Rebecca [...] was pressed into a variety of workshops and classes, as part of our Developmental and Cognitive Drive. [...]
It didn't work with Rebecca, it didn't work with most of them. It was not, I came to think, the right thing to do, because what we did was to drive them full-tilt upon their limitations, as had already been done, futilely, and often to the point of cruelty, throughout their lives.
We paid far too much attention to the defects of our patients, as Rebecca was the first to tell me, and far too little into what was intact and preserved. To use another piece of jargon, we were too concerned with 'defectology' [...]
Oliver Sacks - The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - 1985
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When you are fighting an invisible monster, first throw a bucket of paint over it.