Heavyweight Psychology Wars: Piaget vs. Vygotsky

Piaget vs. Vygotsky - like I said in a previous post, EVERYTHING is a war in American culture. I'm only bringing up this clash between two theories in the psychology of child development and learning because the basic assumptions expressed by Piaget and Vygotsky have a huge bearing on how Asperger's children are defined, viewed and treated by the Helping, Caring, Fixing industry.

Piaget is famous for his 4 stages of development, in which children are like trains that must arrive at specific stations on time. This schedule is absolute, in that behavior and cognitive development is "written" in the Big Book of Universal Law, and any deviation from the rule is a sign of a defective child. Also, children are on their own when learning: children must "discover" knowledge by themselves, without social interference, which begs the question, why do we build schools and hire teachers?

How bizarre! The advantage of the long and open window of learning in humans, is that it's efficient! The individual doesn't have to re-discover a vast trove of existing knowledge, which no individual could possibly do, but has the tremendous advantage of learning from OTHER HUMANS, even those who died long ago. 

In my opinion, Piaget's demands are highly unrealistic (indeed wacky) and are founded in religious prescriptions (supernatural ) rather than being scientific. According to Piaget, a child's behavior must conform to a specific set of instructions, regardless of his or her environment, culture, or social reality. Individual talents and personality 'don't count.' Whether or not a child is born in Madagascar, Siberia, or California, this scheme for learning and development is The Scheme. Wow! Sounds like the justification for the American tradition of Corporate / Religious take over (extermination) of cultures around the world.

 

Vygotsky, as one may guess, since this is a war, is thoroughly disparaged by some 'assembly line' advocates who follow Piaget. It could be that because Vygotsky was Russian, this irrational state of mind is a legacy of the Cold War. The basic differences are:
1. Vygotsky maintained that the cultural and historical context in which the child is born is vital in child learning and development. 2. There are no "stages" of prescribed development. Children  develop along a curve, not in steps. 3. Children learn, not in isolation, but from the adults around them, who provide knowledge and demonstrate skills that help the child to think in increasingly advanced ways until they can function as adults - on their own. Wow! Sounds like a Commie Plot to me!

The tragedy of Psychology Wars, is that American public schools have become the laboratories / battlefields on which competing theories are being tested. Theories are weaponized, politicized and bastardized in the hands of educators, school boards, parents, teachers, consultants, so-called experts, lawyers and publishers - armies of contestants in the dash for funding, contracts, grants and salaries.  Meanwhile, classroom applications of competing psychologies, which are falsely presented as  scientific fact, work at cross-purposes in the classroom, and serve to destroy education.

How does this clash between Titanic Theories of Psychology affect learning and development in Asperger children and - importantly - how society judges us?
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Need I say more? This is not how the world works: this is how psychologists remake the world in their own irrational image.

 

Being Asperger / Some Reactions

Feeling time after time that you need to say "I'm sorry", and not knowing what it is you did. 
  
Being abandoned by a person whom you thought was a friend, when he or she realizes that you are really different, and not pretending.

Being treated like an object, and wanting to yell, "I'm human."

Being referred to as 'quirky' 'eccentric' 'our favorite weirdo' or 'strange, but harmless' when being introduced to someone new, as if the person speaking anticipates that you will do something wrong, and apologizes beforehand.

Being told that you don't care about people, nor do you want friends: that you are incapable of love and affection - by people who claim to care about people, but either they don't, or they don't consider you to be a person. 

Being told that because you are intelligent, well-spoken and an attractive female that you can't possibly be suffering. Your life is perfect.

The instinctive hurt of social lies, especially the big ones, about justice, equality, and fair play; the pervasive disrespect for people of 'lesser' value, by so-called 'normal' people. 

F. Nietzsche, a smart guy!

People criticize your desire and need to spend time alone, but at the same time they want you to go away. In fact, they want anyone who isn't like them to vanish from the universe.

People who think that they own the universe, and go on trashing a planet to which all people belong, but is owned by no one. 

Living in a social world in which 90% of what humans need and value is missing. 

The constant awareness of an invisible cage of words and looks and expectations that social people accept without being aware that it limits or controls them, but which for an Asperger individual is like being locked in a nightmare. 
 
Knowing that a touch of Asperger's would result in a happier and healthier human population, better distribution of resources, effective problem-solving and greater equality in society, but that nothing we can do or say convince social people that we have a contribution to make.

Manipulation of the DSM-5: Robin S. Rosenberg, Clinical Psychologist

Abnormal Is the New Normal

Why will half of the U.S. population have a diagnosable mental disorder?

By Robin S. Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist in San Francisco and the author of Superhero Origins and Abnormal Psychology. Edited for length; bold my emphasis. Full article can be read in SLATE, Medical Examiner section, 4/12/13. 

In addition to classifying some medical disorders as mental disorders, the DSM also has been nibbling at the edges of “normal” by reclassifying as pathological the patterns of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that were previously considered normal (albeit perhaps weird or odd). For instance, people who are extremely shy and concerned about how others might evaluate them, and who thus avoid certain types of activities, might be diagnosed with “avoidant personality disorder.” These same characteristics didn’t used to be considered pathological, and in some other cultures they are not considered to be so.

Another way that the increased prevalence of mental illness occurs is by lowering the threshold of what it takes to be diagnosed with a given disorder. For instance, DSM-5 will change in the criteria for “generalized anxiety disorder,” a disorder that involves excessive and persistent worrying. Whereas the criteria in DSM-IV required three out of six symptoms of worrying, only one symptom is needed in DSM-5. Similarly, whereas in DSM-IV the symptoms must have persisted for at least six months, in DSM-5 the duration has been reduced to three months.

One effect of a bigger mental illness tent is that there are fewer people standing outside the tent. Although the next edition of the DSM might not increase the overall number of disorders, if the criteria are loosened…then more people would qualify for a disorder. There are, and probably will continue to be, fewer and fewer people who will live their lives in relatively good mental health according to the DSM.

The normal trials and tribulations of life—the periods of sadness, or worry, of anxiety, or grief, of difficulty sleeping, of drinking too much caffeine or having caffeine withdrawal headaches—have been pathologized. They’ve been made into mental illnesses… providing a bigger tent for mental illness leaves us with an increasingly restricted definition of mental health and can make us all more likely to see mental illness even when it isn’t there—where there is just normal human struggle. We can become so used to seeing psychopathology that we think—erroneously—that being odd or having difficulties must be an expression of mental illness.

What is going in our culture that allows for this expanding definition of mental illness? There are many explanations. The first is related to payment for treatment. Psychological treatments and medications can be useful for a variety of problems, but for those treatments to be even partially paid for by health insurance companies, the problems must have a diagnosis. It’s not enough that there’s a problem that’s being addressed. It has to be a problem. (Of course, if you treat a problem before it becomes a mental illness, the health insurance company will have ended up saving a significant amount of money, but they don’t pay for early mental health intervention—there has to be a problem. But that’s a story beyond the scope of this article.)

Second, pharmaceutical companies search for ever-wider markets for their products. When more people are diagnosed with a given disorder (perhaps because of less stringent criteria), or a new diagnosis is created, it widens the market for their drugs. They push for “off-label” uses of their medications that in some way reduce a problem, and then they push for that “problem” to be redefined as a problem.

In fact, DSM-5 and the pharmaceutical industry have a significant number of connections: One study found that 70 percent of DSM-5 task-force members have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

Anyone who maintains that the diagnosis put forth in the DSM are science-based is CRAZY...

In a crazy world, sanity must be earned.

 

"Abracadabra" versus "Make It So"

This is the erroneous belief at the core of magic, that words have the power to create reality. Modern humans suffer from the ancient supernatural assurance that "saying" is the same as "doing." This is most obvious today in the institutional practice of stating the intention to "fix" a problem such as child poverty, but the actions taken result in...nothing. Stating intent to solve a problem is not problem solving: political statements are not based on correct analysis of the cause or causes and in practice can obscure or cancel out what might be effective strategies. The result is more laws, and the application of a modern magical remedy: money. Money is believed to solve problems, but it doesn't. The sums allotted to even minor projects have escalated over recent years into hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, which the U.S. government doesn't have, but must borrow, and the debt is converted to funds that are "upcycled" to the wealthy. Problems become chronic, institutionalized, and falsely believed to be unsolvable.

Stymied by their own lack of clear thinking, lack of science and technical knowledge, and belief in the magical power of words, officials and experts claim that no matter how simple the problem, it is extraordinarily complex, and that more funds must be allocated to initiate more studies which merely repeat the cycle and prolong the situation. The problem is PEOPLE who cannot take the step from magic to physical reality; people who believe that the social hierarchy is the only path to results, and that those results are conditioned on the "good will" and responsible feelings of those individuals who have gained power. Can you hear me laughing? Social people cannot seem to grasp this fatal roadblock to effective analysis and action. 

 

The anti-magic corollary to "abracadabra" is MAKE IT SO, used by Captain Picard on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. This command is a call to action, based on the fact that the ship has been designed to perform its functions, and that the crew has been selected and trained to utilize the ship's capabilities, and then some. How ominous is it that a Sci-Fi TV show is a real model for teamwork, competence and success, while the social world spirals out of control?

How ironic, when violence against women has high social value, and is advanced and taught by the entertainment industry.

Sensory Diversity, Brains, and Judeo-Christian Myth

Does the Autism Spectrum make any sense?

I want to spend some time on sensory sensitivities, because I believe that the myriad confusing symptoms that are considered to be diagnostic of Asperger's are the RESULT of a different sensory reception and processing scheme than is present in so-called normal people. The unusually broad array of behaviors and thought processes used to diagnose Asperger people is internally contradictory and inconsistent. Also, these symptoms are unequally distributed among individuals diagnosed as Asperger. A grab bag of 'suspicious' or unwanted behaviors is being used to diagnose an increasing array of new disorders without looking deeply into the origin of such disparate symptoms. Dozens of characteristics are  grouped as a spectrum more from convenience than evidence. The range of possible drivers of behavior is left unknown, and therefore facts that might untangle the mess and lead to a better understanding of developmental diversity in our species remain hidden.

An analogy: A panel of experts decides that having a pain in the neck is pretty much the same as having a headache, so neck pain is swept into a Headache Disorder spectrum. Regardless of how many, or which symptoms the individual may or may not exhibit along this spectrum, he or she is then told that the problem is a defective brain. There is no cure or treatment, but a person can be trained to act is if no pain exists. The CAUSE of the headache (or neck pain) is ignored. The pain might be traced to a brain tumor, allergies, or whiplash, but no differentiation is made.  

The sweeping conclusion that diverse humans can be categorically removed to a "disordered" space reflects a dominant religious attitude that a male god made man in His likeness, therefore there is only ONE God-given correct set of thoughts and behaviors acceptable in human beings. Note that the "disordered space" by definition includes females, and any person authorities designate.  Too many experts and scientists have this conceptual structure embedded in their work and don't even realize it, but cultural ideas taint their assumptions and therefore their conclusions. The insistence that Homo sapiens is the ultimate human, divinely inspired and separated from the animals by a towering barrier of supernatural origin, is only recently being challenged in anthropology and evolutionary science. The supposedly rock-solid line that was drawn by religious males over two millennia ago, which divides "sub-humans" from a self-designated Supreme Man has wrecked the lives of millions of human beings. 

Brilliant!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

The absolutely most true and hysterical video of what it's like to be an Asperger forced to deal with Neurotypicals.

Be nice, please?

If social people were nicer to us, maybe we’d be more social.

What constitutes nice behavior? Nice is different for Asperger individuals than it is for social people. Nice requires sincerity, that is, curiosity about people and not about what they own or what they can do for you. It's equality of status: We're all human - take off the boxing gloves, friendship isn't a competition, it's a collaboration. Open up your mind to the idea that not all humans must be exactly like you. And yes, stop rambling on and on about nothing. Be nice. Have something to say that comes from your own mind and not some drivel you heard on TV.