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Updated 08/03/2007
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As one can see by reading my previous article "Is psychology a science", I am a critic of clinical psychology (and I am not a psychologist). I see it as a modern replacement for religion, serving many of the same needs that religion did, and in much the same way — by asserting nonexistent authority and by enclosing common-sense solutions to life's problems in an exotic wrapper, one that seems to elevate the activity above ordinary experience.
To briefly summarize the content of my previous article on this topic, clinical psychology was originally meant to be a science, using evidence gleaned from scientific studies to produce diagnoses and treatments for mental disorders. But for a number of reasons the connection with science has not taken hold. Over time clinical psychology has become largely a playground for a series of fad treatments of dubious legitimacy, and the treatments are often rationalized by diagnoses that have little to do with science or evidence.
This doesn't mean there are no real mental illnesses, illnesses that are debilitating and stigmatizing. And I do not suggest that psychologists cannot identify such ailments. It does mean the near-complete absence of hard science in the field allows contemporary clinical psychologists to "identify" conditions that once would have failed any common-sense definition of "mental illness," and they can apply treatments that have no established efficacy.
To put it simply, psychologists can describe human behavior, but they cannot explain it. It is the explanations, the shaping of theories to account for observations, that forges a link with science, and it is here that psychology fails. Without explanatory theories, there can be no predictions. Without predictions, there can be no test to support or conclusively falsify a theory. Without the possibility of falsification, there is no science. This is why psychology's failures typically end up in courts of law instead of scientific journals.
It sounds like a cliché indictment of the field to point out that as time passes more and more conditions are being officially described as mental illnesses, but that is a fact, and it is difficult to justify on rational grounds. The field's primary source for diagnostic criteria is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (hereafter DSM). As shown in my prior article, this volume becomes significantly larger with each new revision and includes more conditions seemingly farther removed from what common sense suggests might be described as mental illnesses.
This brings us to "Asperger's Syndrome". Asperger's is described as a condition similar to, but not as severe as, autism. Perhaps "Autism Lite" might be a good name for it, although psychologists are divided about whether it is a form of autism. Skeptics like me will say that Asperger's has become very popular because:
For many years Asperger's lived in the limbo reserved for those conditions thought by clinicians to be distinct from other similar conditions, but not sufficiently distinct to have a name or a diagnosis of its own. Over time, because of a conscious, rather aggressive campaign by past and present editors of the DSM, many more such conditions have been granted the imprimatur of inclusion in clinical psychology's "bible," and Asperger's is now included.
This inclusion, plus the negative stigma attached to the condition, has created a pattern becoming more common in the field of clinical psychology: parents eager to obtain a psychological diagnosis for their children, and psychologists eager to grant such diagnoses. The parents want a diagnosis for a number of reasons:
As to the psychologists, well, the motive is more obvious. With each passing year there are more mental conditions defined as requiring professional intervention, and over time the newer mental conditions seem increasingly to include behaviors once thought to be normal. This can only increase the income and standing of clinical psychologists.
As a result of all the factors above, and with particular focus on Asperger's as a sociological phenomenon, in the U.S. there has been a recent huge increase, some say an epidemic, in the number of autism and autism-related diagnoses. Some psychologists point to environmental causes, although to date nothing specific has been identified. Others say it is a sampling error — the rate of occurrence has not changed, but the family of conditions was simply not correctly diagnosed in the past.
Edward R. Ritvo of the UCLA Medical School, a longtime researcher in this field, strenuously rejects the idea that there is an epidemic. To explain the increase in diagnoses he points to the identification of Asperger's and its inclusion in the DSM as a form of autism, increased overall screening for mental illnesses, and the closure of the old-style state-run mental hospitals where many people who were misdiagnosed are now coming to the attention of clinicians in the outside world and being diagnosed with one or another form of autism.
Among the reasons for the increase in autism diagnoses, Dr. Ritvo says "my research efforts to identify mild forms of the disease which began in the 1970s is paying off." Given the conspicuous increase in business for clinical psychologists and the questionable basis for many of the diagnoses, I think I would have chosen an expression other than "paying off."
Many critics inside and outside the field argue that Asperger's is now being overdiagnosed and that the present diagnostic criteria are too vague, most conspicuously overlapping with what is colloquially known as a "nerd," a bright individual who tends to focus exclusively on a small set of activities, and who is typically someone with limited social skills, but not someone suffering from a mental illness (unless you hear his girlfriend's opinion).
It is important to point out that a mental condition that has acquired legitimacy by inclusion in the DSM, but that can be used to identify a large subset of the population, represents an economic opportunity for the less ethical among psychologists, but in the long term this can only erode public trust in the field. Many psychological fads have come and gone over the years, each acquiring temporary legitimacy in the eyes of the public, only to be cast aside because of credibility problems. I personally think people who consider engaging the services of a clinical psychologist should be required to read the history of the field and notice the many firmly held beliefs that have later been discarded for cause.
Lest the reader think that only critics like me suggest this cautious outlook, here is what the people at the Yale Child Development Center have to say about Asperger's:
"Clearly, the work on Asperger syndrome, in regard to scientific research as well as in regard to service provision, is only beginning. Parents are urged to use a great deal of caution and to adopt a critical approach toward information given to them. [emphasis supplied]."
In my experience this is a remarkably candid evaluation of an issue in clinical psychology, and in my view the reader should not expect to see this level of humility and frankness from a typical clinician.
California defense attorneys recently tried to use Asperger's as a defense against charges that their client set fire to about 125 SUVs in an arson and vandalism spree. Their argument? The defendant had Asperger's Syndrome and was therefore unable to grasp the significance of his actions. The reader should realize that, because of vague diagnostic criteria, nearly anyone can claim to have Asperger's, but the judge didn't accept the argument, instead ordering an eight-year prison sentence and $3.5 million in restitution.
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This history is broadly based on real events, but it has been rendered as fiction to the degree required to conceal the identities of the participants. Any resemblance to real people, places and events is coincidental and unintended.
As you read this story, remember it is meant to provide a relevant case history while concealing the names and personal characteristics of the participants. If you question whether the story refers to reality, believe it — it is as true as it can be while meeting the above requirements. If you think you know who this story is about, forget it — you don't.
In my research I have come to realize this story, which happened to me, is rather typical of the ways by which contemporary psychology is exploited by parents. It provides a "why" for the "what" of this article's first section.
Please Meet my Son
Before I took up software design I was an aerospace engineer, and some of NASA's primary contractors still use my electronic designs in current spacecraft. When they are to be flown, I am asked to consult in their use, so I take up residence in one or another of the NASA aerospace centers located in the Southern U.S..
A few years ago, during one of my sojourns in the South, a mother contacted me — she had found my name on the Web and saw an opportunity. Wouldn't I like to meet a bright, misunderstood kid, someone without any friends, maybe teach him that being bright is not an affliction? I am somewhat less enthusiastic about these sorts of arrangements than in years past. They often turn out badly, usually when my values collide with the values of the parents, or when I put the needs of the child above the needs of the parents. In this case, I demurred, but the mom kept after me for months — she very clearly wasn't going to take no for an answer. Finally, many months later, in desperation and aware that I had permanently put her off, she brought her son to a place she knew I would be, and he was just as bright as she had claimed.
My readers may assume that bright parents tend to have bright kids, but as it happens, the correlation between the intellectual gifts of children and parents is not particularly strong, based on a genetic principle called "regression to the mean." Consistent with this observation, John and Joan Smith were not particularly gifted, but their son Jim certainly was.
John was a draftsman and partner in a successful architectural firm. He was noted for his ability to render an existing structure on paper with uncanny fidelity to the original. Joan, blond, blue-eyed and fashionably slim, owned a small antique store, very orderly, just like herself and her upscale suburban house. The Smiths were rather well-off and devoted to their son — they could certainly provide for his physical needs, but, after their son had reached a certain age, if he were to describe his latest project, they would be unable to understand him. It was about this time that Joan began her campaign to get us together.
When I first met Jim I found him rather glum, no eye contact, indifferent to most things, but over time and on realizing he had an older friend who genuinely liked him and found him interesting, he brightened up, made an effort to interact with the world. Just as one would expect.
Expected Result, Unexpected Reaction
Then the surprise came. I expected the new Jim, the confident Jim who would look you in the eye, would clear the ominous clouds from his parents' radar screens. But then, not myself a parent, I tend to underestimate the complexity of family situations. What I noticed in Jim's parents was one anxiety being replaced by another.
Jim's parents explained that they had acquired an Asperger's diagnosis for him some years before. I learned about Asperger's, but I honestly didn't think Jim met the diagnostic criteria. His functioning was too good, he possessed many normal traits in abundance. The complexity of the situation was not lost on me — it is likely that Jim tended to live up to his parents' expectations when he was with them, and he tended to live up to mine when he was with me. Nevertheless, it became clear that Jim's parents had a stake in Jim's diagnosis, regardless of the facts.
I saw Jim as a very bright, otherwise normal kid, with the potential to become a first-rate scholar, and (as the reader will appreciate having read the section above this one) I didn't think much of the practice of assigning psychological diagnoses to people in the normal range of behavior. Beyond this, I thought it was unfair to stigmatize kids with such diagnoses without a compelling reason — it could hobble them with imaginary burdens, or it could give them an excuse not to try if that was their inclination. I feel especially strongly about assigning a diagnosis like Asperger's, where there is no known cause, the diagnostic criteria are vague, and there is no treatment. What's the point?
The parents certainly didn't share my views. It came out that, to the Smiths, clinical psychology was a branch of medicine, like oncology, with diagnoses that meant something and remedies that worked. To the Smiths, if a psychologist offered advice, it was like a general practitioner recommending penicillin — you did what he said. There was no latitude for personal judgment, after all, a doctor had spoken.
Psychologists as Doctors
It occurs to me that some of my readers may agree with the view that psychologists speak with the authority of a doctor. In answer to this idea, I offer the fate of Candace Newmaker's mother. Candace Newmaker was a 10-year-old girl who was killed in a psychologist's office during a therapy session. In the prosecutions that followed, Candace's mother was not allowed to argue that she had properly deferred her parental authority to the professional therapists who carried out the procedure that killed her child. Instead, Candace's mother was convicted of negligent child abuse resulting in death, and she was handed a long prison sentence (this is one of many similar cases). To be perfectly direct, this means psychologists and psychiatrists do not possess authority. Psychologists can only advise their clients, they cannot compel behavior. People ignore this truth about psychology at their peril, and conscientious psychologists candidly advise their clients to think for themselves.
Needless to say, I didn't share the Newmaker case with the Smiths, but I tried to suggest that, given the soft nature of clinical psychology and its distance from the world of science, the words of psychologists needed to be tempered with personal judgment and skepticism. To my surprise, I got as far with this idea as I might have gotten discussing biblical passages with a Christian fundamentalist.
At that point I gave up trying to reason with Jim's parents. I realized there was something strange going on with them, but I hoped I could be friends with Jim without having to sort through the psyches of all the family members. In other words, in my optimism I failed to spot a tragic, pivotal element in the workings of this family, and in a bitter irony, I later realized someone less averse to psychological explanations would have identified the problem more quickly than I did.
Over time, between my pleasant visits with Jim, Joan began to seriously engage me in conversations that had a distinctly odd character. She certainly had the right to talk to me, given how much time I spent with her son, but these "conversations" were in fact monologues — she clearly had little use for what I said in reply. At first I assumed her conversational style arose from her privileged status among women — she was the sort of woman men tended to listen to uncritically, for reasons you might be able to imagine. In these conversations I noticed she would segue between topics of generally accepted validity and ideas that educated people would never accept without evidence. I tried to be diplomatic about the latter ideas, saying little or nothing, sensing I might pay a high price if I pointed out that some of her notions were simple fantasy. Over time it became clear that Joan's imagination was writing checks her intellect couldn't cash.
Clinical Narcissism
Finally, after a few such conversations, several things fell into place — strange, disconnected conversations, poor reality testing, absolute reliance on the supposed authority of psychologists — and I realized Joan was a serious narcissist. Not the wallowing narcissist that a six-year-old is, but a skilled adult version, with decades of practice from a six-year-old starting point. A clinical psychologist would have identified her as suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), before throwing up his hands at the prospect of talking an adult out of this kind of behavior. The prognosis for NPD is very poor — there are too many advantages in continuing the behavior, in particular if an enabler can be located. As it turned out, Joan's partner John was a perfect narcissistic enabler, weak and dependent, with occasional brief fugues of anger and resentment at his lot.
At this point the reader may smell a rat. How can I justify rejecting many current Asperger's diagnoses, only to accept an NPD diagnosis so readily? Well, it turns out people recognized narcissists for what they were long before psychology came into being, and narcissists do much more harm than your average nerd. Some narcissists can be dangerous, both to themselves and others. And, unlike Asperger's, parents don't line up hoping to get an NPD diagnosis for their children.
Joan was a textbook narcissist — grandiose, lacking in empathy, so certain of her extraordinary talents that she saw no reason to test them against reality, angry at nearly everyone for not fully appreciating her great worth, eager to assign negative responsibilities to anyone but herself, and increasingly prone to falsehood and self-contradiction — contradictions she could not detect on her own, and that she could not stand to have pointed out to her.
Avoidance of Responsibility
There is another NPD trait that is less well-known, one Joan exhibited to an extreme degree — a reliance on faux authority for decision-making. NPD sufferers go to great lengths to avoid personal responsibility, so if they express a belief or make a decision, it must hinge on some kind of external authority, not their own. That way, if anything goes wrong, instead of having to say, "Okay, I made a mistake," words a narcissist would rather die than utter, they may instead blame the source of authority, condemn it, and choose another. This special requirement means that a narcissist's reliance on authority tends to be superficial and transient. The "authority" must agree with whatever the narcissist had already decided to do, however bizarre, which means the authority is very likely to be someone the narcissist knows personally, rather than an objective source of authority like scientific evidence or widely held views of established validity.
The reader will now see why Joan chose psychologists as authority figures — by shopping around, she could find a therapist willing to agree with anything she might say, and if a disagreement came up she could change therapists in a flash. Many laypeople buy the idea that therapists have authority, so she could manipulate her less intellectually accomplished friends on the strength of that authority, and she would never have to accept personal responsibility for anything. For an NPD sufferer, this is heaven on earth.
I don't know how conscientious therapists deal with the potential for exploitation by narcissists, but I hope it is by explaining to their clients that therapists have no authority and cannot be exploited by their clients to win arguments with their friends. I also suspect this advice has precisely no effect on a typical narcissist, who after all went to the therapist to fix the problems with his friends, not himself.
John, Joan's narcissistic enabler, was in many respects a perfect candidate. He sincerely needed to be an enabler, it was his calling in life, and even in lucid moments, moments during which he might rebel against Joan, take an action that might liberate him, he would invariably choose an act of rebellion seemingly designed to fail, after which his performance of contrition was impressive to behold. To put it another way, even when John rebelled against Joan, he did it in such a way as to enable her narcissism.
But contrary to this description's light tone, for both Joan and John the actual drama was much darker, and certainly at odds with the outward appearance of their pretty, well-kept neighborhood. Both Joan and John regularly walked on the border of behaviors society would accept in parents, and they had occasional run-ins with the (real) authorities with respect to their parental behavior.
Reality Sinks In
Once I recognized the family's real problem, and given that Joan was now trying to turn me into an enabler by indoctrinating me in her specific irrational beliefs (which are like potato chips — it's hard to have just one), I realized this was a no-win situation. I saw that I would eventually be expelled from Jim's life, and I could only delay that outcome, not avoid it. So I tried to make the best use of my remaining time — without being overly preachy I tried to instill in Jim a respect for truth and humility. I tried to structure ordinary conversations as though they were about science, with the kind of openness to correction and revision, and the ascendancy of evidence over argument, that characterizes the best scientific debates. I tried to steer disagreements toward evidence rather than appeals to authority, and I invited reasoned disagreement. I accepted corrections to my own opinions, most importantly to model the behavior for Jim, who likely had not witnessed humility before, at least not in that house.
I chose this approach because I regard respect for logic and reason as critical to developing young minds, but as the reader will appreciate, they also can serve as defenses against the essential dishonesty of the narcissist.
Jim gradually realized someone else could process reality with his depth and velocity, which had the effect of breaking his isolation. He began to speak up more often, poised and confident, with the kind of openness to impartial examination and respect for evidence that I think supports the only conversations worth having. Over months of time, to some extent in spite of himself and to the secret frustration of his mother, he began to act like the normal person that was hiding inside him.
Days of our Lives
I hoped for enough time to persuade Jim that he was a valuable person with a bright future, but just then, what can only be described as a TV soap opera unfolded in real life. Joan discovered John had been having an affair for some time, and, consumed by sudden fury, she lost her way on the reality roadmap. She decided to retaliate against her husband's unfaithfulness by pretending she had a similar connection with me.
I had no choice — at a time when both John and Joan were present, I denied the suggestion in no uncertain terms. Those with any life experience will agree with this truthful, candid approach, but in choosing it I had not fully grasped the depth of Joan's narcissism. In Joan's world view, anyone who didn't instantly and permanently fall in love with her was ... defective, less than human. But for me to dismiss the notion as absurd pushed Joan right over the edge, into a realm identified by an old saying that begins: "Hell hath no fury ...".
Narcissists always blame others for their own failings, and under the circumstances, I was the only safe target for Joan's fury — she decided to drive me away. But she had to keep her son from finding out what was going on — her soap opera had no connection to my relationship with her son, and she didn't want him to discover she was destroying our friendship out of spite and selfishness. So, taking note of the amount of time I spent with her son but unable to think of a legitimate complaint, she dreamt up a novel offense for me to be guilty of, one no one had ever heard of before. And, true to her status as a narcissist, she couldn't be talked out of the idea that a child sitting on an adult's lap, in and of itself, constitutes molestation. You did know that, didn't you?
A small digression — this is completely typical narcissist behavior. Joan is furious, feels betrayed by everyone, but because she is a narcissist, she is unable to take responsibility for the connection between her feelings and actions. So instead she defends her choices as obedience to external authority. The authority is imaginary, she invented it herself, but an imaginary authority is still an authority.
Stay Or Else
Once I heard Joan express her new belief, I realized she had lost any connection with reality and was more than willing to say absolutely anything. I saw I had no choice — I explained to her son that I had important philosophical differences with his parents, and I stopped visiting. After a few days, Joan reversed herself and insisted that everything was fine, I was a good influence on her son, wouldn't I come back? But I had watched her contradict herself about matters no sane person would take lightly, so I chose not to volunteer for a repeat performance.
Eventually Joan realized I really meant to stay away, so she reversed herself yet again and, in a civil court hearing, made a vile accusation that is typical of Joan and of narcissists in general — it was long on fury and short on content. Predictably and to Joan's frustration, I defended myself before a seasoned judge by describing her accusation as absolutely false. I came prepared to prove Joan had flatly contradicted herself in writing, but the judge was already satisfied she was lying and ruled accordingly. A routine background check then revealed Joan had pulled this same false-accusation stunt on someone else who had failed to meet her expectations, and with the same outcome. It seems narcissists derive no benefit from experience.
Readers might think Joan's defeat would end a sad chapter in the drama of a dysfunctional personality. But no, there's more. Six months later, she returned to court and tried to hold me responsible for the resumption in her son of a clinical depression my friendship had temporarily lifted. The background check — which I should have performed before entering her house — taught me some essential facts about Joan, and I explained to the court that she was seriously dysfunctional, she had moved heaven and earth to get me together with her son, she had made similar false accusations against another man, and her description of her son as "developmentally delayed"[1] simply contradicted reality.
Joan was served with my position in advance and was free to offer any defense she cared to, but I think she realized what would happen to her if she did, so she said nothing, thus turning my claims into stipulations (issues on which both sides agree). Once again, the court rejected her claims, but in a perverse way, the outcome served her purpose — she is now identified in the public record as severely dysfunctional, which frees her from any responsibility for truthfulness in past and future legal proceedings. On reflection, I think this may have been her twisted strategy all along.
Unacceptable!
Reviewing these events years later, I see a pattern that everyone needs to be aware of in dealing with clinical narcissists (and for greater depth I highly recommend the reading list at the bottom of this article). The pattern is that everything is:
In a quick review, when Joan first contacted me and over a period of months, I politely declined her overtures to meet her son. Unacceptable!
Seeing no change in my posture, Joan finally forced a meeting with her son and, impressed with his giftedness, I decided to befriend him. In subsequent months his outlook improved greatly, to the degree that he began to doubt his mother's description of him as mentally incompetent. Unacceptable!
In a story told here, I warned the parents that a rock climbing outing they were planning was dangerous and should be cancelled, but they ignored my advice. During the outing my young friend lost his grip and began to fall from a nearly vertical rock face, and I halted his fall by grabbing him, very possibly saving his life. Now get this: in order to rescue him, I had to touch him. Unacceptable!
Joan then drove me away as described above. I think she expected to eliminate me and take credit for the positive outlook I had helped produce in her son, but instead he returned to the clinically depressed state that preceded my appearance on the scene. Unacceptable!
Perpetually dissatisfied and quite oblivious to how she appeared to others, Joan then returned to court hoping to hold me responsible for the consequences of her own decisions. To her frustration, a particular judge understood her claims perfectly, but in a way she couldn't foresee. He ruled against her again. Unacceptable!
As the hearing ended, Joan, now clearly drifting away from reality, demanded that I be punished now for things I might do in the future.[2] Interrupting a stunned silence and showing admirable restraint, the judge said "No" and gavelled the proceedings to a close. Unacceptable!
Joan's world view was that reality is completely unsatisfactory, events in her life only prove how ugly and unfair the world is, public institutions are unresponsive to the heartfelt grievances of people with severe personality disorders, and this is entirely the fault of others. From her personal perspective, this is all true. As to me, I have never met anyone so mired in an infantile view of the world, one in which nothing is good enough, and it's all the responsibility of other people, each of whom, upon trying to meet her expectations, discover their efforts are unacceptable.
Historical Parallels
This account bears some small resemblance to a now-infamous case in which a woman falsely accused some Duke University Lacrosse players of kidnapping and rape — in both these cases the woman had made prior false accusations, was eventually shown to be lying, and was found to have mental problems. The Duke University case was pursued by an unscrupulous, politically motivated prosecutor (Mike Nifong). Many lives were ruined before the accuser and the prosecutor were both discovered to be lying. The prosecutor was eventually charged with suppressing exculpatory DNA evidence and his career was ruined. As to the accuser, at first her identity was concealed because she was thought to be the victim of a sex crime. Later her identity was concealed because she was judged mentally unbalanced. Now, as with the case described here, a false accuser walks the streets, free to accuse anyone she cares to, and no one knows her name.
Ultimately, the distinctions between the case described here and the Duke University case come down to elements of chance. In this case, fortuitously[3], an ethically disabled woman was unable to locate an ethically disabled prosecutor willing to champion her cause. Under the circumstances that would have been difficult to imagine — I wasn't her first victim, she struggled so long to get me to meet her son, she had flatly contradicted herself in writing, and most important, she tried to make a criminal accusation in a civil court, the sure sign of a clueless opportunist.
Some readers may wonder why one may not prosecute a person who lies under oath, as Joan did, thus bringing such behavior to a swift end. As it turns out, courtroom liars are almost never prosecuted, something Joan knew from prior experience but that I did not. Where it exists, courtroom truthfulness springs from common sense and personal ethics, unfortunately Joan possessed neither.
Joan's prior victim chose to keep silent about her false accusation against him. Although understandable given the nature of the accusation, I personally think this is a huge mistake, because silence gives the accuser what she wants (attention, revenge, no personal consequences), it lends credence to her claims and it encourages further accusations. That is one of the reasons this fictionalized case history has been written and posted — at the moment only "Joan" knows who she is, but if she chooses another victim, in the public interest her name and full story will be provided to the media.
As shown by the reading list at the bottom of this article, women make false accusations under oath with a regularity that can only be described as shocking. Such women often choose a particularly vile kind of accusation because they think there's no one lower than a child molester. But in point of fact, there is someone lower: a person who lies about it.
Never Again
I have mentored many young people over three decades. Toward the end of the above drama, I received a message from a young man I had mentored years before. His parents, who knew me only by reputation and a single public appearance, had traveled 500 miles so their son could spend a day at my house. He wrote to thank me for the validation I gave him as a bright child with a bright future, and to tell me he had become a successful professional in the intervening twenty years. His message was well-timed, but I had just decided that the risk posed by the Joan Smiths of the world is too great, and I am no longer going to allow parents to talk me into meeting their children. In light of the experience described above, I realized I would have to check the backgrounds of each set of parents to ferret out the fruitcakes, and it just isn't worth it.
In spite of his superior intellect, my young friend may never have fully understood what ended our friendship (Joan did all in her power to keep him from finding out what she was saying), and he will have to sort this all out on his own. He will have to seriously weigh the short-term advantages of being thought mentally ill as a child (endless vacation) against the prospect of entering adulthood wearing the same label (endless frustration). But in the midst of these events, there will be one reliable theme — whatever he accomplishes, whomever he becomes, Joan will find it unacceptable.
This case history should serve as a cautionary tale for any charitable souls thinking about joining organizations like Big Brothers/Sisters of America (this experience wasn't overseen by either of these organizations). At first glance the biggest risk would seem to be failure to help a youngster out. But in this case, there were two possible bad outcomes: failure, and success. Success turned out to have worse consequences than failure would have had, because Joan was so adept at converting success into failure. My advice to those considering similar activities — find out what the parents are capable of, in advance.
"By Proxy?"
A note about this article's title. A great number of Aspergers' diagnoses, and many similar hand-waving psychological labels, are meant to serve the parents' needs, not the child's, indeed it is often the case that the psychological issues belong to the parents, not the children, and the latter are no more than stand-ins, "proxies." This episode fits that description perfectly. Psychologists are not known for calling parents out on this sort of mischief, because, to be perfectly blunt, clinical psychology is a business, and a client is a client.
Footnotes:
Reading List:
A quote from the book excerpted above:
"Assigning a diagnosis to behaviors that are normal for gifted and talented persons is, in our opinion, a significant and widespread problem. In our clinical experience, classifying such behaviors as mental health problems occurs all too often."
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