Vortrag

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The image in society of autism is very inaccurate and also one-sided. Basically, there

are two imaginations, one of them based on the film “Rainman”. People who can

hardly communicate and speak, can’t find their way in everyday life but can calculate

better than every calculator or can see at the first side how many matches are spread

out on the table.

The second imagination of autism is the extreme form of autism. People can hardly

express themselves, have stereotypical movements like upper body rocking and they

are nearly a nursing case.

Both descriptions can be real, but they are rare.

For most of the autistic people these two descriptions don’t hold true, not to that

extent and not in this form. Sure, there are autistic people who can’t speak, sure every

autistic person has problems with communication and sure there are autistic people

who have areas of interests and skills which are out of the ordinary. However, “special

talents” as Rainman shows they are a rarity, whereas you can see special interests

more often. The diversity of interests of many autistic people is much smaller than

normal but many of the autistic people deal with their topics of interests more

intensely than other people would do it. That it`s for the big knowledge that many

autistic people have about their topics, often it’s much more than you need for

everyday live and much more than other people normally have.

To the second description is to be said that we talk in this case about people who have

a very high level of autism. In this case it is forgotten that the intensity of autism can

be very different, and it isn’t said that autistic people need help in every situation in

their live only because they have autism. There are a lot of autistic people who need

only a little bit of special help or can live without any special help. How much help a

person with autism need is up to this person and their skills.

For the diagnosis (especially in adulthood) it isn’t that interesting what the person has

done, how much help this person needs, or which interests this person has. The

question is more than that which abnormalities were there in the development of this

person in infancy and later on, the communication behaviour, social behaviour and

evidence of changes in perception and diversity of interests.

Autism isn’t only a big spectrum related to the intensity but also to the particularities

of autistic people. Autism affects people contradictorily and seem mutually exclusive.

For example, physical contact. Autism is connected with problems to be in physical

contact, it’s rejected. But there are also Autistic people who want to have physical

contact, some of them search for it/ look for it or demand physical contact in their own

way. The same you can find also when we talk about hypersensitivity to different

perceptions, some have a pain in their eyes when they see flickering lights and other

people like it and can’t get enough flickering lights. Some autistic people hardly feel it

if someone toughed them and the others feel been touched when the hand is still 10

cm away of his/her own body. These examples show only extremes. These symptoms

differ in their gradation and severity depending on the autistic person and the current

situation of the autistic person.

Now I tried to explain Autism. Perhaps your question now is what the differences

between autistic people and non-autistic people are. I will try to answer this question

in another text. But I will say some immediately about that: Most of the particularities

of autistic people differ not in their kind but in the form and frequency of needs, skills

and disabilities which also influences the thinking of autistic people.