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Disappointingly outdated, potentially damaging. Not recommended.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 May 2023
If you read this book, prepare to be told that people with ASD who are promoted to management should instead consider returning to a position they can actually "cope with" - perhaps as a librarian or in a role that suits your "enjoyment of repetitive testing procedures", such as testing electronic equipment. Be open to the suggestion that the reason you haven't loosened up in therapy is because you haven't yet tried imagining yourself and your therapist not as humans but as two computers exchanging emails.Writing a review of this book is conflicting. I don't want to give it one star. The wealth of knowledge and research is undeniable. Sadly it's let down by a narrative voice that is outdated in both medical approach and social perspective.The raw information is the book's strength. It's wide ranging, deep, easy to read and logically laid out. Adults with the condition (and a thick skin) will come away with a much deeper understanding of their inner workings.Adults feeling bewildered or overwhelmed by a new diagnosis may find the book does more emotional injury than good and should tread with extreme caution.Parents of a child with Asperger's (AD) or Autism (ASD) should look for more modern resources. You may come away more fearful than optimistic for your child's prospects.Attwood clearly cares deeply about the subject and his patients. The tone is regularly pitiful and often condescending however. Although he includes many quotes from AS individuals, sweeping and pessimistic statements in the author's own words can be found throughout. On every page, the author couches well-researched facts in deeply pessimistic narrative of his own.For the purposes of this review I've flipped randomly to page 59 and will include here the first line: "The child with Asperger's syndrome often plays in an unconventional or idiosyncratic way with different priorities and interests to his or her peers, who tend to be bored by monologues or lectures on the child's special interests." Notice the difference in objectivity and tone before and after the word "peers". I didn't go looking for a quote; I stress that this was the first page I flicked to. Similarly problematic mixtures of objective observations with subjective, negatively-skewed value judgements occur on almost every page in this book, conflating insightful information with outdated and damaging narrative, making it hard for the reader to tell which is which.Every chapter begins with a quote from Hans Asperger, invariably containing words and phrases like "unnatural", "disharmony", "defenceless" and "strangely impenetrable". Again, I haven't searched for these; these are from the first four chapter-opening pages I've flipped to.In a particularly damning chapter on long-term relationships where Attwood asserts repeatedly that any relationship that survives will do so thanks to the ability of the neurotypical partner (almost invariably a woman, according to this chapter) to compromise and adjust to a relationship that they acknowledge as less fulfilling than they could otherwise have and as causing "deterioration in physical health", the author's final word is that the neurotypical partner may achieve best success by looking outside of their relationship to find a special friend who can "provide empathy" and finding time to escape from their partner with friends in order "to regain confidence in social abilities and rapport".Reading the book as someone with the condition is an exercise in shaking off what can at times feel akin to a verbal assault, in order to reach the valuable nugget of truth buried within it. Concerned parents may well find themselves more worried after reading than before, and potentially more motivated to force-fit their child into more "expected" patterns of behaviour, with risks to the child ranging as far as the development of complex PTSD and beyond.Similarly outdated is the approach to gender differences. Attwood presents differences in how AS/ASD presents as "boys will do X, girls will do Y", which is widely accepted as overly simplistic. Approaches to socio-cultural, ethnic, sexuality and other differences - which do a better job at addressing these differences (ie girls present differently than boys because of differences in social environment correlated to, but not caused by gender) are not mentioned at all.Finally, the book feels socially outdated in a more general sense, when read in the 2020s. Bemusingly, the "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" approach extends further into regular use of outdated gender norms. A section on the value of having someone who can help the AD individual with planning-type activities concludes with the statement "the executive secretary mother may not be able to resign until her role is replaced with an executive secretary wife."In the long-term relationships chapter, women who find themselves attracted to a man with ASD are described as looking for a mysterious, silent stranger who reminds them of their father. Men with ASD are described as looking for women who have nice hair. The experience (or existence) of non-straight or cisgendered people isn't alluded to anywhere in the book.Being unable to recommend this book is painful. There is a wealth of information here and with better framing, readers would gain hugely from it. However, despite being written at the turn of this century, the book feels stuck somewhere in the middle of the previous one. Tony Attwood is an expert; the factual basis at the core of every page is sound and will reflect the experience of many. He is not, however, a member of the autistic community and the framing placed around that factual basis is judgemental to the point of damaging and many people may be insulted by how little the value judgements made by the author match their own experience.As my first choice, I wouldn't read a book about women's issues written by a man. Nor would I attend a lecture on Sikh cultural priorities written and delivered by a Catholic. These people may have studied their subjects to the point of expertise but they will have never lived that experience themselves and the people they are discussing will always remain that - subjects.We need more definitive texts written by people with ASD, who can speak accurately to the nature of the condition. This isn't it.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 May 2023
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