John Elder Robison : Successful Careers Essay

This quote from Look Me in The Eye by John Elder Robison is brief, but crucially important. During our Clarkson Seminar class discussion my fellow students and I delved into the topic of what emotions and feelings John Elder Robison possibly experienced as a child. It was generally accepted by the group that he often felt confused, frustrated, and alienated throughout his childhood. However the deeper reason as to why he felt these emotions was only briefly touched on. Much of the blame for these feelings was put on the fact that Robison did not have a formal Asperger's diagnosis as a child. It was argued that if he had a formal Asperger’s diagnosis at a young age he wouldn’t of been as frustrated as he was, simply because he would have at

Thesis Statement: Despite the common misconception that Aspergers is a disability, Christopher Boon demonstrates that the syndrome provides him with distinct advantages.

In the article, “How to Speak Asperger’s,” by Fran Goldfarb and Guthrie Devine, the authors contend that learning to communicate with people with Asperger’s Syndrome is an important skill. The authors introduce the article by providing a narrative about Goldfarb’s son. The point of her narrative is that communication is misunderstood with people with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS). The author, Fran Goldfarb, explains how her son misunderstands communication with his teachers, and how punishment is ineffective, because of his Asperger’s. The authors start by explaining why communication is very complex. To begin with, people with AS struggle with communication, because of their lack of social cues. They tend to miss irony, humor, and they take everything literally. That’s why people with AS don’t understand communication and everything is a struggle for them.

Approximately 947,570 Americans have Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), however, it is not an easy disorder to explain (Bashe 19). With multiple conditions and characteristics in each case, AS is not an easy disorder to diagnose. Asperger’s Syndrome was named after Hans Asperger, an Austrian physician, who first described the disorder in 1944 after studying a group of children with similar, unusual characteristics. However, AS was not made an official disease until 1994. Consequently, Asperger disease is just now becoming published and popular so there is still research and questions being answered. Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, is noted by above-average

Parents utilize a lot of time, energy, and finances into pursuing a diagnosis, working with school professionals, and receiving mental health services. Parents and siblings are also affected by the emotional and behavioral needs of the child with AS, such as an AS child needing more attention and support services than their siblings do. “Children with AS lack natural empathy, which interferes with the ability to be sensitive to the needs of others” (Polirstok & Houghteling, 2006, para 5), affecting family relationships. An AS child tends to withdrawal from social situations and from their own family, which tends to result in an Aspie perceiving oneself as a social failure leading to other mental health disorders, such as depression. Some parents feel isolated by their child’s difficulties and a diagnosis provided support systems, such as an Asperger parent support group. One research participant in the Calzada study stated, “Sometimes I mix with mothers of children with the same diagnosis and their children are in special schools but they’ve got the same label. I find that hard to understand. I look at their child and think they’re nothing like my child; I can’t see any similarities but they’ve got the same diagnosis.” (2006, para. 44). A lack of universality for parents seems to be a negative effect of removing the Asperger diagnosis from the DSM-5, resulting in feeling isolated and unsupported as a

Case 5.1 involves the Miller family. Harold is a 4-year-old White and Jewish pre-school student. Harold’s father is an engineering professor and his mother is a stay-at-home. A recent evaluations show that Harold has Asperger’s Syndrome (Amatea, 2013).

Mark Haddon provides us a perspective from someone living with Asperger’s, he uses first person narration to do this. Haddon creates Christopher’s unique perspective by using

John is a 50 year old African American, non-verbal, capable of saying "hey" and "by". He has been analyzed with a profound range of mental retardation. He was first admitted to Midland Center at the age of 18 months because he could not crawl, walk, or talk. John is a result of a full term pregnancy, his parents were clients at Midland Center at the time of his conception. John's father is not identified and his mother, Mae, whereabouts is not known. However prior to May 24, 1991 John's mother was residing at Palmetto Boarding Home in Walterboro, South Carolina. It was reported that she functions in the severe retarded range of Intelligence and she also has a diagnosis of chronic psychosis. She has no contact with her son. The information reported has been taken from previous reports.

high-functioning form of Autism where people have poor social and communication skills, and his parents knew he would have a challenge developing relationships.

The book Dibs in Search of Self is a story of a smart yet very unsocial and withdrawn little boy named Dibs. The story, written from Dr. Axline’s point of view, shows how Dibs goes from being completely unable to function in a normal classroom setting with other children to discovering himself through play therapy. Nowhere is the book is Dibs specifically diagnosed or even characterized as being autistic. This is not surprising as autism was not really widely understood or diagnosed until the 1960’s; this book was written in 1964. There are many correlations between this book and some of the theories and topics discussed in Berger’s text. I would like to address some of these correlations now.

Oskar Schell was nine years old when his father was tragically taken from him by two jetliners flown by terrorists. This was especially unfortunate for him as his father seemed to be the only person that fully understood how Oskar’s Aspergers affected him and could use that to keep Oskar in a state of growth. Thomas Schell, Oskar’s father, would assign Oskar ‘reconnaissance missions’ in which the young boy had to converse with strangers and do other tasks in order to grow his social skills and get him out of his shell. This was the point at which the class noticed that Oskar’s father seemed to be such a great father to make up for the fact that his own father was absent for his entire life. This moves onto the analysis of Thomas Schell Sr.

Communication is one of the hardest challenges with Asperger's. People with Asperger's have a limited area of interest, resulting in the excessive discussion about this area of interest. They often do not realize that someone has lost interest in the topic of discussion ("PubMedHealth"). "Most treatment efforts focus on enhancing communication skills and reducing problem behaviors. For children with Asperger's syndrome, most therapy should consist of school education combined with special psychological supports for communication and socialization problems "("Magill's Medical Guide"). Fortunately, people, like Jacob, have tutors or teachers to help them converse and behave in a calm and collected manner. Jess, Jacob's tutor, teaches him how to order food politely, how to greet people, and overall, how to carry on a conversation without delving too deep into a certain subject. Being in a school environment gives one with Asperger's a sense of belonging or recognition. Jacob goes to a public school that allows him to use a "get out of class" pass if it gets too overwhelming for him.

Johnny Bailey was a star football player in high school and in college. During his play, time he's showed others not to judge him or others because they’re lower than them. "He was quite a top guy," said Fred Nuesch, who was the Texas A&I sports information director during Bailey's college career. "He was a nice young man and he represented us well whenever he went to different places [to accept his awards]." Every coach he’s ever had during his career adored him because of his hard work and dedication.

The movie Mary and Max is the story of an eight year old girl, named Mary, from Australia who doesn’t have any friends, and lives with her father and alcoholic mother. Max is a forty-four year old man from New York City, who is obese, has a disorder later revealed to be Aspergers, and also has no friends. They develop an unlikely friendship when Mary picks his name out of a phone book and decides to write him a letter asking him where babies come from. They become penpals and friends through many ups and downs in their lives, returning to each other for support and advice. This movie would make a wonderful study on Asperger 's Syndrome alone, however it touches on many other psychological principles

Ego can prohibit the idea of one’s true-self. All Joyce, Jared’s mother wants is for Jared to be like any normal kid, but he is not. This upsets her, and she constantly tries to bring up the fact that he may have Asperger’s and proceeds to explain why. Jared and Joyce, are having a civilized conversation while cooking dinner when Joyce brings up a psychologist and Jared immediately begins to get angry and yells, “I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that I don’t have it… I AM NOT FUCKING RETARDED” (Baker 12). Jared’s anger towards Asperger’s and his mother comes out, and he