Autistic people are strange people, they are often mistaken for morons and even sent to special schools for mentally retarded children. But there it turns out: the child has a number of intellectual abilities that are not characteristic of "ordinary" people.
Doctors all over the world are sounding the alarm: recently, more and more children are being diagnosed with autism. What is the reason? To understand it, you need to understand what is hidden in human physiology behind intuitive ideas about genius.
Are there limits to the growth of the brain as the basis of the human mind?
There are many outstanding scientists in science who came close to autism without crossing the line of pathology - Newton, Einstein, Darwin, Boltzmann, Planck, Mendeleev, Carnot, Ehrenfest, Schrödinger and many others. Einstein and Newton are prime examples.
Einstein kept himself out of the circle of his peers as a child. Until the age of 7, before obsession, he repeated the same sentences. However, all his life he retained the reverent surprise that he experienced at the age of 5 from the compass and at the age of 12 from geometry. I could not fit into the canons of training and career. He hated cramming and dropped out of school at 15.
He graduated from the Polytechnic Institute, but aroused such hostility of the professors that he could not continue his scientific work. Only after 2 years I found a permanent job. She had nothing to do with science - the patent office in Bern. It was there that the official performed work on the special theory of relativity. Throughout his life, Einstein did not know how to ensure his livelihood in the conventional way.
This is not uncommon for autistic individuals. Peter Mitchell, the author of one of the most significant discoveries of the 20th century - the electrical explanation of the energy of life that led to the Nobel Prize, was able to finish the work and publish it at his own expense only because he unexpectedly received an inheritance.
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The concept of "autism" was first introduced by Z. Blair in 1920 as a symptom in severe disorders of interaction with reality in adults with schizophrenia. Early childhood autism was described by Leo Kanner (1943, Kanner syndrome) and then by Hans Asperger (1949). Then one of the definitions of autism sounded like "a person's disconnection from the outside world." This disease affects not only mental functions (speech, intellect, thinking), but also affects the child's perception of a holistic picture of the world.
The main problem of autism lies in the lack of understanding, non-perception by a person of the events taking place around. It has been proven that most of the cases of autism are hereditary, but the exact mechanisms of inheritance are still unknown. The only thing that can be argued is that it is not autism itself that is inherited, but the prerequisites for its development. Whether they will be implemented or not depends largely on external circumstances.
That is why quite often the cause of the appearance of signs of autism at the age of 2-2.5 years is a variety of previous events: birth trauma, natural asphyxia and other disorders of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as various factors that act after birth.
According to available data, the number of people with autism is increasing every year. However, it is unclear whether this is due to some external factors or whether the boundaries of the concept of "autism" are expanding.
Children with autism, starting from the first months of life, have some developmental features. Such a child avoids all types of interaction with adults: he does not cuddle up to his mother when she picks him up, does not stretch out his arms and reach for her, as a healthy baby does, does not look into the eyes, avoids direct gaze.
He often has predominant peripheral vision (looks out of the corner of his eye), he may also not respond to sounds, to his name, which often makes these children suspect a hearing impairment, which in reality is not.
In autism, a characteristic feature of mental development is inconsistency, an ambiguous manifestation of its violation. An autistic child may be both highly intellectual and mentally retarded, may be gifted in some area (music, mathematics), but at the same time not have the simplest everyday and social skills. In various situations, the child can be awkward, and can demonstrate amazing motor dexterity.
The intelligence quotient of autistic children often exceeds 70 on a 100-point scale. Such children show abilities, sometimes just brilliant ones, for drawing, music, construction.
The rest of the spheres of life are not affected at all and do not interest the child. The autistic child is extremely bound by his own stereotypes. His entire inner world is squeezed into a rigid framework, beyond which it is a tragedy for him. This is primarily due to the so-called neophobia - the fear of everything new. In particular, autistic children suffer from sensory phobia, for example, they may be afraid of household electrical appliances that make harsh sounds, the noise of water, darkness or bright light, closed doors, high-necked clothing, etc.
When an autistic child is in a particularly bad situation, he may show aggression and self-aggression. An explosion of despair of destructive power is usually directed against interference in his life and attempts to change the prevailing stereotypes. Selectivity in contacts and lack of visible attachment even to close people result from a whole system of fears, and as a result, self-prohibitions and self-restraints.
Speech is notable for its inflexibility, “made-up”, “mechanistic”, “parrot”. Often gives the impression of being stamped. One of the striking characteristics of the speech of an autistic child is echolaling, often a delayed repetition of a phrase heard somewhere out of connection with the real situation.
When diagnosing autism, the main criterion is that this disease never develops in a healthy child after 5 years. Thus, if the listed deviations are found in a more mature age, one should first of all think about schizophrenia, and not about autism.
Now there are a lot of techniques and developments aimed at treating or correcting autism. For example, communication therapy helps develop a child's independence, autonomy and social adaptation skills. It is also important to facilitate the development of communication skills through sign language and various other methods of non-verbal communication.
Audio-vocal training and audio-training are aimed at the subsequent adaptation of the autistic child in the same way as conflict therapy, the main method of which is a forced hug, "forceal holding", or holding therapy.
This method is also called "forced support" and was first proposed by M. Weich. It consists in an attempt to force, almost forcibly, the formation of a physical connection between mother and child, since it is the absence of this connection that is often considered the main disorder in autism.
Autism cannot be called a disease or even an inferiority in the usual sense of these words. Autistic children often have extraordinary intelligence and talent. As one of the doctors said to a desperate parent: "You have to reach out to his inner world, believe me, it's worth it." Life examples convince that it is so.