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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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 %.
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.
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
