BiblioVault - Books about Autism in children

Autism and Gender

From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks

Jordynn Jack

University of Illinois Press, 2014

The reasons behind the increase in autism diagnoses have become hotly contested in the media as well as within the medical, scholarly, and autistic communities. Jordynn Jack suggests the proliferating number of discussions point to autism as a rhetorical phenomenon that engenders attempts to persuade through arguments, appeals to emotions, and representational strategies.

In Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks, Jack focuses on the ways gender influences popular discussion and understanding of autism's causes and effects. She identifies gendered theories like the “refrigerator mother” theory, for example, which blames emotionally distant mothers for autism, and the “extreme male brain” theory, which links autism to the modes of systematic thinking found in male computer geeks. Jack's analysis reveals how people employ such highly gendered theories to craft rhetorical narratives around stock characters--fix-it dads, heroic mother warriors rescuing children from autism--that advocate for ends beyond the story itself while also allowing the storyteller to gain authority, understand the disorder, and take part in debates.

Autism and Gender reveals the ways we build narratives around controversial topics while offering new insights into the ways rhetorical inquiry can and does contribute to conversations about gender and disability.

[more]

Birth of the Other

Rosine Lefort, in collaberation with Robert Lefort

University of Illinois Press, 1994

   Originally published as Naissance de l' Autre (1980), Birth
        of the Other offers a rare look at language acquisition from a Lacanian
        perspective. In 1951-52 Rosine Lefort conducted the treatment of two largely
        preverbal children, guiding them through psychoanalysis and meticulously
        documenting their activities. Lefort has applied her subsequent training
        in Lacanian theory to these early case notes, which provide remarkably
        lucid examples of exceedingly difficult concepts.
      This exceptional work thus clarifies many misconceptions about psychoanalytic
        theory, furnishes unique insight into what Lacan calls the "time
        of analysis," and grants a clearer understanding of the relationship
        between language and the unconscious.
      "Anyone interested in
        Lacan's psychoanalytical theories should not fail to read these revealing
        clinical studies by one of Lacan's most authoritative and lucid interpreters."
        -- Herman Rapaport, author of Between the Sign and the Gaze

[more]

Children with Autism

A Developmental Perspective

Marian Sigman and Lisa Capps

Harvard University Press, 1997

A window on the insular world of autism, this book offers a rare close look at the mysterious condition that afflicts approximately 350,000 Americans and affects millions more. As they make sense of the many features of autism at every level of intellectual functioning across the life span, Marian Sigman and Lisa Capps weave together clinical vignettes, research findings, methodological considerations, and historical accounts. The result is a compelling, comprehensive view of the disorder, as true to human experience as it is to scientific observation.

Children with Autism is unique in that it views autism through the lens of developmental psychopathology, a discipline grounded in the belief that studies of normal and abnormal development can inform and enhance one another. Sigman and Capps conduct readers through the course of development from infancy to adulthood, outlining the differences between normal and autistic individuals at each stage and highlighting the links between growth in cognitive, social, and emotional domains. In particular, Sigman and Capps suggest that deficits in social understanding emerge in the early infancy of autistic children, and they explore how these deficits organize the development of autistic individuals through the course of their lives. They also examine the effects certain characteristics can have on an autistic person's adjustment over time. Their book concludes with an overview of existing interventions and promising avenues for further research.

[more]