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- cross-posted to:
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"Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay."
-a 15yo autistic girl experiencing ABA therapy
What’s ABA theory? But anyway, spot on.
*therapy. Sounds like some sort of “Autism cure” by christians. Which would be as effective and tortuous as “Gay convertion therapy”
Some people think it’s some kind of autism cure. It’s just understanding the reasons behind behaviors in order to increase behaviors that are desirable and decrease behaviors that are undesirable. Problems could arise from what ends up being defined as undesirable behavior and how that reinforcement is done but that’s true of basically anything with the goal of changing behaviors.
My wife is autistic and studied it herself because it helped her understand all the “social bullshit” as she called it.
Approaching it from the point of view of the autistic person trying to understand the traditional social interaction behaviors, to mimic them by choice for their own profit, sounds beneficial. Approaching it from a goal of forcing the autistic person to behave according to traditional social interactions for the benefit of others and the profit of the therapist, does not.
Pretty much yeah. That’s the problem and how it can become a very bad thing. Same as really any method that seeks to shape behaviors. Are you targeting this behavior because it actually causes distress and interferes with the autistic person’s enjoyment of life? Or are you just trying to breed conformity for the sake of conformity?
I’m going to disagree with the other comment and claim that you’ve made a very good observation. Even though conversion therapies and ABA may somewhat differ in their methods, the both of them are born from the basis of wanting to use operant conditioning on humans, and ignore everything else that we’ve learned about the psychology and neurology of humans that explain why it’s a dogshit idea.
No, it’s not that. It’s a form of therapy that is highly controversial, and mostly stems from the observation that autistic humans can be brought to “behave” like “normal people” if they are sufficiently conditioned to do that. Yet, it is not founded in religious BS, but rather a result of behavioral approaches to psychology that have been very popular, especially in the US and Canada at least since the 60s (like many addiction-therapies and such). Behavioral therapies aren’t bad outright, but have spawned some questionable offspring (like all approaches in medicine tend to do). “Conversion camps” are such offspring. Regarding ABA: While many studies indicate that ABA does, in fact, bring autistic people to behave more like non-autistic people, that in itself is not evidence that the therapy is working. If depressive people behave like I want them to and get out of bed to clean the house because I hold a gun to their head, they are not “cured”. The same goes for this kind of therapy. There are merits to the principles of the approaches bundled under the term “ABA”, but the line between “helping Autistic people” and “torturing autistic people” is razor-thin. Unfortunately, many approaches that call themselves “ABA” are crossing that line, as do many therapists who deny people breaks or meals, or worse.
You know? Humans are cruel dumpster fires of bullshit once they think what they do is right and “for the best”.
thanks for the clarification. Sounds like exactly what I suspected.
It’s only controversial because the way the therapy has been implemented in the past (and unfortunately in some places still today) is similar to what you describe. However, modern practices don’t try to train their clients to act like “normal people” and any serious technician or analyst will only use punishment (or threats of punishments) as a last resort in programs written to target the most imperative behaviors (like running into traffic). Instead, they focus on the use of reinforcement to teach their clients skills that help them to become self sufficient. Following your metaphor, it would be like offering a depressed person $10 for every chore they complete that day rather than holding a gun to their head. The goal is to establish a foundation for life outside of therapy, not to reduce the presentation of autism.
The others have pretty much answered about it, but specifically, it’s a very intense, very personal therapy, with some sessions lasting up to 8 hours. It’s typically one-on-one with the therapist, who will be observing every behavior and rewarding behaviors that are desired. I haven’t heard of any that do it around here, but I am sure some therapists ‘punish’ for behaviors that they do not want to see again.
As was noted in the other replies, it can be extremely demeaning to reduce a person to their behaviors alone, and a great abyss lies next to the feet of any therapist that easily conceals abusive or immoral practices… and those feet are on a slippery slope of scree.
Applied Behavior Analysis
so… like CBT, but you don’t enjoy the torture-part nearly as much?
It’s a branch of behaviorism but it is a distinct branch from CBT. CBT involves cognition and behavior analysts don’t work with thoughts, just behaviors. Like any therapy, it can be misused or it can be helpful, depending on your skill and sensitivity as a therapist. Behavior therapies are not about torture. They are therapies and aim to be helpful. Your mileage may vary though depending on what you want from therapy and how skillful your therapist is.
I think you got wooshed, cause I’m pretty sure the CBT being referred to is cock and ball torture.
Though maybe I got wooshed, I’m not 100% sure.
Sometimes you get wooshed I guess
Applied Behavior Analysis therapy.
That sounds like a euphemism for hitting people.
It does still allow for aversives, so… Kinda?
From a quick search, it’s basically a therapy where, instead of figuring out why the patient is upset, you train them like a dog. And not even the training where you do gentle redirection from bad behaviours. The kind where you whap the “patient” (ie victim) for being “abnormal” so they effectively become a nervous wreck who does as you please to avoid being hurt
Sounds like every conservative’s wet dream.
In a conservative and nothing about this sounds appealing to me.
Do you know any conservatives in real life or do you just have a notion of who they are from memes?
I know conservatives that believe this would be a good idea. I grew up with my parents arguing with family about taking me to ABA, but thankfully my parents had sense and didn’t. All of the family members that thought it would be a good idea are very conservative.
I see three possibilities:
One, you have a different definition of conservative than what is currently the general definition of that label in the US.
Two, you’re lying.
Three, you’re in a country other than the United States and therefore ‘conservative’ doesn’t mean the same thing in general to you.
Quick test: if you agree with or vote for any US Republican politician, you’re just lying. In any other case, there may be a misunderstanding.
you know how liberals fall anywhere from “regulations are good to” to “i think communism should be our mode of function”
Similar thing with conservatives. You can thank politics for lumping you in with the crazies.
Well, I know the policies they’ve been advocating for. You know like, taking away women’s bodily autonomy. Denying them reproductive healthcare. Taking away the rights and dehumanising anybody who doesn’t conform to their very narrow (and utterly unscientific) ideas of gender identity. Making healthcare unaffordable to the point where live expectancy in the richest country on earth is falling. Letting any idiot buy an assault rifle, leading to countless deaths and a population living in fear. An inhumane and deeply racist prison system. Letting police get away with open blatant murder. I could go on. So pardon me if I think that a “conservative” is a person who simply likes to make other people suffer.
That sounds more like the reason why a person would need a therapist to begin with, rather than any kind of actual treatment.
Note that even what we pejoratively call “training like a dog” is so obsolete that I’ve seen/read more than one dog trainer get a bit offended for comparing their profession to ABA. Ultimately, the problem with ABA is that it assumes that the object to be worked with isn’t a subject worthy of being considered sentient, or of being capable of accurately expressing their needs or preferences, or that their mental processes are either too obscure or too wrong to even begin to take them into consideration, but rather that it’s just a very simple organism that you have to punish or reward until it learns to pretend to appear “human enough” in your eyes.
You’d think we would have shelved it already when we already know a lot in the differences in the mental processes of autistic people.