Customer Reviews

An Extraordinary Silence: The Emergence of a Deeply Disturbed Child

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Although this is a very interesting book, there were many parts in it that bothered me. Sean, the boy with whom Cipolloni worked presented behavior that fit the category of Kanner's Autism. I didn't like the way Cipolloni referred to autism as an emotional disturbance. Many behaviors that appear to be rooted in emotional disturbance are more often than not coping mechanisms people with autism have taken on to desensitize themselves to overwhelming stimuli. Autism includes sensory integration and processing difficulties and for those on the spectrum who are either nonverbal or whose speech is severely delayed, responding to stimuli and communicating often is expressed in behavior that is puzzling to others.

I didn't like the way Cipolloni blamed Sean's parents and started that tired old "blame the child's mother" routine. The long antiquated fortress metaphor is a judgmental and inaccurate portrayal of autism. There are many who subscribe to the school of thought that the sensory and communication difficulties are what preclude many with severe autism from communicating in ways the neurotypical world can understand. Suggesting that this is a "choice" and that the child with autism "kept others out" by building such an emotional fortress was something he wanted to do is doing a grave disservice to all. I would have thought that by the time this book was published, greater strides would have been made. Suggesting that anybody would cause their child to be autistic is not only preposterous, it is a downright fallacy. Living with autism is a major challenge, so the suggestion that anybody would cause this is just plain ludicrous.

I also didn't like the way Cipolloni dismissed scientific research and evidence that has proven time and again that autism is a sensory-neurobiological condition. At no time does he acknowledge pioneers who have shared first hand accounts of living with autism, such as Donna Williams; James Williams; Raun Kaufman; Kenneth Hall; Luke Jackson; Temple Grandin; Georgiana Thomas; Ben Levinson; Sean Barron; Elijah Paradiz and John Pyle, whose mother wrote about his life with Asperger's to name a few.

Cipolloni is highly judgmental and condemnatory in writing of Sean's parents and the way they interacted with their child. The book is rife with Bettelhemian fallacies such as blame the parents; the empty fortress and other tired cliches that have proven to be untrue. Plainly Cipolloni does not have all the answers; the boy remains severely autistic throughout the book and at no time does Cipolloni offer any reasonable sounding approach in working with and understanding autistic behavior.

In reading this book, one gets the feeling that Cipolloni is eager to blame the child's parents for his autism. His own attitudes are negative and judgmental and he offers no room for them to defend themselves or to encourage them to feel that they are working on their child's behalf.


The other thing that bothered me was Cipolloni's obvious view of himself as "saving" Sean and the other children with whom he works. Save him from what? Autism presents its major challenges, but it does NOT diminish a person nor can Cipolloni re-make and mold Sean into something he is not. To suggest otherwise is not only cruel, but unfair and unrealistic. Since Cipolloni closes by saying he does not see any of his young clients and has not for years, one wonders if he feels he has truly helped them.

Cipolloni's picture of Sean, the boy he worked with and came to know and love, is beautifully-written and absorbing; his determination to blame Sean's parents (particularly his mother) for Sean's autism is shallow, ignorant and cruel.

He dismisses all scientific evidence for the neurological nature of autism as reductive (ignoring, as well, the many first-person accounts by people with autism such as Temple Grandin) and instead propounds an even more reductive view of Sean's behaviour as caused by his parents (implicitly contrasted with Cipolloni, who we are to take as all-wise, all-caring and understanding). Writing that "the ways they related and interacted were like a malignancy" and that they were "incapable of understanding needs, unable to correctly read them, satisfy them", he presents them as a caricature of the hen-pecked father and the unloving mother (who he describes at one point as "rattling on, insensitive now as ever, patronizing, belittling").

Despite his disingenous claim not to be blaming anyone, it is all too clear that Cipolloni's own attitudes are as patronizing and rigid as anything he attributes to Sean's parents. His own ability to see Sean truly is skewed by his obliviousness to his own emotional reactions, particularly his "rescue fantasy" in which he is the miracle-worker ("invariably I did reach each child") able to save Sean from his wicked and uncomprehending parents.

He admits at the end of the book "I do not go to see Sean or any of the others, and have not for many years".

This book (it is not written nearly rigorously enough to be considered a "case study"-- though it is a page-turner) is exemplary of everything that is wrong (and maybe one or two things that are right) with the so-called "treatment" of autistic children.

Cipolloni makes two great advances over the prevailing psychological paradigm in his dealings with Sean. The first is that he does not refer to Sean as an "It" or as a human body with an animal mind (though there appears to be a discord between words and actions here; if you replace the word "Sean" with "my dog" in some passages, you can easily see how patronizing his behavior can be). In fact, he is overwhelmingly positive in his descriptions of Sean, a sharp contrast to the writings of some other professionals (Lorna Wing comes to mind, or those psychologists who insist that autistic children are less socially developed than chimpanzees) who have such a negative and distasteful view of autism that I, quite frankly, am disgusted that such people are allowed around children at all.

Secondly, he actually CLEARLY states that he does not think that Sean's parents CAUSED his autism. This seems rather obvious to those of us today who are trained to understand biological approaches to psychology. Earlier reviewers seem to have confused Cipolloni's rejection of the "refrigerator mother" causation with his strong insistence (and I have to agree here) with the fact that his parents do NOT help Sean's situation. The parents are just as maladaptive as Sean, perhaps even more so, and refuse to encourage him to come out of his shell.

However, in an attempt to demonstrate the repoire he develops with Sean, Cipolloni casts himself as a pompous, self-absorbed, wannabe martyr. He wants to portray himself as some sort of surrogate father to Sean, but he concentrates far too strongly on "curing" this child's "affliction." Unfortunately, this is the dominant way of thinking (or at least acting) in child psychology. I believe that people like Cipolloni really do want to help, and really do (or try to) care for these children. However, they simply do not, or cannot, understand that they are working with a person who thinks differently, not a "normal" child with a disease that can just be cured.

I realize that some of you who read this book may be doing so for a class or as research. CAVEAT LECTOR, burgeoning professionals! Though Cipolloni does an eloquent job of portraying a warm and friendly (if only partial) relationship with Sean, he fails miserably at truly understanding Sean as a person (though he insists that he does). If the inability to establish multi-directional, positive and constructive "relations" with Freudian "objects" is to be considered a disease, this man is just as "sick" as the child he attempts to treat.

True, there is some communication that develops between the two, but treatment is focused too heavily on making Sean act "normal." There is little attempt to explain to Sean why he should desire to act normal, much less why he should bother with the seemingly (to Sean) pointless tasks that Cipolloni constantly goads him to complete. To Cipolloni, it seems obvious that Sean should be able to figure out the practical significance of communication and participation. From Sean's point of view, these are meaningless 'hoops' to jump through, none connected to the next. When working with autism, the WHY is always much more important than the HOW. Please keep that in mind. Autistic children do grow up eventually... and some even become functional enough to write reviews on Amazon.

A captivating story of an emotionally disturbed child and the man that was determined to reach him.Once I began this book I was unable to put it down. Mr. Cipolloni pulls the reader into the story line with his heartfelt words.He took me along on his journey. I felt his joy, his hopelessness, his laughter, his tears. A must read for everyone. A powerful reminder of the hopes and triumphs of a single person and what we could accomplish with change. A book to be read over and over again. Simplily illuminating.

Mr. Cipolloni has written a superb account of the challenges in working with a seriously disturbed child. It offers a very practical description of doing this type of therapeutic work, with a nicely balanced mix of theory, humanistic speculation and captivating anecdotes. This is the first book in the mental health area that I have read in a while that was actually a "great read". It would likely be enjoyed by both laypersons and professionals