Organização Cultural de Defesa da Cidadania - Entidade Apartidária

terça-feira, 4 de fevereiro de 2014

Autism-and-Piaget



PSYCHOLOGY


On the confusion in the vision on the autism: a Piagetian approach

Cacildo Marques*


   It is well known that there is no example in the literature about cases of autism previous to the 20th century. An autistic child is someone who does not develop the common mechanisms of communication with the similar ones, presents high performance in some area that is possible to sound out - like arithmetical and musical - and builds mentally a particular world, lost in his thought. He shouldn't, ever, be confused by an oligophrenic or by a crazy one.

   Disorder

   Now, the psychiatrists who treat behavioral disturbances invented a way of going round the fact of not managing to find autistic persons in the ancient literature. They created a very comprehensible and mystifying classification called ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorders). A child with ASD so much can be an autistic child like one with Asperger syndrome, which is something like the opposite of the autism (someone with Asperger syndrome speaks too much and has a tendency to understand everything literally).
   Countries that refuse to catalogue their victims of ASD citizens and present only statistics of autism, as France and China do it, they are accused by the international thematic organs of hiding his 'autistic persons'.
   There is, however, a second reason in order these organs had established the confusion called ASD: they intend to disguise the high rate of autism in his countries, like it takes place in the USA and in England. Some countries with low rate of autism do the joy of these organs and present their statistics of ASD, which do not differ a great deal of that of the countries with great proportion of autistic persons.
   Germany and Japan are in this case. If they will count only the authentic autistic persons, they will see that his rate is low.

Rate

   In spite of the confusion on the numbers, on account of the adoption of the ASD statistics, it is possible to note that countries of low rate of autism in his children dispose of a rate of 0,06 %, or 6 for each 10,000 children. Those of high rate, which are all other, have rate of at least 0,12 %, or 12 for each 10,000. In the globalized world, the national rates should be very near between them, but they are not. Further down we will see the reason of that.
   Two great difficulties have been obstructing advancements in the treatment of the problem of the autism. The first one is this of the classification in ASD, which has the objectives of disguising the fact of there being no autistic persons before the 20th century and of hiding the great differences between the incidence of authentic autism in several countries. Another great difficulty is of more general order and it refers to the resistance to the Psychology itself. It does not the question be a controversy between physicists, who accept the action in distance, according to outlined by Isaac Newton in his studies of strength, and chemists, who prefer to study actions that happen between material elements that are in incontestable contact. Chemists, in fact, are not the opposite of the physicists. What there is of crash is between those who believe that the human behavior depends only on concrete substances (genes, for example) and those who admit the paper of the Psychology.

Piagetians

   It is not possible to understand the phenomenon of the autism if the conclusions of Freud and Piaget will be ignored. For the first one, all the tendencies that can be developed in the individual one finds them already in his genes. Masculine baldness, alcoholism, stutter and schizophrenia are not genetic privileges of any specimens of human ones - all we are born with the necessary conditions to acquire or to develop these nuisances, in high or low grade.
   As an expert of the inquiries of Freud, Piaget formulated the Genetic Epistemology, discipline that studies the moments and the situations in which behaviors are incorporated, or rejected, along the phases of growth of child, taking into account that genes bring the multiple means of development.
   It is necessary then to introduce a para-Piagetian category in the study of the autism, so that the phenomenon can be deciphered. The question is the difference of gradation as for the speed of apprenticeship in several children.
   If we admit that children are not equally quick in the absorption of knowledge - what is in according to all the observations of the nature in the varied fields, since the unusual thing would be the equality in the times of answer-, then we will see because, in spite of all the children are born autistic in potential, only 0,06 % develops this disturbance of a refractory way to the existent means of reversion in this beginning of millennium. As it was mentioned above, the autistic child presents high performance in some area, what means that he is between those who should present speed in the apprenticeship.
   They are not all the children, so, that are sensitive to the development of the autism.

Sociabilization

   The number of children inclined to the autism is between 0,12 % and 0,15 % of the totality of children in each range of age. These would be the middle rates of the varied countries if the schools were working as confirming of the childlike tendencies, refusing to its paper of transforming behaviors. So there is, in fact, a certain line of elementary school, in general in the private system, which works under this fault, selling expensively his product. It is easy to identify this type of school: it privileges the introspection in the child and the accumulation of skills in reading and writing with sights to the good performance in the examinations, without the preoccupation of the sociabilization.
   Differently, without neglecting the programmatic contents - well-known, well-read and written ones -, healthy schools look to make loosening in the child skills in the areas of:
                         (a) self-confidence,
                         (b) oratory,
                         (c) politeness,
                         (d) posture,
                         (e) ethics,
                         (f) cooperation,
                         (g) initiative,
                         (h) musicality,
                         (i) clean and
                         (j) gymnastics.

   The schools of this last type carry out his work taking advantage of the resource of the healthy competition, whereas the introspective schools excel for the use of the unhealthy competition, sacrificing the development of the children who are not fitted in determined type of behavior that for these institutions is desirable. (It is important to notice that a school that is denied opting for one of these types of competition, withholding to the child the processing of this fact of the nature, that one sets itself up as a third type of school, certainly much more harmful than the introspective school, which cultivates the unhealthy competition.)
   Then we see why France and China not alone are refused to adopt the mystification of the classification in ASD, how they are in the group of countries of low rate of autism. One can do any type of criticism to a school model of these two countries, but the private introspective school does not exist in them. The school that exists in France and in China, with accomplished teachers, of the public system, manages to revert half of the cases of childlike autism that arrive in it, bringing the rate of 0,12 % to 0,06 %.

Intimidation

   The question that more intrigues the investigators, however, is as for the appearance of the autism in the child. If it is a phenomenon created in the 20th century, without previous registers of similar anything with it, then many hypotheses have been put forward in the attempt of some solution approaches. The idea that autism was caused by vaccines was discarded, after many statistical studies. And many people keep on studying chromosomic perturbations, without results. But the truth is not in these lands.
   It is necessary to turn to Piaget. One has observed recently that, between two children who will fulfill equivalent tasks, if one of them carries out his task in a spectacular or magic way, with great speed, other one will withdraw, unless he has not taken no notice about the proceeding of this who is on his side. This is not an inexorable nor fatal anything, since the question is decided human behavior, but it is a very strong tendency. The clever and very quick child intimidates other one, inhibiting his performance and making him stop concluding, finally, or even to begin, his task.
   Such an inhibition does not differ a great deal from what takes place in the wild nature: the dove baby sees the hawk going down in its direction, with its dreadful chirp, and then the attitude of the dove, before the imminent end, since the competition is absolutely unequal, is fainting, via an opportune and immediate unloading of adrenalin. The dove gives up of the life, as well as the slowest child stops doing what one had asked him.
   This inhibition by part of the slowest child explains great number of the cases of brothers' pairs in which the oldest one has excellent school performance and the youngster one presents himself as mediocre or up to imbecile. The same thing can take place between twins.
   In a classroom in which several pupils of high performance are brought together, slower pupils have a tendency to show null performance. The very quick children in their reasoning and in their realizations of tasks must be instructed from early, chiefly when they have small brothers, to avoid exhibitionisms of their capacities. Exceptional skills must be treated like a dangerous thing, in several senses, and children who have them need to be very well orientated.

Electronic

   The development of the disturbance of the autism certainly does not depend on this phenomenon of the difference of speed of performance between brothers or between near colleagues. Otherwise, Diogenes of Sinope, of the time of Plato, would be probably autistic, and not the cynic whom the history registered. Besides, many well-known hermits would have been autistic. What is behind the autism, so, is something that had not been up to the 20th century: electronic means of communication, principally television.
   The radio and the telephone cannot be exempted, of everything, but the television shows persons speaking, and gesticulating, in a way that for child is magic. A number that reaches 0,12 % of children, and who are quick children in their acquisitions of knowledge, this parcel refuses to compete with this omnipresent machine, and then stops developing the mechanism of the speech. Without the speech, and without the communicative gestures with which the mutes traditionally were emitting their messages, the autistic child atrophies his capacity of communication. He does not then let be inhibited by quicker children, but by spectacular equipments quicker than any human one.
   The way of confirming, or refuting, such a hypothesis is to study communities which children have access neither to the television nor to any device whit electronic display. The existent cases are limited, because only some Protestant churches have the practice to avoid television. Besides these cases, a group that is perhaps more numerous, and up to more conscientious of his philosophy, is that of the followers of the Waldorf School, of Rudolf Steiner. If we will find a proportion bigger than 0,06 % of autistic persons between children of families who follow seriously the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, then we will jump the television as suspicion of provoking autism. Until this takes place, the role of this machine is the explanation that is in force.

(*) Cacildo Marques-Souza is licensed in Mathematics and bachelor in Administration by the University of Sao Paulo (USP), and qualifyied in the program of mastership in economics of the State University of Sao Paulo (Unesp), Brazil.
cacildomarques@gmail.com, @cacildo


REFERENCES

Piaget, Jean
   The origin of intelligence in the child, 1953, Routledge & Kegan Paul

Silverman, Chloe
   Understanding Autism - Parents, Doctors, and the History of a Disorder   
   Princeton University Press, 2012

Baron-Cohen, Simon & Bolton, Patrich
   Autism: The Facts
   Oxford University Press, 1993

Kopetz, Patricia B. & Lee, E. Desmond
   Autism Worldwide: Prevalence, Perceptions, Acceptance, Action
   Journal of Social Sciences 8 (2): 196-201, 2012. ISSN 1549-3652, 2012.
   Department of Education of Children with Disabilities,
   University of Missouri-St. Louis

EUROPEAN COMMISSION - HEALTH & CONSUMER PROTECTION DIRECTORATE-GENERAL
   Some elements about the prevalence of ASD in the European Union
   http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_information/dissemination/diseases/autism_1.pdf