Customer Reviews

Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a person whose imagined future plans have almost never included children, my threshold for empathy with a memoir of parental experiences is pretty high--to me, you had a choice and you made it, knowing full well that your kid, like all kids, would one day be a bratty teenager. Maybe that's why this book works--because Paul Collins and his wife didn't have a choice about their son, Morgan, being born autistic.

The way that Collins blends a momentous year in the life of his family with a variety of stories about the history of autism and notable autists (including many whose conditions have been diagnosed posthumously, because autism wasn't understood at all until recently) works, too. We feel his pain and his growth, and laugh and cry with him, even as he gently gives us a textbook education in the development of society's understanding of the condition, from Peter the Wild Boy to Rainman and beyond.

Quietly, deftly, Collins also seeks to reshape the way we think about autism. For instance, he says, "Autists are described by others--and by themselves--as aliens among humans. But there's an irony to this, for precisely the opposite is true. They are us, and to understand them is to begin to understand what it means to be human. Think of it: a disability is usually defined in terms of what is missing. A child tugs at his or her parents and whispers, 'Where's that man's arm?' But autism is an ability and a disability: it is as much about what is abundant as what is missing, an overexpression of the very traits that make our species unique. Other animals are social, but only humans are capable of abstract logic. The autistic outhuman the humans, and we can scarcely recognize the result."

And then, of course, we have the moment when Collins sees an adult version of his son at a fast food restaurant and watches the reaction of people around him, then walks a few blocks, stops, sits down on the stoop of a church, and cries. "I can't bear the thought that someday, somehow, someone will be cruel to my child. Or pretend that he is not even there." His pain is palpable; you can't help but care about him and empathize with his struggle.

Destined to be a comfort to parents of autistic children, this most recent Paul Collins book is a worthwhile and exceptionally enjoyable read with or without such a personal stake. Even more than Sixpence House, this book perfects the genre of personal history and intense research into the arcane that Collins is creating for himself. Give him 200 pages of your time.

Oh! You thought that autism only affected "Rain Man" and only impacted the life of his brother who sleezily hauled him off to Las Vegas. Or maybe you thought that autistics have only been born in the last 14 years. Boy were you wrong! :-)

Autitstics have been impacting human life and the course of history for hudreds of years. Paul Collins does a fantastic job of not only chronicling his experience with his young son and his being diagnosed as autistic, he also does a fantastic job of chronicling the existence of autistics who lived before there was such a word.
Way to go Paul Collins!
Thank you for exposing Bruno Bettleheim for the creep he was and for interviewing Simon Baron-Cohen (a nice man, as far as I can tell).
Thank you for sharing your fascination with Peter the Wild Boy.

I am an adult with an autism spectrum diagnosis, Asperger's syndrome.

I hope your little boy is always treated with respect by the world that so often demands conformism.

oddizm

I have taught preschool children with disabilities for twenty odd years. I am always looking for books that I can share with parents to help them on their road to raising their child. This is going to the top of the list. What a gift Mr. Collins has written.

For one thing, the total unconditional love Morgan's parents show shines through. It doesn't matter what he can or cannot do - he is a child first. Anything else is secondary. That is such an important view for parents, and teachers, to have.

They took the bull by the horns. The diagnosis was devastating, but it didn't stop them from jumping in to the interventions that were recommended. One of the biggest issues I have is trying to get parents beyond the intial shock and denial, and get them moving. TIme is of the essence. I also have trouble sometimes getting them to see that they indeed are partners in this process - what we do at school cannot be isolated, and must be followed through at home as well. His descriptions of how they experiemented, and how they took the ideas of therapists and adjusted them to fit Morgan was perfect. His description of the classrooms and the activities were right on target as well.

His explanation of how people with autism think can help me explain to parents why their child might be reacting the way that they do.

I was impressed by his experience as a father. Its a rare family where the father actually takes on an equal share of the work in raising a child with disabilities. His POV was enlightening and will give many other fathers encouragement to be involved.

I also appreciated the historical point of view. I think parents and professionals need that background to see where we have been and get a better idea of where we are going.

Speaking of professionals - the books postive take on the therapists was a breath of fresh air. I have quickly tired of the tirads that parents feel they need to write about, and how they had to fight this and fight that, when for the most part, people in this field are in it for good reasons and are trying the best they can. Its important for parents to question and to look for options. But the positive attitude in this book and the author's willingness to work with the staff, makes all of the difference.

In short, this is just an excellent book on so many levels. I highly recommend it to any parent, professional in the field, or anyone who wants more information about autism.

I purchased this book because I enjoyed Collins' earlier title, "Sixpence House" so much. Although "Not Even Wrong" tackles a much different subject, autism, the writing style is the same and I enjoyed it just as much. The thing about Paul Collins is that he is so good at educating his readers on a variety of subjects that you don't realize you are learning until you have finished the book and find yourself seeking out more information. I did not know much about autism before reading this and never had more than a cursory interest in it, but Collins' made it an utterly fascinating subject, both with the massive amount of historical info he provided as well as the way he weaved his own personal story into the narrative. The research he has done here is quite thorough, but it reads like a novel and is never dry or boring. As for the memoir aspect, well, I found myself caring far more about this little boy then I ever imagined. I don't like "disease of the week" books and can happily say that this not at all one of those. This is just good writing, period. As always, Paul Collins did not disappoint this fan.

After reading "Sixpence House" and finding it delightful, I looked up Paul Collins in the library catalog and saw this book. When I read "adventures in autism" I gasped. Not their little boy?! But yes, their little boy, whose adorableness was palpable in "Sixpence House," was diagnosed with autism around the age of three.

This is a memoir of becoming the parent of a special needs child. I say "becoming" because the change from "the parent of the child we love who we thought was normal" to "the parent of the child we love who is autistic" is gradual, marked by milestones of shock and understanding.

Paul Collins shares this becoming with us, so honestly, so lovingly. He interweaves his own story with accounts of the history of the diagnosis of autism, of people with autism and of historical people it is reasonable to speculate were autistic. In doing so, he makes a subtle case for the role of the autist in society past and present. Their disabilities are just as frequently remarkable abilities. Their capacity for single minded obsession has led to many scientific discoveries and technological applications that we all depend on.

Above all, his deep delight in his son and his unconditional love for him are apparent on every page.

Thank you Paul Collins for sharing Morgan with us all.

I love Paul Collins' books, but sometimes have difficulty explaining to friends what they're all about. "Banvard's Folly" was about thirteen people whose lives were tied together by a single theme: failure. "Sixpence House" was about his family's year spent living in Hay-On-Wye, the famous Welsh "Town of Books." But it was also about the intriguing discoveries Paul made in the millions of pages that populated the town. Now comes "Not Even Wrong." It's the story of the Collins' discovery that their son, Morgan is autistic, and how they come to terms with that. It's also about a famous feral child, quite probably autistic, known as "Peter the Wild Boy." And it's about other autists, and society's often misguided efforts to deal with them...

By now, you may conclude that these are works that are hard to pigeonhole. But after finishing this third book, I see some common themes emerging in Paul's work. Most apparent, of course, is a fascination with the forgotten corridors of the past. History is mostly the story of our journey down a few well-lighted, well-traveled paths. Every now and then, however, we're lucky enough to have a Paul Collins who loves to explore the dark, musty, mostly forgotten byways. It's often here that he finds a telling anecdote or incident that helps to illuminate his world, and ours.

The greatest characteristic of Paul's work, though, is empathy. "Banvard's Folly" easily could have been done in a tongue-in-cheek, "aren't these people a laugh" kind of style. Instead, Paul wrote with a real understanding of what motivated these individuals. Empathy is what shines through the pages of this book. Not only his love for his son, but also his caring for the autists he meets in a coffee house or only in the dusty pages of an old archive. This is a man who understands, and who cares.

If you want to know a writer of true grace, get to know the works of Paul Collins.--William C. Hall

Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism was written by historian Paul Collins, the author of Sixpence House. His son Morgan bounces around exuberantly playing verbal games with numbers and letters, banging on the piano, reading everything in sight, and interacting with his nanny and parents in his own way.

Morgan is certainly not a "stranger in the strange land of human emotions" as the official review claims (once again, the autistic as weird alien stereotype). He's *happy*. He has a great time. He's as enthusiastic as Mandy West in Paul West's old classic Words for a Deaf Daughter and just as oblivious to the fact that according to autism experts, he's actually living in a world of his own and that there must be a real child in there struggling to get out, etc., etc.

And his parents! They think he's simply a bright kid with many interests. Who the hell cares if he doesn't answer when you ask his name or play along with dumb "look at the funny monkey" games when there's a much more interesting talking computerized camera in the same room?

In short, the parents don't see anything wrong with the kid, because there isn't anything wrong with the kid. He isn't living in a world of his own. He's just more interested in music, math, reading, and audio equipment than people. A phalanx of experts try to convince Collins that Morgan's in need of vast amounts of therapy to bring him up to "normal", but Collins sensibly doesn't buy it even after he is made to understand that two-year-olds generally have more interest in the above social interactions.

Like Paul West citing stories of famous deaf people, Collins goes back in time to look at historical figures who may have had conditions similar to autism, which the shrinks finally talk him into believing his son is at least sort of, kind of, on the spectrum. He spends a lot of time on Peter the Wild Boy, gets into a bit of Henry Darger and others, and presents us with an endless array of fascinating trivia. Thirty years ago, the obviously devoted Collins would have been targeted, for his thoroughness and thoughtfulness, as one of those too- intellectual "refrigerator parents" whose cold, remote attitude forced their kids to "withdraw into a shell of autism". He talks about Bruno Bettelheim, too -- the guy who came up with that, who faked a psychology degree and promoted the theory that all autism was caused by abusive parents. Bettelheim defrauded the psychiatric community and the public for years, while brutalizing hundreds of children at his Orthogenic School.

He also finds evidence that so-called Asperger syndrome is not a "mild" or "high functioning" form of autism --it is autism. The perceived difference between autism and Asperger originated with different samplings and with the differing attitudes of Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger toward their young subjects. Asperger's research was ignored for decades, some of it lost in WWII.

Collins looks for (and finds) a way to help Morgan communicate without murdering who he is, using an array of homemade picture cards. He also finds a school with an autistic program where the kids are permitted to learn in an interdisciplinary fashion, related to their particular interests and styles.

The book ends in almost a parody of the old sunburst-through-clouds, ohmygod-it's a breakthrough fashion when Morgan notices Collins has left the room and yells "Daddy" to bring him back. So those who believe in the sickness/cure paradigm get a Reader's Digest condensed version of what they want, and Morgan remains jolly well autistic.

The book repeatedly and convincingly gives the message that it's a mistake to try to force we autistics to behave as something other than our true selves. Parents of other autistic kids tell Collins about how their kid went through the pink monkey routine when they were mainstreamed, but did fine in an autistic school where they were allowed to communicate in their own way. Simply letting autistic people be autistic is such a revolutionary idea! But I think it will be accepted, along with ideas such as autistic culture, in the very near future.

It is easy to forget that autism is still classified as a mental illness. Part of this confusion is caused by the fact that some psychotic children (made that way by abuse or other toxic life circumstance) behave superficially similar to autistic (cf. Mira Rothenberg's Children with Emerald Eyes). The Journal of Autism used to be the Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia and the two conditions were constantly being mistaken for each other. Now it is generally acknowledged thanks to Bernard Rimland and others that autism has a biochemical and/or neurological basis and is not a response to child abuse. (I believe it is only a matter of time before multiple personality is similarly demystified.)

As of 2010, most mainstream services for autism are still dedicated to the proposition that autism can and must be cured, and that until that day, autistics must be trained to behave as close to non-autistic as possible. But the internet is full of autistic teens and adults, who explain their experiences on thousands of blogs and Youtube videos, rejecting puzzle-piece objectification. And there are blogs by parents explaining that, once again, there is nothing wrong with their kids. They're just different, so their education (not "intervention") will have to be different.

It'll take a while to change, but I believe it will change. And I will live to see it, and so will you. Thank you, Paul Collins, for bringing that day a little closer.

My nephew had this book, and I picked up his copy to look at. I couldn't put it down! I read the whole book in 2 days, and found it very uplifting. It included 'historical' information on autism, as well as personal experiences of the author. It made autism look like a learning difference instead of a severe mental deficit (as it is sometimes portrayed). The author's emotions were genuine, and the stories were touching. The reader was left feeling renewed for the fight - if need be - for his own family members or friends. It was such a healing feeling to read the book, I'm seriously considering reading it again.

As the parent of a little girl with autism, I have read many, many books on the subject. This book is one of the most intriguing ones I have come across. Paul Collins tells about his family's struggle to help their son, Morgan, who has been diagnosed with autism and intersperses his personal life with fascinating tales about Peter the wild boy and other suspected autists throughout history. The similarities between Paul's child and my own child are incredible so this book touched me in ways that many other books did not. My favorite passage in Paul's book was at the end when he writes "It's not a tragedy, it's not a sad story, it's not the movie of the week. It's my family." Well said. This book is a keeper!

What's that old pop psych principle?-the one about how everyone tends to use their professional skills to deal with what ever life hands them: Teachers will always try to teach their way through problems and engineers will try to engineer their way through. In Not Even Wrong Paul Collins says, "My living is that of a historian, which means I sequence fragments and extrapolate a world from them. I've done it every day of my life." It's not surprising then that, when his son Morgan's diagnosis with autism changed this young father's world, he got to work. Through travel, research, and direct examination with his sharp mind and tender heart, he extrapolated a new world which incorporates autism into his family, community and sense of history. Along the way, as he relates tales of those historic odd balls and geniuses who share traits with his son, he humanizes them and affirms their contributions to the world we all share. Collins also covers a range of information on autistic neurology, thinking and sensory perception in addition to some history of the diagnosis and treatment of the disorder, all while giving the reader poignant vignettes of Morgan's intriguing intellect, puzzling behavior and first forays into linguistic interpersonal communication. (Pictures! Words!) That sounds horribly dry as I describe it, but somehow this author has made it engrossing.
Among my frustrations (A polite term but this is a review of a polite book.) as the mother of an autistic child is the sense that my family has been isolated. And, frankly, for years the books on autism that I only half-read did little to change my mind. But I enjoyed every page of Not Even Wrong. Collins gets exactly right many common experiences, such as the forced transformation of our social awareness, even if he is reticent about the depth of our fear and grief. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves an autistic person and to anyone who wants to know more about autism.
Parents of autistic children take note of this great tip from page 212: Church steps are a good place to sit down and cry undisturbed. All these years I've been forcing myself to keep walking!