[1]Jasper van Haasteren said:
I think I'll take the term normocentrism as a starting point. An interesting idea to give this a name, but this term clouds the readers from what for me is the underlying issue. The underlying issue in my view is that every individual has the tendency to experience his/her own way of feeling, seeing, hearing, and experiencing the world as being valid. This makes it a small step to view one?s own experience of life as the only one, or as the majority one. This also makes it hard to understand other ways to experience life, other ways of thinking, feeling, dealing with situations, etc. etc.
If we were to start from the term normocentrism, Mottron uses this to differentiate between autistic and non-autistic people. If the term is truly intended to only point at this distinction, it should be neurotypical centrism. Make the term fit the limited distinction between autistic and neurotypical people.
And here is why I say so. Within Mensa I have a few friends who are also autistic. We have our own set of nonverbal communications, our own set of social "rules" and we have even tested them in a wider context. The most interesting observations happened when there was a large group of autistic people with only a couple of neurotypical people. In this setting the autistic way of communicating was used by almost everyone, and those who did not "speak" our social interaction were left out. This of course meant the most hardcore neurotypical people. They were unable to join conversations, they were unable to get any contact whatsoever, and in the end some of them just left the conference. If we apply the term normocentrism, in this setting it would mean that the autistic way of communicating was the norm and those who have not mastered the autistic way of interacting were socially inapt.
I have also been to several meetings for aspergers, in that setting it is easy for all of us to join conversations, to engage in social contact, etc. etc. because we all speak the same social language.
It is merely that the neurotypical population far outnumbers the autistic population which causes the neurotypical ways of social conduct prevails. It is this outnumbering that is the root cause for every problem that is experienced by people that fall outside the ways of doing and being of the majority. Be it autistic, be it extremely intelligent, be it a more complex worldview, be it left handiness, be it sexual orientation, it doesn't matter how an individual differs. To differ means there's a gap both sides have to overcome.
To apply this on the individual level: Every person has a certain way of interacting with others that is natural for that individual. Also each person has a certain range with whom she/he can interact. Of course the range varies from person to person. But if the natural ways of communicating between two people are far enough apart, having a huge range can still mean the two of them have trouble communicating, or are even unable to communicate. Both will interpret the reactions and behavior of the other in ways that is comprehensible to themselves. And this is by definition limited, and does not always include the way the one giving the reaction will interpret it.
If the natural way of being between individuals differs only slightly, communication is much more fluent. This is so simple and obvious that hardly anyone seems to realize this to be at the root of communication between people. Communication difficulties as well as success depend on the differences between the natural ways and the range both can reach.
Just to make the most obvious point so far: if the group is autistic, the differences are small, and thus even a small range is more than sufficient. The same goes if the group is neurotypical, or extremely intelligent, intuitive, non-verbal or any way of being that anyone can think of.
The mistake made by the majority is that they impose their way of communicating upon others. Their values, their ideals, their ways of communication, everything gets imposed upon the minority. And those who do not fit the profile set by the majority get labeled as being defective. And from the viewpoint that to differ is to be defective, this is correct.
Viewed from science to differ means just that, to differ. But since the neurotypical way of being has the tendency to give emotional value to everything, the neurotypical way of being has difficulties using objective language and thought. And thus it sees defects. And defects usually require a fix.
It is the view of me and my fellow Aspergers that this is a shortcoming in the neurotypical way of being. Some Aspergers view this shortcoming with the same judgmental normocentrism that many of neurotypical people view the autistic way of being.
Another basic flaw in how autism is being described and tested has to do with the concept of empathy. This concept is viewed from the perspective of the neurotypical way of being, with all of its neurotypical centric applications.
When we let go of neurotypical centric and any other kind of centric view the result would be the following: The range of being an individual can communicate with also entails a range of being with which this individual can empathize with. This range is usually limited to what the individual trying to understand how another might feel, would feel himself in the situation the other is in. This of course has the basic flaw that the variation of ways to experience a situation is much larger than the range of feelings any single individual will experience within that situation.
The solution is to try to understand the way the other individual?s way of being works, and to do this in the terms the other uses, letting go of all your own experiences for that situation.
For the neurotypical way of being this is almost impossible. The neurotypical way of being starts out with how it itself would feel in any situation and then ascribe those feelings to others. This works for all other neurotypical individuals and this is a successful strategy in those situations. However, this strategy utterly fails when trying to empathize with someone outside the neurotypical range, for example an autistic person.
For most autistic individuals, their range does not include the neurotypical way of experiencing life. And since the autistic way is a minority, autistic people have to work very hard on increasing their range to reach the neurotypical way of experiencing life. On the other hand, neurotypical centrism states that it is perfectly healthy that the range of neurotypical individuals does not include the autistic way of experiencing life.
For autistic people, the capability to process large amounts of raw data is a solution most high intelligent autistic people adopt. They collect an almost insane amount of data on the neurotypical way of being and after a decade or two of study they can enter some simple neurotypical social settings.
After this long study, the range of people who have traveled this path is much larger, even though it might still not include the neurotypical way of being. The interesting thing is that neurotypical centrism keeps saying that autistic individuals can?t empathize with people very well. While the neurotypical scientists only mean that the neurotypical way of being is not within the range of the autistic people who are tested.
Another thought: I believe the reason why autism is viewed in such negative terms has a historical reason. It was first described from the perspective of psychiatry instead of the perspective of psychology. Psychiatry feels it needs to fix while psychology is mainly interested in the fact that humans differ from each other. In a way, psychiatry is much more normocentric than psychology is.
I think this covers what I wanted to say for now, I am quite interested in any response.
Jasper.
[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 9033a.html
10 Jul 2012, 12:42 pm
