ABSTRACT
If you’ve just picked this book up casually from the bookshop shelf and have turned to this chapter because you want to find out all about Autistic Spectrum Disorders, rather than severe or profound learning difficulties and autism – stop right here. Put this book back on the shelf and go to the Autism section where there are many hundreds of very learned tomes available. Moving through in degrees of difficulty I might recommend The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (Vintage, 2004) – a novel, but an ingeniously constructed one that gives an excellent insight into higher-functioning autism (not, note, Asperger’s) even if the book itself does not mention autism (or Asperger’s) once. Two classics from people who have autism themselves, firstly Temple Grandin’s Emergence Labelled Autistic (T. Grandin and M. Scariano, 1986) from Warner books and Nobody Nowhere by Donna Williams (Jessica Kingsley, 1999). And for those seeking a more academic analysis, Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome: The Facts by Simon Baron-Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2008) does exactly what it says on the tin from an acknowledged world expert, and Theory of Mind and the Triad of Perspectives on Autism and Asperger Syndrome by Olga Bogdashina (Jessica Kingsley, 2006) is well-rounded and full of thought-provoking little asides.
