she revealed the nature of the speech used -- and dismissed by staff as "just screaming" -- by her and other people who lived in the institution she came from.)

I work in a group home taking care of mentally challenged adults, and several people my agency supports use facilitated communication. It's fascinating, especially when you're reading what a person with very low functioning, classic autism has to say... these people are so intelligent and their thoughts and feelings about the world are so 'normal', the exact opposite to anything you see in their outward presence or body language.

One thing I have never understood too well, is what it is that people see in people's appearance that they think precludes having "normal" thoughts in the first place.

Such as is mentioned in http://www.gettingthetruthout.org/ (you have to go through the whole site, not just the first part, to see what I mean).

Also I remember watching a video of Tito Mukhopadhyay, thinking he looked a fair bit like me (at least in what I've been able to see of me) in some of his mannerisms and facial expressions, and wondering what the fuss was about that he could write. Apparently because he flaps his hands and doesn't look at people much? Or something?

I'd say it's anything that's not 'normal'. Mannerisms, movements, facial expressions, differences in body language, the way a person talks... anything that you wouldn't expect to see in an average person, anything that's not normal by society's standards. There just seems to be something in our natural human wiring that says the outside is supposed to match the inside, so if a person looks different then they must be ret*d or something. In a lot of cases that theory is true, but there's probably even more cases where there's a disparity between outer and inner. (Including the ones where it's turned around the other way - the person looks perfectly normal on the outside but they have some kind of serious intellectual disability.)

BTW, thanks for posting that website - especially in a job like mine, it's so important to be reminded of what's really going on in the minds of people like that girl.

To me I think I never figured out which "outsides" are "supposed to" correspond to which "insides", so I don't know how to predict who will get seen as what except occasionally.