Why do professionals do this?

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Why do professionals focus on functional tasks with regards to autistic people as opposed to studying the social climate surrounding disability populations?


They may not be trained to consider how societal norms create barriers in everyday life for autistic people!

Last edited by Jamesy on 16 Jul 2013, 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Because it's much easier to get published that way.

You mean if we were more accepted, and if society at large more focused on what we can do, rather than what we can't?

True but its not beneficial for us

Why does society focus on what we can't do?

Unfortunately, many autistic people have accepted this blanket statement as their own and ultimately focus on what they can't do.

I've said it before:

We would be wise to rid our minds of can't.

I've heard a social worker say that his field takes a strength-oriented approach.

The model that they (and most other people) have in their head is that there are normal people and disordered people, and the normal people aren't the ones who need fixing or to do any adapting.

I remember seeing a documentary about a guy who was born without arms. By the time he was a teen he could do everything that people do his feet, i.e. dress himself, eat with a knife and fork, write, catch and throw a baseball, and so on. And since he never had arms he never felt like he was missing anything.

And then, his doctor and his parents got him some prosthetic arms. They were clunky, slow, and would randomly jam up, though, and made his functionally much worse than when he used his feet. So, he told the doctor and his parents that he didn't want to use the arms -- and they basically told him to shut up. They were stuck on the idea that looking normal was more important than his actual functionality and comfort. Eventually, the guy got so fed up that he ditched the arms somewhere and ignored his doctor and parents about the subject after that.

So, people are weird.

I agree, its just so hard, maybe impossible to rid the mind of it when you have been brought up that way by the world from the very early years, I can pretend and fight all I want the concept of can't will always likely be engrained in my mind, its something most of us have to learn to just live and deal with.

Because applied psychology focusses on functional assessment to work out possible interventions and/or treatments that increase the autistic person's social inclusion and independence.

The social climate surrounding the autistic person is peripheral and uncontrolled.

Most of the problem comes from the so-called bastions of government and industry. If you aren't productive, your ARE the problem, is their mantra.

Psychology has always defaulted to change the individual instead of the individual's environment. Once you hit the latter, then it's Skinner & socialism. That's a much harder sell then a few jolts of juice.