Steve Silberman Meet the Author


Steve Silberman

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We will have more on those stories are at the top of the hour, but

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let's catch up with Mickey Higham Nick Higham --.

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Steve Silberman won the Samuel Johnson Prize for the best

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nonfiction book of the year. Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism

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and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently is a

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book about autism. From its first diagnosis in the 1930s, the prize

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givers called it ground-breaking and he toured a force of research. --

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and a tour de force. Steve Silberman, one of your

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starting points for this book was an idea that got about in the 90s that

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there was an epidemic of autism. That was erroneous, wasn't it, what

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there was was a change in the diagnosis, a perceived increase of

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the number of people with the disease, but nothing had changed, is

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that right? That is true. Several things happened that contributed to

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an epidemic. One was that the diagnosis was radically broadened to

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include many more people. That was intentional. It was a psychiatrist

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in London who herself was the mother of a profoundly disabled autistic

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daughter called Susie. She knew what it was like to raise such a child

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without support, resources, and access to special education. She did

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a survey in Camberwell where she started looking for autistic

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children to figure out what the proper level of Government provision

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for them would be. She saw many more children than the prevailing, very

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narrow and monolithic model of autism one accounted for. She

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basically worked behind the scenes to radically get the criteria for

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diagnosis. It persuaded governments on both sides of the atom and -- of

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the Atlantic to help people with the condition and their families. And

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overturned what has often been, since the first diagnosis in the

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1930s, a rather bleak clinical approach. They tried to cure people.

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It isn't something you can cure. And the treatments work often quite

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horrifying, frankly. That's true. It came in part because there was a

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prevailing theory that parents were responsible for causing autism in

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their children. So the recommended treatment was to remove them to

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institutions, to take them out of the toxic environment of the home.

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So they were not luxury autism awards for them to go to, they were

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sent to state hospitals, and psychology waltz for adults. Two

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generations of autistic children disappeared behind the walls. --

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psychology hospital wards. It was this idea of the mother who failed

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to love her child. Why did psychologists come up with that

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idea? Psychoanalysis was on the rise in the 1940s when the man who

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claimed to have found autism came up with that theory. He initially

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proposed autism as something which was inborn. But he ended up being

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persuaded by his colleagues that if he claimed it was inborn then there

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was no hope and there was no role for child psychiatrists like Lee

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O'Connor. They persuaded him to say it was because of bad parenting.

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That created an important role for the child psychiatrist which was to

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actually have more power than the parents and say that these children

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should be removed from the home and sent to an institution. He was

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working on developing his first diagnosis in the 1930s. At the same

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time there was another man doing similar work with a similarly

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disabled children in Vienna. Yes, he worked in the University of Vienna

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in the 1930s. He discovered what we now call the autism spectrum. He

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understood that autism was a lifelong condition that would

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require support from parents and teachers and the community. He had a

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very impressing view of autism. He also understood it was something

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genetic, not something caused by the parents. He had a chief

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diagnostician who was Jewish. In 1938 the Nazis marched into Austria

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annexed Austria from the German Fatherland. Like many Jews, he had

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to leave or die. He was rescued by Leo Connor. That was something that

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wasn't known until my book was published. It was always thought it

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was a coincidence, but in fact Leo Connor helped rescue many Jewish

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clinicians. He hired him, and he evaluated his first autistic

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patients. When he published his findings initially in Germany, he

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went to great pains to select Case histories as examples, what we would

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perhaps term high functioning autism. And there was a reason for

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that. At the time the Nazis were targeting, for euthanasia, any

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disabled children. The Nazis launched a secret euthanasia

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programme against disabled children and adults as a practice run for the

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Holocaust against the Jews. One of the things they were trying to

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eradicate was hereditary forms of disability. The children in the

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clinic became a target. He had to do what he could. He presented the most

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able of the children as possibly even a boom to the Reich by saying

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they could be good codebreakers. One of the things you tried to do in

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this book, one of the ways it changes our perspective, is to

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emphasise the fact that many autistic people are indeed highly

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gifted, highly intelligent, you find a lot of them in silicon valley, but

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the fact remains that autism can be devastating, particularly for

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families with autistic children. It is often a grim condition to have to

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live with. I do guilty -- are you guilty of glossing this like him?

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No. One of the main characters in the book is a child who is barely

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verbal. They are very profoundly disabled people in the book.

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Sometimes readers forget about them because they are not quoted, really.

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They seem to skip over them. My book represents the broad range of the

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spectrum, which, as you say, goes from very gifted programmers who

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might have a job in silicon valley, to profoundly disabled people who

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require assisted living for every day of their lives. What is the

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future for people with autism, for society and the medical

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profession's approach towards autism? This is demanding a place at

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the table when policy is set that affects their lives, such as service

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provision. They are also contributing the narratives of their

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own existence to understand autism. By hearing what autistic people go

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through in daily life we understand the condition of a lot better. You

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won the Samuel Johnson Prize last night. Pleasing for you. Does it

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have wider significance? What is nice is that I was the first popular

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science writer to win the prize in the history of the award. I am glad

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to open up that field. To make the point that science and literature

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work very well together. That is what I try to do in this book. Thank

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you very much, Steve Silberman.

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