The Fugitive Mind
- Author:
Peter Rowlands
Dent, ?2.25 It seems fashionable these days for books about handicapped children to be written not only by doctors, psychologists, teachers and social workers but also by parents of handicapped children. This is not to say that parents are not qualified to write or are not the best people to write on the subject but a book written by a parent automatically has certain reservations. It is bound to be subjective, certain self-interest is involved, the case study, however deep, cannot be unbiased, and the message must be seen as a cry for help.
Peter Rowlands’ ‘The Fugitive Mind’ is no exception. What is the purpose of writing the book? What is the message? If the objective is (as it appears to be) to give other parents the wisdom of their experience in dealing with an autistic child, the book succeeds moderately well.
But there are a large number of reservations to be made. John is born into an educated family (the majority of the parents of autistic children are of the higher socioeconomic group), and with a father who is a psychologist, but this does not seem to have led to the condition being recognised earlier. In this way, the parents behaved like any other parents, observing some of the deficiencies yet failing to recognise them, or not trying to recognise their significance. A chance visit to a children’s hospital, for a physical ailment, and a consultant’s remark seemed to trigger off the need for further probing. By this time, however, there has already been a lot of stress and tension between the parents but no positive action.
Again, like most accounts, John’s early life is written up as a retrospective study, and accordingly falls short of the truth. There are some hazy bits, some modified, some distorted perhaps. A prospective study is what we want. In this context the future development of John (in his later years), would be worth a detailed study. The two years of development since the last chapter was written, covered in a two page ‘postscript’ is inadequate. A more detailed account would have been of considerable value.
The parents talk about the child as being ‘mildly’ autistic. Apart from the presence of a number of welldocumented features, and the brief mention of the absence of a few, we don’t know why, and how the diagnosis of ‘mild’ autism was made. There is no mention of the level of intelligence at which John was functioning. Sipce it is well known that predicting outcome in autism depends on two main factors ? language development and intelligence ? this omission needs some explanation.
Because the author is dealing with ‘mild’ handicap, the book loses some of its natural impetus. A mild handicap inevitably lessens the enormity of the problems, and to some extent dilutes the strength of the message.
Nevertheless the Rowlands’ observation of John and their handling of the problems which he posed will be of considerable help to other parents. Their day-to-day dealing with John and also their handling of him on special occasions and in varied situations will also be well received. Their hopes and joys at some of his performances and ‘achievements’, and frustrations at some of his failures will also no doubt be shared.
The author often doubts his own handling of John, and also the positive and negative impact of the environment on him, and this is natural. The right answer to this must be extremely difficult to find. The extensive struggle the parents had to place John in a suitable school appears to be the second message. Why was this necessary? What should be done to prevent this from happening to others? The shortages of suitable places is the basic reason. The other factors ? attitude of teachers, being the responsibility of one county or another, transport difficulties ? are incidental. The National Society for Austistic Children, together with other pressure groups, should be fully supported in their efforts to solve the national shortage of places. The author’s account will certainly add to their voice. The last word about the role of the psychiatrist in these cases. It appears that having been asked to give an opinion about diagnosis, he disappeared from the scene altogether. That the headmaster of John’s present school has no time for psychiatry, and that the author came to subscribe to his point of view is abundantly clear. Was it because of the ‘mild’ handicap that he had not played a bigger part? Has he got a positive role to play?
Kanjilal
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.