Customer Reviews

Communication Unbound: How Facilitated Communication is Challenging Traditional Views of Autism and Ability-Disability (Special Education Series)

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Dr. Biklen is arguably the most informed promoter of facilitated communication in North America. However, lurking in his book is evidence that FC is generally useless, except for a small percentage of persons diagnosed with autism -- those with normal or above average intelligence who have a profound communication disability.

Unfortunately, the excessive claims made by this book have helped raise the hopes of countless parents of autistic children, only to have them cruely dashed.

People considering buying this book should be aware that more than 50 studies have shown that in the vast majority of cases, the facilitated "messages" come not from the autistic person but from the facilitator. Proponents of FC have responded by claiming that any kind of scientific study destroys the "trust" necessary for FC to work, and then demonstrating this "trust" by such practices as ignoring all non-facilitated attempts at communication, and even using physical force to hold some "clients" at the keyboard. Autistic people deserve better than to be used as human Ouija boards for "normal" people's fantasies.

While Bliken is a talented writer, his subject matter leaves much to be desired. He attempts to prove a topic that he has not fully researched, nor does he seem inclined to believe that he needs to fully research it. Since Bliken's findings, scientific research has been done, and it has proven Bliken and Facilitated Communication to be well-intended, but terribly misused and virtually, wrong.

Biklen's book is a wonderful and fascinating account of an attempt to put on one side forty years of accumulated prejudice on the topic of autism and ask what the actual, observable problem that these people have is. For most of the more severe cases, the problem involves communication difficulties. Other researchers had assumed that the communication problems were inseperable from the condition: Biklen asked "If we try and fix the communication problems, what would we find?" Using facilitated communication, a means of steadying a person's pointing to enable them to point to pictures, words or letters, Biklen was able to show that the abilities of these people existed but had been buried. This is not a cure for autism - all you have at the end of it is a person with autism who can communicate rather than a person with autism who can't - but anyone who has an interest in the contested territory of autism must read this book.

FC, as it is known, burst on the scene a few decades ago and was hailed as a new tool for the treatment of autism. Money was spent, and parents of severely autistic children becasme vocal proponants of FC as their children were newly discovered to be warm, creative individuals limited by some unknown neuromuscular problem. Hundreds of "facilitators" appeared on the scene to translate for these children and adults.

But there was a dark side, too. Allegations of sexual abuse were made. FC facilitators were being used in custody cases and in suppoort of criminal charges, even though no on ehad ever actually established a scientific criteria for certifying facilitators, or even evaluating what they were doing.

Once science did look at FC, a very different picture appeard, and it looked less like science and a lot like pseduo-psychic phenomena. Facilitators were unable to reveal any information from subjects that they, the facilitators, didn't already know. Different facilitators delivered different stories. Under controlled conditions facilitators couldn't produced- and invoked excuses not unlike those of alleged psychics. The practice was looking less and less clinical and more metaphysical.

Still, FC had, and continues to have, its supporters, mostly parents clinging on to the idea that their severley autistic child is "normal" and those makingh money in the field. But the overwhleming scientific opinion, supported by every controlled study done, is that there's nothing there.