Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This book was the first of autobiographical accounts I read about a family’s intimate experience of autism in one of their members. This is about an enchanting, classically autistic child, who displayed all the deeply puzzling features that have fascinated me. Almost a fairy tale in itself, with a rightly optimistic message to other parents. Learning happens even when severe learning disability is present, and autistic individuals can make amazing progress – without becoming ‘normal’.
Your next book was actually written by the mother of a child with autism – The Siege: A Family’s Journey into the World of an Autistic Child by Clara Claiborne Park.
Yes, the mother wrote it at a time when autism was not at all known. It was one of the first such accounts and it influenced me greatly because it gives such a detailed and truthful description of the everyday life of an autistic child. Now there are quite a number of biographies written by parents.
For a researcher they are rich sources of information.You can’t replace that kind of information by just observing a child for a few days. I have always been influenced by what parents say about autism. For example, in the case of Ellie, the little girl described in this book, she was both incredibly learning-disabled and incredibly intelligent. How can this be explained? This question has fascinated me ever since I started learning about autism.
Ellie had an amazing and very different sense of time, space and colour. And she is now actually a rather good artist. When she was little, she had no speech and couldn’t understand anything that was going on around her. She grew up in an extremely loving family and that fact alone was extremely important to be brought out. In those days some influential people thought autism was due to rejection by the mother. In the 1960s when I did my PhD this idea badly needed to be debunked. There was so little known about autism.
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Uta Frith is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Visiting Professor at Aarhus University where she participates in the ‘Interacting Minds’ group. She is well-known for her pioneering work on neuro-developmental disorders, especially autism. She has contributed some of the major theories explaining the enigmatic symptoms of this condition and has published numerous scientific articles and books. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
