I had a letter from a mother who wanted to share her letter.  Here it is: Read the rest of this entry »

  I have done consultations with those who fit Exposure Anxiety since 1996 and still do online consultations with those wanting to manage this highly problematic condition. This is a snip from an upcoming abridged version of my book, Exposure Anxiety: The Invisible Cage.

If there were a diagnostic criteria for EA it might fit this: Read the rest of this entry »

  Once upon a time Romans forced gladiators to fight wild animals for the audience’s blood lust.  Then we had Nazi Germany where regular Germans turned a blind eye to persecution or considered their own part in it minimal for they were only doing what ‘others had already done’.  And we had football but it became so corporate people lost ownership of it.  Today we have celebrity bashing as the new football and those who get the boots in will often say “I wasn’t the first”, “I’m only doing what others had already done” and that he or she ‘deserved it’ by ‘making themselves a public person’.   When haters call for new recruits, I find this lust for shared hatred sociologically fascinating but also calls to my spirituality as a Taoist.  Why do people crave such imbalance? Read the rest of this entry »

  I recently got a comment on one of my blogs.  It was from a staunch supporter of a psychoanalytic approach to autism, an approach which held that autism was caused by trauma in the womb or due to a difficult birth (and could be treated through ‘rebirthing‘ and the debunked 1970s autism treatment of ‘holding therapy‘.  This ‘primal pain’ theory includes the idea that the autistic child has become autistic from things as vast as chemical assaults by smoking and substance abusing mothers, by mothers experiencing mental illness or abuse or other trauma during pregnancy or who feel negativity or indifference about the child they are carrying or were effected by mother’s suffering post natal depression.  He wanted to raise with me the idea that I was actually a “broken normal”.  This is our conversation: Read the rest of this entry »

  At the age of 25 I scored just under 70 on an IQ test.  That’s in the mildly mentally retarded range.  But by then I already spoke 4 languages, could scan volumes of books, play instruments, and could recite back long auditory strings outside of the ability of most humans.

I also already had an honors degree in Sociology, a degree in Linguistics.  So how could I score so low? Read the rest of this entry »

If art expresses the cognition, perception, social emotional, communication and personality states of the artist, what are we learning from artists with autism?  Are we learning about autism at all through their art, and if so, which facets of their autism?  Are we in fact learning more about the diversity of autism through the array of works by people with autism and how does this stir up fiercely defended old and new stereotypes? Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes there are things which would be funny if they weren’t so annoying.  One of those is where the use of the title “Dr” is taken to mean the person is qualified as a medical doctor, as a psychologist or psychiatrist.  In fact “Dr” simply means they have a ‘doctorate‘, a PhD, a piece of paper showing they have achieved the highest level of education in a given field.  But that could be a doctorate, a PhD in Philosophy, Sociology, Engineering, even in Biology and they’d have no more expertise to diagnose language, psychiatric, information processing, developmental or personality disorders, than a well read garbo. Read the rest of this entry »

  Zealots love a conspiracy and there’s nothing anyone can do to HELP THEM get over the manifestation of what might even be THEIR personality disorder.  So why do some people pull out all the stops to gather others with their same orientation to escalate their theories into hate, even into public shaming forums and as far as cyber stalking.  Read the rest of this entry »

A student named Kim Fairley had read several of my books and ws writing a paper on The Development of Autism.  She asked if she could ask some questions.  I agreed on the basis I’d publish it as an interview for the benefit of others.  Here’s the interview: Read the rest of this entry »

  Barrie Silberberg is author of: The Autism and ADHD Diet: A Step-by-Step Guide to Hope and Healing by Living Gluten Free and Casein Free (GFCF) and Other Interventions, to be published by Sourcebooks, Inc. April 2009.  Having been one of the earliest diagnosed people with autism on a GF/CF and low Salicylate/low Phenol diet (I went on this in 1990) I invited her to send me some questions about my experiences with the diet.  Here’s our interview:  Read the rest of this entry »