Last updated on November 26, 2023
Halfway through NeuroTribes and it primarily serves to reinforce history I knew after reading so much over the last 12 years about autism, yet the books adds important details. Overall, the names largely missing from history (often women) are given a nod by Silberman in his history of the autism community, something I consider essential to the record.
But, let’s be honest: men dominated the psychiatric field in the United States and they did an absolutely horrendous job as they embraced misogynistic and deeply flawed theories of autism. In particular, the frauds Leo Kanner and Bruno Bettelheim deserve scorn for promoting the “refrigerator mother” hypothesis. Though I have only started the section on Bernard Rimland, I largely blame him for Ivar Lovaas’ connection to autism. Lovaas, a man who wanted to cure “effeminate” boys.
Any history of psychiatry is bound to disturb a reader. The “dark ages” of psychiatry continue to this day with a fair bit of nonsense still in practice.
Steve Silberman does not glorify these men, though he wrote the first edition before we knew the depths of Asperger’s support for Nazi ideas. NeuroTribes paints a largely sympathetic picture of Asperger and his colleagues. It is probably more complicated than my gut reaction to Asperger: Nazis are bad, period.
The second half of the book, as we approach the 1970s and into the present, will likely connect more with my experiences, since I was born in the late 1960s. I’m one of the “undiscovered” autistics who was reclassified only after the spectrum was embraced by healthcare providers.
In the pages of NeuroTribes, I do see myself. I’m the socially awkward geek, someone who still has Polaroid photo collections of clouds from elementary school and other data that wouldn’t be significant to 99 percent of people. My isolation and my struggles are reflected in the case studies. That might make others feel better or something, but it only reminds me that I am an outcast no matter what.
We cannot expect Silberman to present histories not documented. He cannot tell us about the women and minorities never diagnosed, for example. Autism is, historically, a story of middle-class white boys who were taken to specialists by parents with the educational backgrounds and social privilege to know something wasn’t right with other diagnoses for their sons.
If I ever get around to updating my text or writing a new book about my experiences, I doubt I’d be offering anything that Silberman and others haven’t already documented. Social skills matter, and those are what autistics lack, so we struggle to succeed in professions that require interpersonal networks.
I’m trying to be positive, but reading about autistics seldom makes me feel better about myself — which is why I didn’t rush to read NeuroTribes when it was published. To read the history and the case studies is to feel like little has changed. It is to say, “Great, there are people like me and most of them aren’t all that successful either.”
As I read the book, I’ll post some more thoughts. Admittedly, I am not reading it quickly as it takes a lot of energy to engage with the text. Silberman writes well and brings together important information. That I see so much of myself in the pages is what exhausts me.