Autism and Sensing: The Unlost Instinct

Rating:
Summary: Another extraordinary book from my sister.
Review: Another deep and uplifting master piece from my sister Donna. It's great that she can help so many people in the world through her thoughts and feelings - portrayed in her writing. Love from Brother Shane.....

Rating:
Summary: What's described is real, but the way it's described....
Review: This book attempts to outline the "system of sensing" -- a way of perceiving the world that the author feels is common to everyone, but that in most people without certain neurological conditions, it is replaced and made redundant by the "system of interpretation" and "significance".

She explains phenomena that would normally be referred to as paranormal, and how they really seem to arise from a particular form of awareness of one's environment that using one's rational mind can obscure. Having experienced many of these phenomena, I'm inclined to agree with her there, and applaud her for attempting to remove the layer of fear most people place on top of these things.

However -- and this is where her writing usually breaks down -- her attempts to come up with categories to fit different modes of thought and development neatly into, come across to me as about as accurate as trying to read the Freudian stages of development and apply them to my life. The stages of "sensing," "interpretation", and "significance" -- in the order and delineation she gives them -- simply don't apply to my life or to many others' lives, yet she makes these developmental stages the basis for much of her understanding of autism. I can understand "sensing", but the others both lose me and make me think that if they do exist, they may not exist in exactly the forms she tries to give them. For someone who says she's primarily outside of language (as am I), she seems to apply a lot of rigid linguistic ideas where they're not useful.

The book uses simplistic concepts of "right-brain" and "left-brain" that have been thoroughly discredited and decried by most serious neurologists, but which have survived in the pop-neurology contexts that most people have seen them in. Even something as simple as being left-handed throws these functional categories into question, and there is extreme variation in which things are handled on which side of the brain even among right-handers.

It also describes some rather dangerous ideas about how most evil is drawn to the "false self". Given that a person can be very good, not very trapped (if at all) in "false self" land, and still have evil thrown at them, I think this section of the book goes too far. In trying to remove the "Stephen King mentality" around that which is called "psychic", it also removes a healthy sense of caution around things that it's wise to be cautious around. Saying "It can't harm you if you aren't drawn to its embrace", as part of the book does, highlights this danger well. Certainly being drawn to it or afraid of it (which can amount to the same thing) increase one's susceptibility to being harmed by evil, but so do being in the wrong place at the wrong time or being physically weak, which have nothing to do with a false self. Parts of the book are very unbalanced this way -- there is a certain arrogance in believing one is completely immune to evil if one is not drawn to or afraid of it. It is right that fear is a bad thing around evil, but caution is not a bad thing at all, and the book does not directly address caution.

There are some very good points made in this book, and some very good descriptions of ideas most people shy away from, which is why I gave it two stars instead of one. But the elaborations on these descriptions range from misleading (the developmental stages as applied to autism, the right-brain/left-brain thing) to dangerous (the ideas about evil, and the subtle underlying hints that a person who does not agree with these ideas has too much false self and misplaced fear hanging around), and that was important enough to remove the other three. I have already met professionals who directly damage autistic people by misapplying the already misguided concepts in parts of this book, and while this is not entirely the book's fault, the concepts outlined in the book were substantial contributors.

Rating:
Summary: GOOD AND INTRESTING
Review: THIS BOOK IS VERY DIFFERNT FORM DONNAS OTHER BOOKS.IN HERE SHE GIVES A THEROY ABOUT AUTISM. I DONT KNOW IF IS TRUE OTR NOT BUT IT REALLY IS INTRESTING. THE BOOK IS NOT THE EASYEST READ INT HE WORLD THOUGH. SOME PARTS ARE VERY DISCPICTIVE IN PSYCOLGOLY. AND SOME PARTS ALMOST SEEMS LIKE PHILSOPY.

Rating:
Summary: Donna does it again!
Review: To date, this is absolutely the most fascinating and wonderful book about Autism! She has an amazing gift to explain an entirely different world, her own and so many of my friends. This book has given me extraordianry insight and understanding for my friends who live with Autism. I think this is a must read for everyone!