A letter to Dr Sukhareva - 100 years later #autism #girls

Dr Sukhareva,

Thank you for publishing your paper on girls like me and my daughter. I am sorry it took nearly 100 years for it to be seen more widely. They now (in the 21st century) claim we “mask” our autism but it seems the problem is misogyny and an incomplete understanding of autism history. I was unaware I would have been considered a “schizoid” personality and I am glad to be informed of this. I am not afraid of the term and embrace it. I can see the social repression that was happening in the early 20th century and the language you use and assumptions you make need some work. But I am glad you left this study behind.

As a 21st century autistic woman, white, living in colonial Australia I have been subject to the forces of colonisation through church, culture and the social, however I believe because my family were immigrants I felt a little outside anyway and was able to retain some of my schizoid self. I am also very musical/artistic so am acceptable and even liked in my social circles.

To get you up to speed, some people think autism is the force of outside agents like trauma, or disease or economic factors or vaccines. Some even believe it to be demonic! Some say it’s innate and our brain/biological makeup. Some say we are angels fallen to Earth! To me autism is like an interface between the inside and the outside of my experience. My personal opinion? I was born like this.

I wasn’t traumatised as a child, I had an idyllic, safe, clean environment growing up. My mum was depressed, sure, my ancestors traumatised too, but for the first 14 years. I had a nice childhood. There was no war and we lived safely and economically stable in a forest. This is a contrast to your patients who suffered through some very harsh circumstances.

From the age of 14 I was however bullied and sexually assaulted a number of times and for someone so sheltered the shocks of ‘reality’ affected me greatly. In the end I think I disassociated to save my life. I gave up on myself and restricted my being. This however has proved unsustainable.

I recognise myself in each one of your case studies and I would like to explore the resonances. I will present my thoughts and share my personal ideas around them. Resonance has been an important construct in my life, in music and creativity, in friendship and when moving from abstract to concrete - from theory into the personal.

So I will personalise your theories and critique.

Case #1

• “..a talented girl with “strong individuality” —-Absolutely, ask anyone.

• Showed great concern and sensitivity towards them at such times. Absolutely, ask anyone.

• Great love of independence. My mum said this. I moved out of home at 19, was always wanting independence and my parents were strict.

• Spends her free time aimlessly.. I spent hours listening to music and dreaming, Does this count? Does there have to be an aim?

• Had no interest in reading, Only music or useful things TO ME. Not a fan of fiction would rather live my life instead of reading about made up others.

• Showed no preference for games. Too competitive.

• she was unskilled with chores, Mum taught me.

• she did everything clumsily: dropped everything, was uncoordinated. Got the scars and bodily injuries from falling to prove it

• She took little interest in her clothing, was often untidily dressed, had no particular love of order for her things. Only when depressed and wanting to disappear.

• She did not like to dress like everyone else; she went about with no overcoat in winter or wore odd stockings. Legend - odd stockings/ socks FTW

• She can perform logical operations well only within the confines of the concrete. If you bring abstract in to concrete I can understand it better and more easily.

• distrustful, sceptical attitude towards everything: “Everything is bad here, the children are bad too, it was better at the other school.” Felt that way when I was being bullied and harrassed in various institutions. School and workplace

• The constant desire to be better, combined with her feelings of inferiority, creates an underlying affective tone of restlessness and a distrustful, suspicious attitude towards people. I feel this.

• She apperceives people’s behaviour towards her very finely; yeh a little too well sometimes

• She has a sense of camaraderie, it is expressed through constant effort to protect anyone who has been slighted; but here too it is to do with an idiosyncratic, inflexible, and hyperbolic sense of justice. Absolutely. Not sure why a sense of justice and caring about others is being pathologised?

• “individualistic” from an early age. Absolutely, ask anyone.

• restless sleep, nightmares, hyperimaginative lies. Yeh, but the lying bit - do you mean storytelling - also what is reality to you because mine is probably a little different.

• Rudiments of the paranoid symptom complex: distrusting, suspicious behaviour towards other people, constant quest for justice. Yes, but bullying and abuse was happening or had happened.

Case #2

• talent for visual art was observed. It was until one teacher told me I wasn’t good at it.

• The teacher considered her gifted not just technically but also artistically and creatively. Yes, me and classical singing

• definite tendency towards systemisation shown. I can dig this - its not a deficit.

• It is interesting that with all pictures depicting seeming impossibilities, she was insistently determined to demonstrate that the picture was accurate, even though she had understood it correctly: “Doesn’t matter; this kind of thing happens; I like doing everything backwards too; this uncle is dressed very warmly in summer; I do the same thing: I wear a coat in summer but not in winter.” Trying to explain the impossible is fun and thinking of the opposite of an argument also is good for me.

• Contrastive associations occur: many negations If something doesn’t feel right to me I question it

• Good performance ability at school. Until the bullying started

• She is very unsettled in class, wriggles around on the bench, jumps up, pulls, and picks at the exercise books. Guilty

• “I dislike everything and everyone here is bad.” Bullying and shitty school trying to force me to be like everyone else

• She is very sensitive, her self-esteem is particularly vulnerable. True

• She has a fine understanding of different emotional experiences. True.

• The teacher believed she was the most sensitive and intelligent girl in her whole group. Won the christian living award

Case #3

• She was always very strong-willed and disobedient, always did the opposite of what she was asked to do. Sometimes

• sticks to rote work For spelling and maths yes - for me it was a kind of musical learning

• When she is worked up, she pulls vulgar pranks, plays the clown, dresses in some strange outfit that stands out, pulls faces. Guilty. Likely bored or frustrated.

• Very emotive, sensitive, tender, and affectionate. Guilty so is my daughter.

• Constantly experiencing a simultaneous “I want to” and “I don’t want to”. She will want something intensely and at the same time impulsively fight against her own desires. Guilty

• Feels embarrassed about her clumsy movements. YES. Humiliated quite a few times.

• Pronounced deficiency in motor skills: movements clumsy and angular, synkineses. My body hurts from the falls. Yes to the facial movement stuff too

Case #4

• Showed talent for music early on: (ability to improvise). ME

• marked absentmindedness became more noticeable with every year. ME bullying and hormones made me worse.

• Intelligent and perceptive, yet she could not manage the simplest requests. Sometimes

• she forgot My mum said if my head wasn’t screwed on I’d leave it behind

• would take an hour to get dressed, trying to find something comfortable and make sure I looked neat enough.

• Before doing anything, she had to make very elaborate preparations, took far too long, was often distracted by something, didn’t finish what she started. Her character was not ill-natured, but her manner had little of the childlike friendliness and gentleness. ME. Took me ages to get ready for school and work. Mum taught me to do it quicker so I could sleep more. I never slept well so foggy from tiredness.

• She enjoyed playing with children, but preferred the company of adults. ME ask anyone. I was precocious according to dad.

• particularly enjoyed hearing imaginative stories and fairy tales. Guilty

• She loved noisy play involving movement and rarely played with dolls. ME

• would not tolerate the Froebelian games, and invented her own. Smart kid

• Despite her musical talent, she made poor progress, did not enjoy doing “theory”

• I got interested in theory when my teacher explained that it would help me write music. I was able to learn it then.

• She understood everything very quickly but forgot it all just as fast. ME

• She became healthy during her time in the country. I still do feel better around nature

• Walks with immensely long steps. Haha me

• Sleep—falls asleep with difficulty I meditate to go to sleep now.

• asks: “Am I normal?” “I have such large hands—does this happen or is it an illness?”, etc. My family called me hypochondriac

• Complains about her own absent-mindedness, says she can’t do anything, because she forgets it all so quickly. ME because of being told off

• If some work is suggested to her, she declines circuitously: “I will never finish it, I won’t be able to do it.” Approaches work unwillingly and gets anxiously worked up. ME anxious

• Logical processes are coordinated, no absent-mindedness, no restriction of thought. ME

• She has the capacity for abstract thought. ME

• very clear understanding of human emotions and relationships. ME Interesting that the other case study has this too. I think we like to explore life and peoples experiences.

• Greatly enjoys engaging in class, loves music, physical exercises, and games—plays with great enthusiasm and risk. ME

• Alongside high estimation of herself and her abilities, striving to be better than the others—a constant anxiety and insecurity about her own capabilities. I made it to the Conservatorium and dropped out because of this.

• She is egoistic and concerned with her own ends, but frequently also makes an effort for her schoolmates and stands up for them. I thought this was normal lol\

• Enjoys talking about principles and justice. Me.

• Her behaviour can often be annoying and intrusive. haha Me

• She pesters people with endless questions and requests; is very insistent when she wants something. Need the info

• Special talents: she is musically gifted (ability to compose) and shows literary abilities (writes stories for the school children’s magazine). Wrote a piece for a friend which got into the yearbook, wrote a musical, have written SO much. Composing music since 10 years old.

• She had been an intelligent, gifted, musical child. YES

• The teachers who worked with her considered her a gifted girl but difficult to educate on account of her high level of absent-mindedness. I can show you my school reports.This got bad during puberty - because of bullying and hormones/changing body and peer stuff.

Case #5

• The mother coddled the girl yet wound her up at the same time through her nervousness ME

• Many superfluous movements when she is agitated. Sometimes compulsive movements: nail biting. Clumsy gait. Facial expressions correspond to the situation (a bit too much sometimes).

• Voice loud, piercing. I ended up singing opera.

• Did not like dolls and broke them to find out what was inside; preferred active games with boys. The boys did fun stuff and didn't bully like the girls. I love pulling apart things to put them back together.

• “I have never been afraid of anything. I climbed onto the attic and on top of roofs. I’ve always been very wilful and I enjoyed doing things despite being told not to.” YES this was normal fun in my childhood. I sat on the edge of. Waterfall and did all sorts of climbing.

• “Don’t interrogate me.” I am still like this. I don’t let many people in because my life is pretty strange and intense and people want to offer quick fixes for stuff. I am also independent and like to sort things out.

• She likes to be praised very much but is also very embarrassed when this happens; often expresses a fear that people will laugh and make fun of her. “I would rather you told me off than praised me.” Me, but didn't like being told off at all. Mum had to teach me to take compliments about my singing.

• Talented girl. Musical, sings well. Dramatic talent. Draws well. Hello!

Symptoms <<Characteristics>> that appear frequently but not always. (I changed your language to de-pathologise it)

We count among the basic symptoms <<characteristics>>:

1. the autistic attitude

Not sure what this is….

2. Ambivalence of the thymopsyche,

Ambivalence —- the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas

Thymopsyche - The life, soul, emotions, or passions of the mind: "A person's thyopsyche represents ideas, mental representations or desires.”

I believe this is the ability to see things from different perspectives or entertain the impossible - things you should not be curbing or pathologising.

3. the idiosyncratic thought processes: tendency towards the abstract and

formal; automatism..

4. symptoms of motor skill deficiency: angularity, clumsy movements.

REALLY WISH I HAD KNOWN ABOUT THIS > MY WHOLE BODY HURTS

Among the accessory symptoms:

1. the paranoid symptom complex—the distrustful,suspicious attitude towards the people around her (the constant feeling of being hurt, the erroneous interpretation of other people’s behaviour),

BULLYING

1. the psychasthenic syndrome: insecurity, feelings of inferiority, tendency towards obsessive compulsiveness, and symptoms which could be called “catatonoid” symptoms—increased suggestibility, pronounced negativism, sometimes both at once,

BULLYING

1. related to this last group are the psychomotor disorders—tendencies towards stereotyped movements, foolish behaviour, automatism; impulsivity.

BULLYING

1. The main difference is that for the girls, the emotional disturbances always come to the fore in the picture of schizoid psychopathies. It is precisely these emotional defects which mark the schizoid person with the stamp of vulgarity, quirkiness, and eccentricity. This is just rude tbh - I think this is the reason I liked the company of boys. Boys are less disturbed by these things.

A distinguishing feature of the girls is also their great volatility of mood, where the mood changes of the schizoid girl differ very strongly from the hysterical lability of mood and the cyclothymic endogenous mood phases. Lack of sleep and social pressures and bullying will make someone volatile, especially when they are sensitive

All these children are very egocentric, strive to be something greater, and feel every injury to their self-esteem extraordinarily keenly. Sometimes people with low self esteem seem distant and haughty from the outside.

The ambivalence makes a mark here too: a high level of self-esteem and inflated self-estimation goes hand in hand with a feeling of inferiority which gives rise to a constant feeling of inner tension vented through seemingly inexplicable moods and tomfoolery.

I repeat, sometimes people with low self esteem seem distant and haughty from the outside. Tomfoolery is a way to make friends or comrades and seems to be acceptable for boys and not girls?

2. The idiosyncrasies of schizoid thinking are less markedly pronounced with the girls Could be the reasons nobody has been able to see us for 100 years?. We have observed such schizoid symptoms as a pronounced automatism of thought (Cases 1, 2, 3), sometimes a slightly plastic, somewhat restricted psyche, and a certain autism of thought which manifested as a disconnect from the real world I’d like to know what you think the real world is…. (weakening of the feeling of reality). The tendency towards the abstract, towards schematic and formal thinking which is characteristic of the schizoid boys is observed much less often in the girls (we saw this in only one case).

In addition to the greater emotiveness of women, their thinking is more vivid, intuitive, and visual; this hinders the operations required for abstraction. Intuition is abstract..

Women perceive the world in concrete images and are less capable of abstract and schematic thinking. Generalisation

They are the odd ones out in children’s social settings; sometimes, they provoke hostile behaviour How do they provoke hostile behaviour…. Are they being bullied? (Cases 1, 3, and 5), and "sometimes, they simply don’t stand out." ---- Like I said, 100 years.

They also have a peculiar, rigid sense of justice which is tied in to a tendency to see underdogs whom they must protect everywhere—pedantic warriors for principles. This can be a bad bad thing when they are radicalised by religions or cults or politics. Otherwise caring about the “underdog” ..as you say.. is an admirable thing.

Thats all i got for now. I've just run out of spoons. Thats what we say now when we're at our limits of coping and need to stop. Our suicide rate is higher and we die from stress related illnesses. Many of us also have co-occuring conditions that need medical treatment also. Looking after oneself has become very important and recognising our autonomy and needs paramount.

Thanks again,

This information is VERY handy,

f

x