On the psychiatrists couch

My recent classic PTSD reaction to a recent posting on Facebook, bringing back painful flashbacks of something far in the past, has given me to much reflection, and my blog is about to take a somewhat dark turn as I confront and try to out the many demons of my childhood that still have the power to possess me with fear, shame and emotional pain.

Now this is still going to be an autism relevant blog, but what it will not be is a blame the parents blog, because I know that ones childhood takes place in a social context beyond the family where people are effectively conditioned by class, upbringing, education, media and general cultural ethos into a set of beliefs embodied in the zeitgeist.

It is my belief that many parents turn to biomed as a reaction to the evils of the Bettleheim era, and to many genetic implication is still a form of blaming the parent.

Well I am also aware, and have been since my diagnosis that there are a variety of perspectives on everything. I see it from the inside in one way, my parents saw it in another, and people outside the family looking on at my parents often difficult marriage saw it another, taking sides as they saw fit.

That is why it is very difficult for me to embark on what I am about to do.

Some of it is already hinted at in the autobiography I provided back in the days when a geocities page was the thing to have. I wrote that post diagnosis as a personal journey into my past recontextualising in the light of what I had recently learnt of myself. Perhaps I was wrong to do that, but it is too late now that so much of my life is already out there for people to pick at and come to there own conclusions, coloured by whatever experiences they have had and how they look at the world in general.

It has been the basis of a disagreement I came to have with an author, who gave my web pages added publicity by including material from them in a book. I felt later that there was a danger that by saying some things about my dad that could be more wideley read than the internet, might rebound on me because I feared the hostile reactions of people who were my dad's friends, and who had seen him in a more sympathetic light than I was forced to view during family rows and disputes.

I mistakenly believed by allowing my words to reach a wider audience that might enhance my prospects of following the likes Of Donna Williams, Wendy Lawson, and Lianne Holiday Willey and becoming a writer myself.

Well let's just say I was naieve at the time, and was mistaken. I have since come to the conclusion that if I have any ambitions as a writer left, it is to be a scholarly writer and not a sensationalist autobiographer.

Which is why it is going to be so awkward now to turn back to some of those things in my childhood, inevitably related to my autism and other 'disabilities' or 'difference'

To deal sensitively with the outside as well as the inside perspectives, and not to lay the blame on anyone for my parents sometimes rocky marriage, or the still traumatic events of my schooldays which have been revisited to me last night.

These things happened, and I cannot be silent about them forever. I make this turn in order to excorcise those demons.

The link from today's blog may be puzzling some, what it has to do with the Coventry Music scene, well the article mentions includes a picture of my dad lifted from my former geocities (RIP) web site, which shows that local people, my dads friends amongst them have read it, and I feel sorry for what I said about him and want to make some ammends now, by attempting to dissect the whole social context of what led to those difficult times without invoking the whole sorry farce of blame the 'aspie' husband.