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Your brain is a rain forest
People with conditions like ADHD, dyslexia and mood disorders are routinely labeled "disabled". But differences among brains are as enriching—and essential—as differences among plants and animals. Welcome to the new field of neurodiversity.
Imagine for a moment that our society has been transformed into a culture of flowers. Now let’s say for the sake of argument that the psychiatrists are the roses. Visualize a gigantic sunflower coming into the rose psychiatrist’s office. The psychiatrist pulls out his diagnostic tools and in a matter of a half an hour or so has come up with a diagnosis: “You suffer from hugism. It’s a treatable condition if caught early enough, but alas, there’s not too much we can do for you at this point in your development. We do, however, have some strategies that can help you learn to cope with your disorder.” The sunflower receives the suggestions and leaves the doctor’s consulting room with its brilliant yellow and brown head hanging low on its stem.
Next on the doctor’s schedule is a tiny bluet. The rose psychiatrist gives the bluet a few diagnostic tests and a full physical examination. Then it renders its judgment: “Sorry, bluet, but you have GD, or growing disability. We think it’s genetic. However, you needn’t worry. With appropriate treatment, you can learn to live a productive and successful life in a plot of well-drained sandy loam somewhere.”
The bluet leaves the doctor’s office feeling even smaller than when it came in. Finally, a calla lily enters the consulting room and the psychiatrist needs only five minutes to determine the problem: “You have PDD, or petal deficit disorder. This can be controlled, though not cured, with a specially designed formula. In fact, my local herbicide representative has left me with some free samples if you’d like to give them a try.”
These scenarios sound silly, but they serve as a metaphor for how our culture treats neurological differences in human beings these days. Instead of celebrating the natural diversity inherent in human brains, too often we medicalize and pathologize those differences by saying, “Johnny has autism. Susie has a learning disability. Pete suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.”
Imagine if we did this with cultural distinctions (“People from Holland suffer from altitude deprivation syndrome”) or racial differences (“Eduardo has a pigmentation disorder because his skin isn’t white”). We’d be regarded as racists and nationalists. Yet, with respect to the human brain, this sort of thinking goes on all the time under the aegis of “objective” science.
The lessons we have learned about biodiversity and cultural and racial diversity need to be applied to the human brain. We need a new field of neurodiversity that regards human brains as the biological entities they are, and appreciates the vast natural differences that exist from one brain to another regarding sociability, learning, attention, mood and other important mental functions.
Instead of pretending that hidden away in a vault somewhere is a perfectly “normal” brain, to which all other brains must be compared (e.g., the rose psychiatrist’s brain), we need to admit that there is no standard brain, just as there is no standard flower, or standard cultural or racial group, and that, in fact, diversity among brains is just as wonderfully enriching as biodiversity and the diversity among cultures and races.
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Excellent article, especially in raising awareness that "disorders" may be accompanied by positive traits, and that prejudice needs to be replaced with sound knowledge and a willingness to "think outside the box" (something many people with "disorders" do naturally!)
One comment: The perspective of someone who has a "disorder" may be quite different from that of a so-called "neurotypical" (or "normal") person. I don't believe that it is entirely fair to say that, whenever there is a mis-match in understandings, the "understanding" of the so-called "normal" person should be automatically taken as the default assumption. I will use some examples from Asperger's syndrome, a condition with which I personally live.
For example, I don't necessarily lack empathy; I'm in fact quite compassionate, sometimes to a fault. However, I don't have a good handle on how to handle deception, including self-deception; I'm also regarded as being very "blunt". Some distinction must be made between identifying with people's basic feelings vs. their desire to self-deceive, before applying the blanket label of "non-empathic" across the board. Besides, just how many "normals" REALLY care about other people, except as adjuncts to their own egos ???
Likewise, many people misunderstand my fascination with, say, the internal workings of a computer; do they realize that I can get just as bored with sports talk, fashion, or outright gossip? Why should interests in the latter be automatically regarded as "normal" to the exclusion of just about everything else?
I'm not alone in these observations; many of us with Asperger's are actually quite articulate, and we've shared similar observations among ourselves. Check out www.wrongplanet.net to see a community that is for people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders and their loved ones. I'm sure that similar communities exist for many other "disorders".
The point here is that, if neurodiversity researchers (and others) want to understand where we're really coming from, maybe they need to actually start asking us how we really perceive the world around us. It's like trying to understand what it's like to live in the ghetto: If you haven't lived there yourself, you should at least talk to people who have lived there, or your own limiting assumptions are likely to distort your perceptions of that more diverse reality that you're trying to understand!
posted by shevek on 6/ 3/2010 4:52 pm