Autism?

  • Autism?

    Posted by Whit Blauvelt on April 15, 2024 at 10:56 pm

    In the books, McGilchrist places autism on the same spectrum as schizophrenia. Elsewhere, they are generally written of as entirely separate diagnoses. How widely shared is the hypothesis that they are of a kind? (Asking this as a matter of theory. Other than a few friends whose kids are considered mildly autistic, there’s no one close to me afflicted with either.)

    Shannon McCarthy replied 7 months, 2 weeks ago 4 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Anthony Farnsworth

    Member
    April 16, 2024 at 9:56 am

    Hi, I am reading (very slowly) Madness and modernism by Louis Sass. Iain has mentioned this book when talking about autism and schizophrenia being on the same spectrum. My understanding is that people with both an autistic process and a schizophrenic process ‘get stuck’ in viewing the world almost exclusively from the left hemispheres perspective of reality. They find it hard to stop putting the world under a microscope and step into the left hemisphere more holistic view of the world.

  • Iain McGilchrist

    Member
    April 16, 2024 at 10:50 am

    Hello, Whit. Schizophrenia and autism are of course distinct conditions, but they have similarities – for this reason psychiatry refers to the schizo-autistic spectrum. Read more here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8931527/

    • Shannon McCarthy

      Member
      April 24, 2024 at 3:09 pm

      Hi Iain,

      The way Jung describes schizophrenia in his papers seems quite different from the modern definition. It seems like he saw it as an overwhelming flood of the unconscious, but not necessarily the tragic undoing of a person. Do you think Jung was talking about the same thing as when we say schizophrenia now?

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