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Reviews tagging 'Schizophrenia/Psychosis '
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently by Steve Silberman
8 reviews
The detail of the terrible child abuse was also too much for me. It is 100% important to educate people about these horrors. I would have appreciated less haunting detail or perhaps a warning so I could choose a time to read it when I could have my feelings. (I read it before work and ended up crying the whole morning.) I’m glad I read this book but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Graphic: Ableism, Child abuse, Child death, Torture, Forced institutionalization, Antisemitism, Abandonment
Moderate: Chronic illness, Self harm, Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Praising Hans Asperger as an unbridled hero and treasure, and failing to comment on the harms of outpatient therapies in the 60s and 70s in parallel to the inpatient shows either an acute lack of understanding or deliberate ignorance, and after a few glaring omissions I don't feel like this is a great way to learn about my history.
Graphic: Ableism, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexism, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, Abandonment, Colonisation
The book is white- and Western-centric, primarily focused on Austria, the UK, and the US, where most formal research on autism has been done. Silberman does include the voices of some girls and sometimes autistic mothers, plus Temple Grandin. There are some mentions of Japanese families, but very little said about minorities in the US or lower socioeconomic classes.
Silberman attempts to let the facts stand for themselves. In doing so, he does not take a strong stand against some of the figures who committed abuses. Asperger is presented as Nazi-lite. Electrocution is clearly bad, but the insidious frameworks that ins ired such a "treatment" are not fully confronted. Inference is required to identify all of the issues that Silberman presents.
This book may have the most content warnings of any book I have reviewed, although none of it is gratuitous.
Graphic: Ableism, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Physical abuse, Forced institutionalization
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Genocide, Mental illness, Misogyny, Self harm, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Antisemitism, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , War
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Fatphobia, Hate crime, Homophobia, Miscarriage, Panic attacks/disorders, Excrement, Vomit, Religious bigotry, Murder, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail
Graphic: Ableism, Body shaming, Child abuse, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Self harm, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Medical trauma, Abandonment
Moderate: Hate crime, Racial slurs, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Antisemitism, Medical trauma, Classism
Minor: Gore, Miscarriage, Panic attacks/disorders, Transphobia, Xenophobia, Religious bigotry, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , War
Minor: Child abuse, Mental illness, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Graphic: Ableism, Child abuse, Child death, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Self harm, Torture, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Murder
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Genocide, Hate crime, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Transphobia, Antisemitism, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , War, Classism
Minor: Body shaming, Bullying, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Fatphobia, Islamophobia, Grief, Abortion, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury
Neurotribes is a carefully researched book that spans over a century to look closely at how autism came to be represented in medicine and society. It's largely horrific: until nearly the 2000s, an autism diagnosis would almost always resulted in either forced institutionalization, or "treatment" that closely resembled torture, all in an effort to "overcome" it. It is absolutely heartbreaking to hear about how children are studied, experimented on, tortured, and abandoned to institutions, and there are long sections of the book that detail arguments of the time for eugenics as they are relevant to autism research and history. Still, throughout the book, it is clear the author writes with a profound compassion and empathy for people and families managing autism now: the hideous and violent history of the condition and diagnosis are condemnable, and are condemned.
The bulk of this book examines this difficult history, but it is sandwiched on either end by some speculation and observations around autism in the 21st century - it considers the "autism epidemic," a phenomenon not caused by an actual uptick in autism, but in a growth of diagnoses, as both the diagnostic criteria are expanded and better understood, and the diagnosis itself is not a sentence to a stilted life. The autism "epidemic" is simply the beautiful result of autistic individuals being allowed to exist in the whole, complex, and individual lives they have always had the capacity of enjoying - it is the beginning of an end of stigma, perhaps.
I highly recommend this book as a learning tool, for its breadth and scope, with the warning that within that scope is a long and horrible history of ableism.
Graphic: Ableism, Child abuse, Child death, Forced institutionalization, Antisemitism, Medical content, Medical trauma, Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Graphic: Ableism, Child abuse, Homophobia, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Medical trauma
Moderate: Bullying, Genocide, Self harm, Antisemitism
Minor: Self harm, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis