I was told by my OT not to do EMDR work while I was doing OT. When I mentioned it, she looked positively alarmed and said that it would severely overload my system. So that may be evidence that EMDR works differently from stimming. After all, she didn’t tell me to stay away from stimming altogether. In fact, she encouraged me to stim whenever I needed to.

I wonder if the posit that stimming is a form of systematizing behavior may not be related to the systematizing integrative effects of EMDR, if you’ve ever experienced that treatment for PTSD. I’ve had positive effects from a form of that–the finger waving version– and it does remind me of finger flipping my profoundly autistic brother does when he’s happy.

I’m diagnosed AS (not surprisingly) and I stim when I’m severely stressed, which I am pretty darn good at avoiding by now. I do think the activity might have a similar action in the mind to the EMDR.

Just a thought…
DB

You make an excellent point. In arguing against what I consider Baron-Cohen’s oversimplications about innate male and female traits, I overstated. What I meant to say is that any research that leaves the influence of culture out of the equation, especially concerning its effect on gender roles and gender identity, is fundamentally flawed. One cannot assert, with any assurance, that male and female traits have only a biological/neurological foundation any more than one can assert that they are only cultural constructs. The interaction between nature and nurture is too complex to develop a theory in which one trumps the other.

I love reading your blog.

It’s vital to examine the flaws and assumptions made in such research. I was very much agreeing with your critique until I read the following point you made, on which I’d like to give feedback:

“Any difference in abilities between males and females can easily be explained not by brain structure, but by the ways in which girls are socialized and educated in western societies.”

Cognitive abilities and traits such as the one you mentioned have been studied through neuropsychological and other tests and do have a biological basis. Many studies investigate the neural correlates of such cognitive traits (for example, those associated with executive dysfunction.) Endophenotypes are also studied.

I felt the need to comment on this point because it reminded me of some of the assumptions of psychologists I have met who insist that all cognitive traits and neurologically-based issues can be explained purely by things like culture, social context, upbringing and gender roles. They are unaware of the research literature demonstrating the etiology of such traits and conditions is more complex than this, having strong genetic and neurobiological basis. This assumption is still prevalent among professionals today (the consequences of which I have had the misfortune of experiencing firsthand), and can result in harm. In many places today, eating disorders, anxiety disorders and autism are being blamed purely on nurture and environmental causes. This is in spite of it now being known there are innate predisposing risk factors involved, such as the cognitive style of detail-oriented processing associated with eating disorders. Cognitive traits and styles are to a large degree innate.

Thanks for the link to the Gestalt forum. I have a feeling I’ll be spending some time there.

As a female who got Asperger’s dx late in life, I took the EQ & SQ tests in back of B-C’s “The Essential Difference” book. I got very low scores on both scales, which would indicate I do little of either systemizing or empathizing ? My NT boyfriend at the time took same quizzes & got high scores on both scales. Go figure…

Only recently found this blog, and I resonate with so much of what you’ve described throughout the posts. Thanks.

Ever since my daughter spent a year in a wheelchair and looked during the last months of her illness very much like someone retarded, I’ve made a point of making eye contact with everyone I pass who seems disabled. What are the chances that beneath the spastic exterior resides someone perfectly lucid and intelligent? Even if it only happens once in my lifetime, I will be overjoyed if I manage to affirm the humanity of someone who rarely gets treated like a person.

On generalizing a population: this already happens in the mainstream world, of course. There are technical definitions of normal (such as IQ test scores) that get applied to all of us, and not a single human being is “normal” in every respect. (And if there is one, well, that’s the exception that proves the rule: how abnormal is being normal in every single respect? ) And generalizations have their uses. Oaks aren’t elms, but it’s useful to have a category “tree” which represents their general commonalities. But people shouldn’t forget that generalizations have limited applicability–and when they do, that’s where the problems begin to get serious.