Using FC to Dispel Autism Superstitions?
It is a stretch, but in watching a particular scene in the movie “The Reason I Jump,” I can start to understand how Facilitated Communication (FC) could be used as a coping strategy for people living in highly superstitious communities throughout the world.
The scene that caught my attention features Roland and Mary Penn-Timity of Sierra Leone as they talk about raising their daughter, Jestina. Jestina has limited to no functional verbal skills, screams, bites, head-bangs, bolts, laughs maniacally, and engages in repetitive movements typical of individuals with profound autism.
The Boston Planchette first made in Boston in 1860. For sale by G.W. Cottrell, 36 Cornell, Boston. (Source: American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series 1; circa 1860)
Mary states: “Because of the way autism presents, the screams, the, you know, the sudden jumps no matter what you do, you’re the family with the devil child.”
Roland adds, referring to people in his community, “The mentality that we have here is that we give to children. And we expect them to look after us. So, when they look at kids with autism, to them, those children cannot give them back anything. And because of the pressure of the neighborhood, pressure of the community, they tend to abandon them. They leave them in the bush.”
Alarmingly, Mr. Penn-Timity seems to be alluding to filicide. I realize “The Reason I Jump” is, primarily, a propaganda film advocating FC, but it seems irresponsible for the producers to include this statement and expect viewers to take it on face value. The ramifications are far-reaching and, if true, the claims should be investigated and remedied. If, for some reason, they are part of local folklore, or perhaps exaggerated or not true, then the filmmakers, by including Penn-Timity’s statement, are merely adding to the misinformation that surrounds autism.
Beyond that, in a community where people with autism and their families are, literally, demonized, ridiculed, and ostracized, FC might be a tool to help parents create an illusion of “normalcy” (a concept Douglas Biklen, co-founder of FC, discussed in some of his early writings). It is possible to see that a child who scares people with their sudden jumps and screams, for example, may be more accepted if that person could also produce beautiful poetry, write books, or make artwork, even if the creations are produced with a facilitator manipulating the child’s hand. In addition, these endeavors could potentially provide an income for the parents and more closely align with the expectation that the child should “give back.”
Later in the movie, David Mitchell, who translated the FC-generated source material, states:
“For most of history, we’ve assigned autism to demons or to witchcraft or in the early 20th century to ‘retardation’ and—and have acted accordingly, I’m afraid, which I don’t like to think about, ‘cause that would have been my son.”
What I find frustrating and a bit ironic is that Mitchell, while raising concerns about superstitions and autism, advocates FC, which itself is rooted in superstition and illusion.
In his article “The Enduring Legend of the Changeling,” Stuart Vyse discusses a phenomenon in which parents struggling to cope with a child born with abnormalities and developmental problems claim their healthy child was stolen by the devil (or, depending on the culture, witches, fairies, elves, incubi, trolls, water spirits, dwarves, or demons) and a “counterfeit” or “changeling” was left in its place. Children with autism can (outwardly) appear to develop typically for the first 12-18 months before increased communication, behavioral, and developmental difficulties become more evident. Some of these children even lose skills they had previously mastered, including the ability to verbally interact with their parents. It might be no surprise to learn that these children were viewed as changelings.
The Siege: A Family’s Journey into the World of an Autistic Child (book cover)
In The Siege: A Family’s Journey Into the World of an Autistic Child, Clara Claiborne Park writes:
I knew only that my fourth child was not like the others, who needed me and loved me, as I loved them. The fairies had stolen away the human baby and left one of their own. There she moved, every day, among us but not of us, acquiescent when we approached, untouched when we retreated, serene, detached, in perfect equilibrium. Existing among us, she had her being elsewhere.
As Vyse points out in his article “while fairies, incubi, witches and demons play a much smaller role in our world today, we are far from free of the changeling impulse.” He cites FC (including variants such as Rapid Prompting Method) as a contemporary form of the changeling phenomenon.
As we have noted in other blog posts, some parents struggling to accept their child’s diagnosis of profound autism (or other developmental disabilities) turn to FC as a “last resort.” Defying the existing body of scientific research regarding autism and the development of language and literacy skills, these parents and/or facilitators reject evidence-based measures and find solace in guiding their child’s or client’s hands to type out messages that often reveal unexpected literacy skills or contain information far beyond the child’s age and education level. FC use, in this case, may serve to reacquaint the parents with their “stolen” child, if only as an illusion.
FC is a form of automatic writing and has links to the Ouija board or using a planchette. Automatic writing was popularized by the Spiritualist movement (mid-1800s to early-1900s). The surrealists, too, used automatic writing and the Ouija board to tap into their subconscious minds. With psychic mediumship, a person acting as a conduit “receives” messages from an outside agent (e.g., the spirit of a dead loved one) often while in a dissociative state. For some people, this dissociative state is easy to achieve and can be described as a suspension of disbelief. Authors, songwriters, storytellers, and others often talk about “receiving” inspiration for their work that, to them, feels like it originated from a source outside themselves.
In his book, Communication Unbound, Biklen appears to describe this same flow state as his facilitators move from the beginning (more self-aware) stages of FC where they expressed concerns about exerting control over their clients’ movements to a more advanced and fluid production of FCed messages. His purpose was to reject the idea of facilitator control, but, to me, having experienced this state as a former facilitator, it sounds like Biklen is, perhaps unwittingly, describing the dissociative qualities of automatic writing that help make FC “work.”
The “automatic” messages obtained by psychics using a Ouija board were often disjointed, if poetic, and contained information the medium or artist claimed they did not know or remember “receiving.” Some of the messages contained rude, even sexually explicit content and were considered “proof” of authenticity. Spiritualist mediums (usually women) found they could challenge political and social norms, make money, travel, and associate with people above their rank without retribution because they (and their audiences) attributed their divine messages to outside agents or “spirits.”
A Ouija board manufactured by the Kennard Novelty Company of Baltimore. (Source: Museum of Talking Boards, circa 1890)
In 1993, Kathleen Dillon wrote an article called “Facilitated Communication, Autism, and Ouija.” In it, she outlines some of the similarities between Ouija and FC. I have paraphrased the list:
Messages produced often have typographical errors, phonetic spellings, unusual utterances, and content unfamiliar to the facilitator/medium.
Both typically use a board with alpha-numeric characters.
Both use a “pointer.” For the Ouija board, the pointer is usually a planchette. For FC, the pointer is the finger of the subject.
Facilitators/mediums are largely unaware of the extent to which they control the messages. They attribute these movements to an outside agent.
The messages are interpreted post hoc. The receiver looks for meaning in the typed message, even when the message contains partial or unintelligible words.
The “successes” are seen as proof of authenticity and the “failures” ignored.
Both have the potential for harm to the subject and others.
The techniques are based on trust and “the right energy.” They cannot be tested.
Of course, we know that FC can be tested to rule in or rule out facilitator influence by using quantifiable measures in the form of double-blind testing, but proponents do not like this option. To date, reliably controlled tests indicate that it is the facilitators themselves who are authoring the messages. The same, btw, holds true for psychic mediums.
In a 1993 article called “Facilitator Control as Automatic Behavior: A Verbal Behavior Analysis,” Genae Hall advocated for focusing on the facilitator’s behavior—an approach that remains vitally important today. She wrote:
The fact that facilitators often control and direct the typing has been called ‘facilitator influence,’ which seems to be a misnomer. ‘Facilitator influence’ suggests that the disabled person is emitting verbal behavior, and the facilitator is exerting partial control (or ‘influence’) over that behavior. Although partial control certainly may occur when fading prompts within structured teaching programs, such control has not been demonstrated in most cases of FC. Rather than influencing the typed messages, the facilitator appears to be the sole author of those messages. Thus, the focus of analysis is shifted from the disabled person’s behavior to the facilitator’s behavior. (89-90)
I do think we need more research into why proponents of FC adopt the practice and hold firmly to the belief in it despite overwhelming evidence that it cannot work as an independent form of communication. Certainly, it seems to bring some psychological relief to Mitchell and the other parents featured in “The Reason I Jump.” Perhaps there is a mystical “changeling” component to FC that proponents rely on as a coping strategy and to justify its use.
In the meantime, I would argue that facilitator-generated messages create a false narrative that reflect the voices of the facilitators and not those subjected to its use. In turn, these serve to perpetuate superstitions around autism, not dispel them.
Selected Recommended Reading (in addition to the linked articles)
Facilitated Communication: Mental Miracle or Sleight of Hand?
A Magician in the Lab: The Farce Known as ‘FC’
New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America.
Nonconscious Movements: From Mystical Messages to Facilitated Communication
Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game
Planchette, Or the Despair of Science
Reviews of “The Reason I Jump”
Behind the slick production values of “The Reason I Jump”, lies Facilitated Communication
The Reason I Jump: D- Documentary, A+ Propaganda
The Reason I Jump: self promotion trumps intellectual honesty, part 1
The Reason I Jump: self promotion trumps intellectual honesty, part 2
Note: I did a database search for information regarding filicide and individuals with disabilities in Sierra Leone and wrote to human rights groups, but was unsuccessful in finding reliably sourced information about this subject.