Identity

CSCL Letter to the editor

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/02/11/national/a072047S67.DTL

Right now I’m in California for a debate tournament (which is why this post is so late, Robin and Ben…) so I decided to take a look at the “local” paper here, the San Francisco Chronicle. I found an article about a proposal to remove Asperger’s syndrome from the DSM, and lump it together along with other variations of autism under “autism spectrum disorders”. The article reported the controversy surrounding the change of labels.


Dear Editor,

I think the recent article, “Proposed autism diagnosis changes anger ‘Aspies’” raises several interesting issues surrounding language and identity. I was surprised at the amount of hostility some individuals with Asperger’s felt toward the change, in particular those who felt that the change was offensive because it groups them with autistic individuals who had more severe symptoms. It seemed, however, that many more were concerned with the fact that changing the diagnostic label would somehow erase or marginalize their identity as individuals with Asperger’s. To me, this begs the very important question “How are out identities shapes by science?” The strong emotions of individuals with Asperger’s seem to show that the clinical label has become a strong part of how they see themselves, and so the removal of said label by the scientific community is thus erasing part of who they are. Why do we privilege the authority of the DSM? Society is not making the switch (yet) nor (does it seem) are individuals in their own lives, yet people are furious and concerned over the change. I think the findings of the article expose the immense faith we have in science as a cite of truth. A manual should not determine how we identify as people. The change also ignores the social and cultural implications that have now become attached to the words “Asperger’s” or “autism”. Both of these points go unexplored by the article, which limits the amount of knowledge or understanding one can gain about the situation.

–Laura Johnson
St. Paul, MN