Interesting essay challenging the notion that medical difference equals pathology. With Children of a Lesser God, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, “Flowers for Algernon,” “Cathedral,” The Glass Menagerie, The Miracle Worker, and The Sound and the Fury, I can see putting together a special topics literature course on pathology and pathos in literature.
An intervention to switch on my emotions succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, but it turned my life upside down….Before the T.M.S., I had fantasized that the emotional cues I was missing in my autism would bring me closer to people. The reality was very different… Seeing emotion didn’t make my life happy. It scared me, as the fear I felt in others took hold in me, too. As exciting as my new sensory ability was, it cost me customers at work, when I felt them looking at me with contempt. It spoiled friendships when I saw teasing in a different and nastier light. It even ruined memories when I realized that people I remembered as funny were really making fun of me. —NYTimes
Post was last modified on 6 May 2016 8:55 am
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I agree with Karissa. :)
Very interesting for a psych class. I do have to remind students who want to apply their knowledge of psychology or pathology that diagnosing King Oedipus with an Oedipus complex or Willy Loman with senile dementia has only limited literary value. I am interested in how these works challenge our culture's health-normative bias.
Even at the time I was unsure of the value of analyzing fictional characters in such a way.
My undergrad child psychology course required we read Diary of Anne Frank and Tom Sawyer and write papers analyzing the characters in terms of developmental stages.
Worth nothing: the most popular sitcom on television, "The Big Bang Theory," for all its shortcomings, deals relatively sympathetically with the relationship between neurotypical but nerdy Amy and Sheldon, who is characterized as distinctly on the spectrum and a gray asexual; however, the show will not say the words "autism," "aspergers," or "asexual."
Something similar came up on "Community," when the word "Aspergers" was constantly shushed or censored before it could be spoken about socially withdrawn Abed, who processed the world through mixed media and a gift for mimicry. I wonder why TV is willing to talk about these things but not give them names?
Do it! That would be marvelous. (I'd want to take it...)