There is an ancient and noble tradition of burning a straw-Freud, which started during the Freudian analysis vs Jungian analysis and analysis vs behaviorism conflicts decades ago, and it is still used today to signal your allegiance to a specific tribe, usually either skeptical or religious, depending on context. On LW this tradition is honored during the winter solstice, too.
I would recommend against classical Freudian psychoanalysis in this case simply because it was developed for dealing with stuff like this, which is fairly uncommon in our society; and is probably completely unrelated to autism.
I’m sorry I can’t give you a more specific advice than this: try to contact families with similar problems and ask what worked for them. Seems to me that no therapy is scientifically proved yet, but I would probably bet on something like CBT.
When dealing with an autistic child, my impression from reading some blogs is that you should not expect any “common sense” at people-related things. Just accept that the autistic child has greater inferetial distances and problem understanding metaphors, therefore explain to them everything very simply and literally.
Seems to me that no therapy is scientifically proved yet, but I would probably bet on something like CBT.
I assume by “scientifically proved” you mean well supported by the available evidence, in which case CBT has already attained that [edit: I don’t mean specifically for autism; Villiam_Bur’s comment leads me to infer that he’s referring to CBT being a potentially useful therapy more generally]. And the reason Freud is so disparaged is because his methodology was at best proto-scientific and at worst speculation, and yet people still take him seriously. For that reason, I speculate the hostility ostensibly directed towards Freud is actually intended for his current supporters.
Actually, I wanted to say that there is no proof that CBT works for autism; but because it was proved to work for other things, I would bet on it anyway. I don’t believe it could cure the cause, but I believe it could teach some useful behaviors to somehow compensate for the missing skills.
Perhaps I’m missing a point here, but when I look in Google Scholar there seems to be enough existing research on CBT & autism to say whether it helped or not.
Those articles seem mostly about CBT used to reduce anxiety and obsessive-compulsive behavior at autistic children. Yes, that’s an area where CBT is successful, and it’s a great news that it works for autists too.
But to me it seems like it does not address the “essence” of autism (not that I know exactly what the essence of autism is), only fixes some symptoms. At the end, if everything succeeds, you will still have an autistic child; some of the problems will be fixed, some of them will remain. Yes, it’s worth doing, just don’t get your hopes too high.
There is an ancient and noble tradition of burning a straw-Freud, which started during the Freudian analysis vs Jungian analysis and analysis vs behaviorism conflicts decades ago, and it is still used today to signal your allegiance to a specific tribe, usually either skeptical or religious, depending on context. On LW this tradition is honored during the winter solstice, too.
I would recommend against classical Freudian psychoanalysis in this case simply because it was developed for dealing with stuff like this, which is fairly uncommon in our society; and is probably completely unrelated to autism.
I’m sorry I can’t give you a more specific advice than this: try to contact families with similar problems and ask what worked for them. Seems to me that no therapy is scientifically proved yet, but I would probably bet on something like CBT.
When dealing with an autistic child, my impression from reading some blogs is that you should not expect any “common sense” at people-related things. Just accept that the autistic child has greater inferetial distances and problem understanding metaphors, therefore explain to them everything very simply and literally.
I assume by “scientifically proved” you mean well supported by the available evidence, in which case CBT has already attained that [edit: I don’t mean specifically for autism; Villiam_Bur’s comment leads me to infer that he’s referring to CBT being a potentially useful therapy more generally]. And the reason Freud is so disparaged is because his methodology was at best proto-scientific and at worst speculation, and yet people still take him seriously. For that reason, I speculate the hostility ostensibly directed towards Freud is actually intended for his current supporters.
Actually, I wanted to say that there is no proof that CBT works for autism; but because it was proved to work for other things, I would bet on it anyway. I don’t believe it could cure the cause, but I believe it could teach some useful behaviors to somehow compensate for the missing skills.
Perhaps I’m missing a point here, but when I look in Google Scholar there seems to be enough existing research on CBT & autism to say whether it helped or not.
Those articles seem mostly about CBT used to reduce anxiety and obsessive-compulsive behavior at autistic children. Yes, that’s an area where CBT is successful, and it’s a great news that it works for autists too.
But to me it seems like it does not address the “essence” of autism (not that I know exactly what the essence of autism is), only fixes some symptoms. At the end, if everything succeeds, you will still have an autistic child; some of the problems will be fixed, some of them will remain. Yes, it’s worth doing, just don’t get your hopes too high.