Regular marked price: $21.00Discount Price: $18.90
Cost Savings: $2.10 (10%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.85882
EAN num: 9780814799284
ISBN number: 0814799280
Label: NYU Press
Manufacturer: NYU Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 314
Printing Date: August 01, 2005
Publishing house: NYU Press
Release Date: August 01, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 491660
Studio: NYU Press
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.
'The writings of Rubin, Mukhopadhyay, and all of the contributors are testament to the need to embrace a 'disability consciousness' in seeking educational and therapeutic options for autistic persons so that they can achieve their full potential. While Biklen refrains from extensive analysis of his contributors' words, his book is truly valuable in its straightforward presentation of the voices of autistic persons speaking not only for but as themselves.'
—Disability Studies Quarterly
'Disagrees with the common picture of autism, presenting chapters written by those with autism themselves—including those considered most severely disabled within the world of autism—to present a personalized view of how autism is experienced by those diagnosed. . . . A 'must' for any who understand the autistic experience.'
—Bookwatch
'Biklen's tenacity is to be admired.'
—CHOICE
“The prevailing view of autism and disability is redefined in this beautifully written book. Can you ask for more than to inform, inspire, challenge, and help to create new ways of understanding? Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone forces us to confront misunderstanding, misperceptions, and lack of knowledge, and to rethink disability and autism. It demands that we embrace people who act, communicate, and socialize differently. I love this book!”
—Jan Nisbet, Director, Institute on Disability
”Austism and the Myth of the Person Alone is one of those rare professional books that causes one to pause and consider what it tells us about our literature, our field, and, perhaps, ourselves...Biklen has given us a fascinating, thoughtful and, most important, essential book by including insights, experiences, and perspectives of individuals with autism to add to the canon.”
—American Association on Mental Retardation
Autism has been defined by experts as a developmental disorder affecting social and communication skills as well as verbal and nonverbal communication. It is said to occur in as many as 2 to 6 in 1,000 individuals. This book challenges the prevailing, tragic narrative of impairment that so often characterizes discussions about autism.
Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone seriously engages the perspectives of people with autism, including those who have been considered as the most severely disabled within the autism spectrum. The heart of the book consists of chapters by people with autism themselves, either in an interview format with the author or written by themselves. Each author communicates either by typing or by a combination of speech and typing. These chapters are framed by a substantive introduction and conclusion that contextualize the book, the methodology, and the analysis, and situate it within a critical disability studies framework. The volume allows a look into the rich and insightful perspectives of people who have heretofore been thought of as uninterested in the world.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
In the plethora of works on ASDs, Biklen's edited volume is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding autistic experience with an eye to theory or therapy.
Rated by buyers -
This is a beautiful book, an important book, a book that should be required reading for everyone who has any dealings whatsoever with persons with autism. It is awe-inspiring to read about how seven individuals, each of whom experiences autism in unique ways, have learned to move beyond the ongoing challenges they face daily to live full lives with the assistance of a communication method known as Facilitated Communication.
This book offers not only an intriguing look at some of the many faces of autism, but also at how the use of Facilitated Communication has allowed them to express their thoughts, expose their intelligence, and to be an active member of the world community.
Rated by buyers 
-
It's about time we had a book that debunks and confronts head on the fallacies about autism. I am sick of the fallacy that people with autism are alone and choose solitude. Bull manure! People with autism love and crave social interaction, but have difficulty in navigating on tricky social grounds.
It's about time we retired that tired fallacy about "fixing" people with autism altogther. I am sick of people with autism being regarded as being in need of repair - how about we "repair" the neurotypical (NT) myth once and for all? If you want to know more about autism, then talk to somebody who has it. Not all people with autism are nonverbal. Many is the time when people with autism have asked NT people how to pass for NT and other tips in surviving in a world that tilts in favor of the NT population.
It's about time adults with autism living full, productive lives were given a turn at bat. Kudos to Biklen for introducing several people with autism living rich, full lives replete with socialization to us all. If you want a glimpse behind the Autistic Curtain, then this book is for you.
It's about time to read this!
Rated by buyers -
When I recommend that people buy just one book about autistic people, this is usually it. It powerfully destroys stereotypes about autistic people whose primary mode of communication is not speech, including the idea that we all have the same experience of the world or that we all came to our current method of communication in the same way (or even that we all use the same method of communication). It also deals with the routine underestimation of autistic people that happens as a matter of course, and the folly of the ongoing automatic classification of some autistic people as 'low-functioning'.
Rated by buyers -
This is an outstanding book, one of the landmark publications to date from the literature of autistic people speaking for themselves.
Of course autistic people can and do communicate. Scientists have defined the category of autism by an impairment of communication, not its absence. Nor do the criteria say anything about intelligence (however that concept may be defined).
Readers will discover that Douglas Biklen, the book's co-author and editor, addresses these issues in the introductory chapter:
"In light of the controversy, this book includes [with one exception] individuals who can type without physical support or who can speak the words that they type, before and as they type them and after they have typed them."
It's interesting that the present controversy echoes similar debates that have occurred in the last century regarding the capabilities of deaf people, people with cerebral palsy, people of non-European descent, and so on. Those debates included assertions from the existing power structure that the dis-empowered class of people (whoever they happened to be) couldn't/didn't/shouldn't speak for themselves. Sound familiar?
A bit more on the science and how this book addresses it. Why, and among whom, is FC (facilitated communication, or typing with the help of another person) controversial? The primary reason is that peer-reviewed publications, including controlled studies, show mixed (not only negative) results. On page 9, Biklen elaborates:
"Controversy has swirled around the method of facilitated communication because it has been shown that a facilitator's physical touch of the typist's hand or arm could influence the person's pointing, and because a number of studies failed to validate authorship ([13 references cited]). Each of the above studies used one basic type as assessment, namely, message-passing; the person being assessed was asked to convey information that could not be known to the facilitator. Other studies, using a range of test situations as well as linguistic analysis and documentation of physical, independent-of-facilitator typing, have successfully demonstrated authorship ([11 references cited])."
So the controversy is in fact not a matter of scientists vs. nonscientists, but of debate based on evidence and reason (with some emotion thrown in from all sides; the parties involved are only human, after all). From the scientific literaure, here's an example from researchers at Harvard and MIT:
"The case of a 13-year-old boy with autism, severe mental retardation, and a seizure disorder who was able to demonstrate valid facilitated communication was described. ... This case study adds to the small, but growing number of demonstrations that facilitated communication can sometimes be a valid method for at least some individuals with developmental disabilities." (Weiss MJ, Wagner SH, Bauman ML. Mental Retardation. 1996 August.)
Since that study, scientists have published further work suggesting that autistic people are capable of more than has been previously assumed. According to a recent review on IQ testing of autistic people:
"There are frequent claims in the literature that a majority of children with autism are mentally retarded (MR). The present study examined the evidence used as the basis for these claims, reviewing 215 articles published between 1937 and 2003. ... Overall, the findings indicate that more empirical evidence is needed before conclusions can be made about the percentages of children with autism who are mentally retarded." (Edelson, M.G. (2006). Are the majority of children with autism mentally retarded?: A systematic evaluation of the data. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 21, 66-83.)
The idea that (nonverbal) autistic people can't/don't/shouldn't speak for themselves cannot be defended, except, echoing Oliver Sacks, by an appeal to the notion that "the alternative is unthinkable". (In other words, we've assumed it to be so, and the consequences of acknowledging our errors are so vast that it's safer to deny evidence to the contrary.) I say it's about time to think outside the box, or really, to expand the umbrella to include autistic people (along with everyone else) such that their basic needs for self-expression are met. If you're into that, you will like this book. If you're not, you really ought to read it and reconsider.
Find other books like this one:
