Posted on 07/15/2008 5:08:57 PM PDT by jazusamo
I haven’t kept up. We did most of our business at NAS Coronado (my uncle lived nearby until fairly recently) and occasionally at the Marine base, of which the name has dropped out of my mind right now.
The correlation is with older fathers, and not with older mothers, as I understand.
The decline had already started by 1979. Somewhere between 1974 and 1977 Senator Vasconcellos (we used to jokingly call him Senator Vascectomy) had already started the self esteem programs in the CA public schools. I sort of use that as a symbolic marker for the beginning of the end. Back then it was a joke. Now, it has infected an entire generation of kids.
You are exactly right.
we used to jokingly call him Senator Vascectomy) had already started the self esteem programs in the CA public schools. I sort of use that as a symbolic marker for the beginning of the end.
Yes, the "self-esteem movement". blech. I remember it well. Immediately prior to 1974, in my highschool, when "conflict resolution" was in its earliest stages, and we were encouraged to work out "conflicts" with our parents using a pillow to represent our "parents" and what would like to say to them... When Melville's Billy Budd was taught in my honors Lit class from a feminist perspective, when the first grads of Berkeley's free speech movement were teaching at my school, when Planned Parenthood had an on-campus rep at my school; when it was resolved that the open-classroom (architecturally) had contributed greatly to lower class work and poorer students... then, we began to see the inkling of the "self-esteem movement".
Being "mellow" and "being yourself" was the next phase of the "let it all hang out" mental fashion coda.
And what was going on in business training programs in SF during this time was.. well.. right out of a scientology manual of today. Truly, trippy. It excused sloppy standards and found alibis for incompetence.
But I refused to give up my fantastic and entirely wearable and durable polyester business suits for Levi Jeans and the new "peasant look". I travelled a lot. I've always been well pressed. :)
I think it goes something like this. A researcher or a group of researchers publish a seminal article on a very rare, devastating and poorly understood condition. “Wow, cool!” think their lesser colleagues and jump on the bandwagon, producing a whole slew of “companion” (academic codeword for “copycat”) literature. Of course, since the disorder is, as I mentioned, rare, subjects are in short supply; and, because the disorder is poorly understood, there isn’t much to discuss, except descriptively and by outlining the diagnostic criteria. Thus, these diagnostic criteria get “revised” and “updated” — meaning they get expanded — which, of course, kills two birds with one stone: generates more subjects for study and gives researchers something new to write about. At some point, the flurry of scientific and administrative activity spills over into mainstream media. This is where all hell breaks loose, particularly if the disorder affects children. The media reports how the original researcher estimated circa 1908 that there were only about 80 people in the world with this condition and now 1 in 6 has it!! Hack historians begin cavalierly diagnosing famous figures from the past. School administrations push the diagnosis relentlessly, as a way of lightening up their overloaded classrooms by sending those children who aren’t perfectly obedient and docile to special ed. Therapists and some parents also push the diagnosis relentlessly, as a way of getting drugs or services that, they figure, can’t hurt. Doctors begin diagnosing left and right as well, with an eye towards their malpractice carrier — for, a false positive diagnosis is not malpractice, but failure to diagnose is. People start talking about an “epidemic”. In order to make sure all the afflicted are discovered, diagnostic criteria are expanded even further, thus making the “epidemic” a self-fulfilling prophecy. Meanwhile the researchers, who have done little except establish protocol and modify it a few times claim, that they have made “tremendous progress towards understanding” the condition, though they have no more clue than 50 years ago as to what causes it, how to prevent it, or how to cure it. In other words, it becomes a fad — and it hardly benefits those people who truly suffer from the condition.
Strictly speaking, the problem with the ASD label today is not overdiagnosis, but overmedicalization. After all, it is, as I said, a matter of protocol. The powers that be decide what the diagnostic criteria are, and if a large swath of humanity meets those criteria, then it is what it is. What bothers me, however, is that there is a definite trend towards pathologizing socially troublesome behaviors. As someone once wrote, a child can no longer be simply boisterous or simply shy without provoking inquiry into whether he is suffering from the Condition Du Jour. And if he ever had anything like speech delay, then perfectly normal behaviors (dumping girlfriend, interest in nuclear physics) will be interpreted as a manifestations of “lifelong difficulties” (relationship troubles, narrow interests). I few months ago, in a conversation with a relative who happened to be a physician, I mentioned an 18th-century German archaeologist who from childhood was keenly interested in clues that old junk offers about people who made it or owned it, and thus spent his early years rummaging through rubbish heaps instead of playing with other boys. “Ah, he must have been autistic,” the doctor said, dismissively. To his contemporaries, he was merely eccentric — to her, he was a head case. In the 18th century, he became an eminent scholar, a published author, and a highly regarded expert on antiquities. Today, he would have been thrust into an institution, away from rigorous academic pursuits, and indoctrinated that he is physically and mentally incapable to function successfully in the world of “normal” people. This is ridiculous, really. Must every slight departure from the mainstream be characterized as a “disorder”?
And folks, please don’t say things like “My daughter has it, autism is real, etc.” It may be real in your case — but the undoubted existence of a condition does not justify slapping the label on people who merely don’t follow social conventions and expectations closely enough. The conflation of culture with medicine is truly frightening. And overdiagnosis isn’t as harmless as some have claimed. A false positive has devastating effects on a family. Children are placed in educational environments that are wrong for them. They are subjected to endless testing. And they grow up believing they are handicapped and different (in a bad way) from everyone else. And let’s not ignore the parents. There are people who divorce in the wake of a diagnosis, people who kill themselves. And even when they do not, a false diagnosis leaves psychological scars that can never truly be healed.
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