Autism and sin

As I have been exploring the history of the concept of autism, my theological antennae have started quivering.

In 1910–11, Eugen Bleuler coined the word autismus (autism) to describe a symptom he observed among adult psychiatric patients, namely a pathological withdrawal from reality into an inner world of fantasy. The Greek root of the term (autos) points to self-absorption and detachment from external reality as the defining feature of autism. Later, in the early 1940s, Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner described autistic patterns in children, which Kanner termed ‘early infantile autism’ (more recently known as classic autism). Their work led to autism being thought of as a neurodevelopmental issue rather than a symptom of an adult psychopathology. But the core defining feature – self-absorption and detachment from reality – remained unchanged.

The reason for my quivering theological antennae is that the defining feature of autism as originally introduced to psychiatry bears an disturbing resemblance to Protestant and Catholic understandings of sin. In fact, Martin Luther’s classic definition of sin as a state of being incurvatus in se – of being ‘curved in upon oneself’. In other words, sin is a condition in which the heart turns away from God and neighbour to rely on its own resources and satisfy its own desires. There is a clear structural parallel between autism as originally understood and Western theology’s understanding of sin. In both frameworks, the fundamental error/pathology is the rejection of the external (Reality/God) in favour of the internal (Self).

We can push this a bit further because Bleuler did not restrict his use of ‘autism’ to his patients. He also wrote about ‘autistic thinking’ in normal people, namely his fellow doctors (see his Autistic and Undisciplined Thinking in Medicine, and How to Overcome It [1919]), describing it as logic driven by wishes, desires, and fantasies rather than hard reality. In this usage, ‘autism’ functions similarly to the theological concept of idolatry or concupiscence: it is a defect of the will where the subject prefers a comfortable lie (inner wish) over a demanding truth (external reality). By framing ‘wishful thinking’ as a primitive or pathological trait, he was effectively medicalizing the old religious warning against following the ‘desires of the flesh’ and the ‘imaginations of the heart’.

An unfortunate coincidence? I think not. Bleuler was not personally religious, but he grew up in Zurich where the ‘grammar’ of human interiority was written by the Reformation. Sin was understood as social withdrawal and self-obsession. While health/salvation was understood as turning outward toward the community and objective truth. When he sought to describe the ultimate pathology of the mind, he reached for a concept that looked just like the ultimate pathology of the soul he would have heard about in the catechism of his youth.

In view of all this, I don’t think it is unreasonable to see the classic understanding of autism as a secularization of the Western Christian view of sin: it has simply taken the structure of the sinner curved inward and transformed it into the patient withdrawn inward.

Flickr update

Another 23 photos added to my photostream at Flickr (about half from near home and the rest from Arduaine).

St Philaret of Moscow

Today, we commemorate St Philaret (Drozdov), Metropolitan of Moscow.

Two centuries on, he is mainly remembered outside Russia for the morning prayer that has been ascribed to him:

O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace, help me in all things to rely upon your holy will.
In every hour of the day reveal your will to me.
Bless my dealings with all who surround me.
Teach me to treat all that comes to throughout the day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that your will governs all.
In all my deeds and words, guide my thoughts and feelings.
In unforeseen events, let me not forget that all are sent by you.
Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without embittering and embarrassing others.
Give me strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day with all that it shall bring.
Direct my will, teach me to pray.
And you, yourself, pray in me.
Amen.

In fact, this prayer originally came from a French Catholic spiritual writer, François Fénelon (1651–1715). However, Philaret popularized its use within the Orthodox Church.

As Metropolitan of Moscow, he played an important role in the revival of Russian Orthodoxy in the nineteenth century. He was a staunch defender of the Elders of Optina against widespread criticism. It was under his leadership that a modern translation of the Bible into Russian came into being (another initiative that was widely criticized by conservative forces). He pushed for reform of the Church’s subordination to the Russian state and as a result made a number of influential enemies (not least Tsar Nicholas I who had him confined to his diocese for several years). In addition, he was a prolific author and his Catechism is still in use today.

Troparion

Having acquired the grace of the Holy Spirit
O divinely wise and holy hierarch Philaret,
you preached truth and righteousness to the people with enlightened understanding;
with a contrite heart you showed peace and mercy to the suffering;
and as a teacher and tireless guardian of the Faith 
with the staff of uprightness you preserved the Russian flock.
Therefore, as you have boldness before Christ our God,
pray that He preserve the Church, and grant salvation to the people, and to our souls.

Kontakion

As a true imitator of the venerable Sergius;
you loved virtue from childhood, O divinely blessed Philaret.
As a righteous pastor and blameless confessor, you were subject to mockery and abuse by the ungodly after your holy repose,
but God has glorified you with signs and miracles
and shown you to be the helper of our Church.

Beth Taylor at Glasgow Art Club

I spent lunch-time yesterday at the Glasgow Art Club attending a really superb concert organized by Westbourne Music. The soloist was the Glaswegian mezzo Beth Taylor, and she was performing a programme of songs by female composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

There was a lot to like in the programme, including three songs by Clara Schumann (which left me thinking that Brahms had learned a lot from her), five songs by Alma Mahler, plus pieces by Lili and Nadia Boulanger, Ethel Smyth, Hedwige Chrétien, Germaine Tailleferre, and Augusta Holmès. I think my favourites were the pieces by Tailleferre, Holmès, and Nadia Boulanger.

All the music was very strong, but what made the concert stand out for me was Beth’s performance. She throws herself into the music with absolute confidence and communicates it as much by her gestures and expressions as by her amazing voice.

Prayer ropes and neurodivergence

The traditional Orthodox prayer rope is a loop of coarse black wool woven into knots (often 33 or 100) and closed with a cruciform tassel. It is most commonly used to count the number of times you have recited the Jesus Prayer (or similar alternative).

However, for some neurodivergent people those knots can become instruments of torture. If you are hypersensitive to textures, counting off those knots can feel like rubbing your fingers along a sheet of sandpaper. In addition to finding the sensation of the knots very uncomfortable, I find that it masks my awareness of the distinction between one knot and the next. So counting with a traditional wool prayer rope is virtually impossible.

Fortunately, I have found a Russian Orthodox alternative – the lestovka. Instead of wool knots, it consists of strips of leather wound round a core (usually small pieces twig wrapped in scrolls with the Jesus Prayer) to form ‘rungs’. The smooth leather rungs give a very different (much more pleasant) tactile experience and are not so tightly packed as the knots, making it much easier to use for counting. It occurs to me that, in addition to its use for prayer, the lestovka is an easily pocketable and discreet stimming aid.

The lestovka has come to be associated with the Russian Old Believers and Eastern Catholics. But their use was once much more widespread in Russian Orthodoxy (see e.g. some icons of St Sergius of Radonezh or St Seraphim of Sarov) and they are once more becoming more popular.

They can be found (sometimes at ridiculously high prices) on sites like Etsy. I got my fairly simply 50-rung lestovka from the Convent of St Elisabeth the New Martyr, Minsk.

Misunderstanding autism

I wish I could celebrate the fact that earlier this year the Ukrainian Orthodox Church published a molieben for autistic children. Unfortunately the language of those prayers reveals an appalling ignorance of autism on the part of their author(s). Some examples:

Moleben for Children Suffering from the Affliction of Autism . . .

. . . these suffering children . . .

. . . the innocent suffering children . . . afflicted with the illness of autism . . .

. . . who innocently suffer from the illness of autism

Let’s be clear. Autism is not an illness. It is a family of neurodevelopmental differences which means that the brains of autistic people are wired rather differently than those of the majority of the population. What autistic people need is not healing but acceptance of such differences as make the majority uncomfortable. And perhaps the Orthodox Church should take a fresh look at the men and women it venerates as fools-for-Christ in light of the diagnostic criteria for autism.

The Overlapping Skills and Strengths of Neurodiversity by Nancy Doyle,
based on work by Mary Colley

Environmentalist, heal thyself!

I’m in the middle of editing the papers from last year’s ORIC Conference, and I came across a striking line in one of them: ‘By healing yourself, you heal the entirety of nature.’ My first, kneejerk reaction was to think that this was dangerously quietistic. Taken out of context, might one not read it as suggesting we can address the environmental crisis merely by attending to our own spiritual state? An extreme (and radically spiritualized) version of ‘Think globally, act locally’?

But in an Orthodox context it doesn’t mean that at all. If, as Orthodoxy believes, we are called to be the priests of creation, then this is a reminder that no effort to heal the environment is complete (or even achievable) without at the same time walking the path of self-healing, i.e. of theosis.

And so, I was led back to St Gregory of Sinai’s insistence that the perfect hesychast ‘sees the entire creation luminous’.