Lovaas literally didn’t see autistic people as human. Tell me again about the respect this man had for disabled people. Tell me he saw autistic people as humans and just wanted to help us live “in the real world”.
This is the therapist who created ABA. This is the therapy people are defending. If you are an “autism parent” who defends ABA, I suggest you read this passage and listen to autistic people when we say ABA is abusive and dehumanizing.
[Image: Text from what seems to be an e-book, a paragraph is highlighted in yellow and reads:
“He explained to Psychology Today, “You see, you start pretty much from scratch with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense - they have hair, a nose and a mouth - but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way of looking at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person.”]
This statement is out of context, and the original poster didn’t even bother to cut out the part above the highlighted paragraph that hints at what Lovaas likely really means. “…(lan)guage, intellectual and social behaviors where none had existed…” That is what he means. He even says in the quote that’s highlighted “but they are not people in a psychological sense.” The key word there is psychological.
He is not saying autistic people aren’t people in general and don’t deserve to be treated as people. He is saying that autistic people, especially children, lack certain social skills that most neurotypical people have almost inherently, such as reading expressions and understanding sarcasm. In that sense, yes it is like building a person when teaching an autistic person these skills.
Also keep in mind there are 191 other pages of this we aren’t seeing while looking at this screenshot, and the OP didn’t link us to the original source. We can’t even confirm for ourselves what he is saying in full context, we are just supposed to take their word for it. If they really cared about the apparent “abuse” in ABA therapy, wouldn’t they have provided more evidence to support their claim instead of saying “listen to us we’re autistic!”?
This post has “jump to conclusions” written all over it, and I encourage parents to do actual research instead of listening to emotional knee-jerks like this. If you choose to put your child into ABA, be sure you are able to confirm your child’s safety, and have a say in what goes on. Listening to autistic people is a great way to learn more about the experience, but autistic people are not the sole authority on this topic.
The fact than you think you’re little explanation of “what he really means” “in context” makes it any better is so beyond disturbing.
@my-makeshift-masquerade Just for information’s sake, the quote is from Neurotribes. There are references at the end of said chapter. If you want me to look up page numbers and such, I can grab my copy and do that at a later date. But if you want to get to know what Lovaas was all about, you should read The Me Book. But I have a feeling that you don’t actually care about anything except justifying this streaming pile of dung, which is appalling. Never work with autistic people, or children in general, please. Lord.
Thank you for the offer. Information is always welcome! For the record, I don’t care about justification, but I do care about the truth. You calling Lovaas a steaming pile of dung shows you have no bias at all, right? Also, it’s a shame you say that, I work with myself all the time.
Oh, my bad for caring about stopping an abusive therapy that caused PTSD. Yeah I’m clearly supposed to just sit back and be ok with that.
News flash - you can be autistic and support things that harm other autistic people. You can be an autistic person and an asshole! Imagine that!
i mean, the context it was taken out of didn’t make anything better, i’m literally screaming right now
of course they have a bias, especially if the thing they have a bias against is actually shitty
what is even going on
Right?
Like ok, save for a bunch of right wing homophobes, I don’t tend to see people go, well saying conversion therapy is bad is showing you’re biased! No, we recognize that a bad thing is a bad thing.
Also I bring up conversion therapy because Lovaas was the father of BOTH. ABA and conversion therapy all come from the same place. It’s “funny” (no it’s not) that one is almost without question considered to be awful and the other is seen as “the most effective therapy” for autistic kids. As a queer autistic person, this pisses me off.
btw, there's a LOT of articles available online about the shit Lovaas said. For example, the article referenced above is available here: http://www.neurodiversity.com/library_chance_1974.html
