The whole "not able to empathize" bit is a stereotype. If that was the case, how on earth did they persuade a woman to marry them? Nearly all high-functioning aspies can empathise in one form or another, we just have trouble expressing empathy correctly.
Personally I would automatically suspect the motives of any marriage therapist who ups and calls herself a medical psychologist and then dives into the autism industry. Her newsletter touts "special discounts on wellness products". She has a sideline as a "business consultant". The only academic journal article she seems to have had published was in the journal Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice. Draw your own conclusions about her motives. I'd say she's spotted autism as a new growth industry and is diving right in there.
It was with shock and dismay that I read the information on the link that you posted for Kathy J. Marshack. Unfortunately this is representative of individuals of the U.S. professional community who use their academic credentials to exploit both the autistic community and the natural caring and the fears of the parents, family members and friends of people and children in the autistic community. Although there are many good professionals in our country, who really do care and take their time to carefully evaluate the effect of their actions on the community that they are addressing with their “theories” – they are unfortunately, in my professional experience, few and far between. It appears that Kathy J. Marshack is one of the people who are using credentials to further a personal agenda or to exploit a niche for financial and other secondary gains known consciously, or driven by unconscious motives.
In fairness I want to be clear that I have not read her book, but only the points that she has put on her website. (I also now understand that she was married to an Aspie and had a bad experience.) As these are on a website, for general public consumption, I will address some of the points that Marshack appears to be making. I also want to make it clear that as I have not had the opportunity to examine and evaluate her I can only make broad assumptions that may or may not be true, about what she is trying to do. (If I had evaluated her I would not be able to write about her as confidentiality would prevent me from writing about her psychology.) However, as she appears to be categorizing all of us into a narrow pigeonhole and extrapolating what she claims to be factual data, I believe it is fair to at least look at other viewpoints that hold equal if not more actual validity to the ones that she is so boldly putting forth.
From first impressions it appears that Marshack is also trying to exploit a market of women who mourn why their partners don’t know and understand them. Women Who Love To Much is a themes that has certainly been over that ground, not in both the book form, endless articles in the magazines that exploit women. As has much of the Co-dependency work that proliferated in the late 80’s and 90’s. And then there is, Women Are From Venus and Men Are From Mars. It is a theme that has had many incarnations and this appears to be a new twist on that market. This twist is unfair both to the women that she is addressing and to the Aspies that she is burdening with her misinformation.
Undoubtedly Marshack knows about abandonment wounds. In what is posited as normal NT development in the Western world as the child is developing they must make the psychological journey from identifying and experiencing themselves as part of their mothers – or forward looking psychologists, psychiatrists and educators say of their parents – to more self identity. Lack of proper parenting, illness, bonding break factors as in adoption or the death or actual physical abandonment by the parents can cause the child to partially on some level or fully not grow through this stage (window of 18 months to three years, depending on the child) so that they have an abandonment wound. In adulthood this can cause anxiety, fear and various levels of inability to trust adult partners, amongst other things.
In the Jungian community and elsewhere, as in the codependency community, as in Dr. Barry Weinhold and Dr. Janae Weinhold’s work at the University of Colorado (Breaking Free Of the Co-Dependency Trap) the cultural factor in gender raising as been postulated to actually cause girls to have some form of culturally acceptable – albeit according to covert rules – abandonment wound. This is postulated to have to do with the way that NT girls are related to and raised being positively reinforced to be in relationship to another rather than the positive reinforcement that boys get from parents, adults and teachers to be physically active in the environment. Because girls get approximately 160 covert messages per hour to cling, and not to be out exploring, they end up with a place in their inner psychology that feels completely bereft and set adrift unless in close relationship with another; the relationship with other is where the individual then gets self identity and meaning. In adulthood this “abandonment wound” constantly fears that others will leave and thus the individual will be cast adrift into a void or vacuum in which they will emotionally die.
In adulthood women with abandonment wounds derive their sense of meaning, their sense of self, their emotional and spiritual connections and needs through another. Most usually through their emotional partner and/or their children. They are not autonomous. As Jungians like John Sanford have explored we will never get from another what we need to fill our wounds. The “other” can never fulfill us emotionally or spiritually. Our abandonment wounds, our co-dependency can only be healed within ourselves and paradoxically that is when we are really able to love another because we are able to experience real love and not the mistaken “need” that many in NT culture experience as love.
The abandonment wound is addictive. The women, and some men, who have it become addicted to relationships with others. It is one of the process addictions – so called because there is not an actual substance involved but the addiction causes the same sort of reaction in the brain as with a substance addiction. Other process addictions are shopping, gambling, raging and harming others.
The problem is that the abandonment wound is so much a part of most women’s make up in western, Dominator society that it is often considered normal. Theorists who consider the problems of the society as a whole have shown that underlying the ability to control people by the advertising industry is the exploitation of this wound. Naomi Wolf in her book, The Beauty Myth, looks at how women often have to spend up to 40 % of their income to meet the dressing, grooming and make up standards “set” for them in relationship to males in their same professions – such as in law and corporate work. If one looks at the women’s magazines and at the television commercials one can see the subtle and not so subtle marketing that plays with women’s need to be wanted, desired and part of a relationship.
Heterosexual NT women, most who have some degree of abandonment wound, look for their emotional and spiritual needs to be met through their male partners. Unconsciously they are looking for their “power in the world.” Although many women have debunked Carl Jung’s theory of the Syzergy – the countersexual contained within the other – so the male has his feminine side . .or anima and the woman has her unconscious male side . . so called the Animus * - it is a concept that should be explored especially by NT women if they are to heal. In 1987, Kathy Carlson, trained at the New York Jungian Institute, considered an expert in the Mother and Daughter relationship, author of In Her Own Image once laughed during our training sessions, “Women look to their male mates for the healing and mothering that they either didn’t receive or imperfectly received in childhood. In our culture (Dominator culture) this is the worst place to look because men cannot give it to them. But it results in women going round and round. They need to look inward and towards the Divine Feminine for their healing.”
The above is just bare bones theory and simplistic, but what Women Who Love Too Much looks at is the addiction and how to take responsibility for healing it. What Marshak seems to do it the opposite: Marshak blames the woman’s partner for the effects in her adult life of her abandonment wound instead of showing women how to take responsibility and heal their wounds.
This is extremely dangerous as it singles out Aspies, making sweeping, negative pronouncements about them, as if Marshak is an expert, with information straight from the Devine Creator, while at the same time supporting women to keep their abandonment wounds. It is a version of what is called, “ego syntonic” – where one experiences one’s wounds and negative behavior patterns as part of one’s self image and definition and thus cannot see that one has something that needs healed – and/or a character disorder which always experiences the world outside of self concept as needing changed or healed. This is not therapeutic – it is thinly veiled hatred and prejudice. If one would substitute “Black,” “Jew,” “***,” “Hispanic,” or any group that has been harmed and reviled by a greater culture for Aspie in Marshak’s writing and pronouncements one would see through her machinations for what they are – even if she herself is so ego syntonic or character disordered that she cannot see what she is doing.
Hatred and the prejudice that it produces has through history created genocides, slavery and social reviling of groups and individuals that has been harmful in many ways to the group that hatred is directed at. But it also harms the well being of the society that tolerates it because individuals and groups that are targeted are often so under siege by the stereotypes and the living and working conditions that are imposed on them that they cannot heal and stabilize so as to contribute the richness of the gifts that they are born with.
I spent a good deal of childhood in the fifties, segregated south. From my parents and adults I heard their public and private pronouncements about the negative attributes of the character and genetic defectiveness of Black people. The psychologists and doctors of the time had a number of theories, that they thought were truth sent down from God, that justified economic, educational, physical and psychological abuse. I see the same thing going on now in the work of Marshack. Frankly, I am very glad to be Aspie, because it allowed me to relate to the real person, what was beyond the skin color, so that I was the only one in school to play with the black girl in our class. What is so right about NT culture that would bring harm to children and ostracize them simply because of their skin color? And why couldn’t the other children, one would surmise, mainly NT, see through the cultural “shoulds” of the paradigm that bound them?
Another situation jumps out in my mind from South Africa before the overthrow of Apartheid. One of the reining politicians was holding forth to a journalist as to why apartheid was justified. They were on his plantation and he was sitting next to an older black man of grandfatherly age who was softly smiling. He explained to journalist, looking directly into the camera, that the man had lived on his place since before he was a boy. According to him he loved the old man, very much, as one would love a dog and be loyal and caring towards one’s pet. He explained that although the blacks looked like humans – which he defined as white people – they were in fact monkeys. He then laughed, and patted the black grandfather and held up his hand to the camera so that the palm was exposed. “What does this look like to you?” He queried. He wanted the viewers to understand what he understood, that this man’s hand look liked a gorilla’s hand; thus, because in South African logic, supported by their church, the Black man looked like an animal, he was – obviously – an animal. And thus the justification for enslavement of a huge population and all the exploitation and abuse that it entailed.
Marshack’s “theories” are just as harmful to Aspies as the logic of the slave and segregated south of the U.S. and elsewhere and the logic that led South Africa to its apartheid was to a whole group of people simply based on skin color. And it is not just in the playing field of male and female relationships that her “theories” are harmful. The women that she is exploiting often have Aspie children. And many other professionals, looking for a niche market to exploit are reading her work. These negative pronouncements could have horrible consequences for us in criminal prosecutions, work places and in divorce courts if people like Marshack market themselves as Expert Witnesses. Her work can be picked up and applied as “truth” in a number of places that will hurt us emotionally and economically. The far reaching implication to Aspies and all Autism spectrum individuals is not to be underestimated. Yet she and others think that they can get away with their thinly veiled hatred and exploitation simply because we are on the spectrum and are perceived as not being able to defend ourselves.
What can be done? Education. NT women have to stop being exploited by people like Marshack. Let us remember that although psychology can be used for healing and well being that it is often wielded by the power broker groups of NT culture that are so myopic that they do not see that their social paradigm has caused mass extinction of species, environment and the global warming that now threatens all of us. NT women must start to see that it is they that need to meet their own needs and heal their abandonment wounds.
Am I saying that Aspie partners don’t have problems? Far from it. Growing up in the larger, Dominator paradigm has wounded both NT women and Aspies. Aspies are being blamed for the wounds that they carry from growing up in a culture that not only does not recognize their gifts but also does not show them how to harness them so that they can be the contributors that they are meant to be. Many NT women who are with Aspies because they sense the spirituality and energy that is there; they sense the specialness. But instead of moaning, whining and refusing to heal their abandonment wounds, making their partners “wrong” – these women need to help us to change the whole culture so that we all can heal and get on with a better plan for the planet and quality of life for all. Whining only keeps everyone wounded and fills the pockets of predators, looking for financial gain, hiding behind professional credentials. (Again, this is not to say that all professionals are like this, many are motivated by altruism and true caring to find what works for healing and wholeness – not make individuals fit into theories.)
Aspies cannot give spiritual companionship? Have spirituality? Have emotion? Have empathy? Meet eyes in conversations???? Dominator Paradigmatic Hogwash! Perverse Blindness! The same thing that has kept so many of us imprisoned in a belief system, imposed by these theorists, that makes many of us feel that something is wrong with us. In other cultures, different from the present one that is predominant in the west, we were the Shamans! The Healers. The Visionaries! The Wise Ones! But those cultures knew who we were and how we were needed – those cultures recognized us and helped us to develop our natural gifts. Most of us are very capable of talking to the animals – but how valued is that in a culture that has brought about massive species extinctions in the past fifty years?????? We have the ability to sense what people need for healing – but how valued is that in a social paradigm that is run by a multi-billion dollar drug industry? We can communicate intuitively – and we have many other abilities – but they are not valued on the yardsticks of what the Dominator cultural paradigm values.
I was also brought up in a time when left handed people were seen as weird and the children were often slapped, hit and punished to make them into right handers. Many children grew to be adults who were very wounded. Yet now we know that left handed ness can indeed be a sign of extreme creativity. I propose that as the Hunter/Gatherer tribal cultures knew who we Aspies are and helped us bring forth and value our gifts as Shaman and Wise Ones – that if our culture starts to value and explore who we are . . . and help us to find our place that we are here to help to heal the planet.
As an aside – in the Northwest of the North American continent – Oregon, Washington and British Columbia – as well as elsewhere – there are a number of groups that try to teach NT’s to be shaman, healers, etc. Its not that I don’t think that there is value in their trying to learn to harness their higher powers – but I personally find that it is like trying to make fish into birds. Paradoxically the usually NT psychologists and social workers who “sell” themselves as experts at teaching these things, making a good deal of money in doing it . . often don’t know what they are doing. But like Marshack, they make all sorts of bizarre claims and pronouncements and put forth theories that serve their pocketbooks more than the NTs that they are supposedly teaching.
If NT women would take responsibility for their own healing and develop their higher, real spirituality through formal meditation, yoga and quality lifestyle that promotes planetary healing – and help us form places where Aspies can heal, explore and develop who we really are – they might find that we are the wonderful partners that they sought in the first place. If not then they can take responsibility to find NT partners. Robert Johnson, Jungian Analyst, who wrote the books, HE, SHE and WE, as well, as Inner Work and others, feels that as we take personal responsibility to heal our personal wounds and find and develop our gifts that we become able to be real partners with another person. He feels that we need to follow the ideal of Brother/Sister – as in the concept of the sun God, Apollo and the moon Goddess, Artemis. We are companions and compatriots in life – not needy, whiny – we companion each other so that each of us can develop are personal gifts and interests so that we can truly contribute in this incarnation – which is, sadly, often all too short.
But the bigger issue that has to be addressed is that this is yet another attack on us by what seems to be a very nasty individual who is hiding behind professional credentials. She either does not know the harm that she is wreaking or doesn’t care. She is hiding behind the very real hurt that these NT women are feeling. I don’t deny their pain or what they perceive as the immediate cause – but I deny that it is at its root caused by the Aspie. Marshack has taken aimed and put forth theories that harm us terribly and she can use her credentials and rhetoric to re-direct blame onto us while she hides in her smugness.
I want to go back to group struggles through history for recognition, healing, autonomy, education and the ability to have self determination. We have been terribly hurt, many of us and we suffer in our quality of life as a result. There is no denying it. Marshack’s website and book only ratchets up an element of society that is filled with hate and willing to profit by harming us further. We could, wounded as many of us are, continue to fall to the level of these hate mongers. But I propose that we take a deep breath and allow our healing energies, our spirituality, our good natures to take center stage. Let’s take control and set the standard higher rather than falling to their level and reacting. When any group is “in reaction” they are letting the Batterers pull their strings like puppets.
Gandhi and Martin Luther King led fairly peaceful revolutions against violent cultures. Perhaps some would say they are bad examples because of what happened to them – but the abusers could not detract from the message of education and non-violence that they put forth. And Nelson Mandela also embodied that message. The internet and awareness is allowing us to find each other – to start to come together. In that, as in former freedom movements, we can use our numbers to start the healing process and then the discovery process as we explore who we really are . . not what the prevailing culture has taught us that we are. We need to strike down the negative attributes that have been put on us like straight jackets so that we can find our gifts and develop them. Marin Luther King’s, “I have a dream . . . “ speech is the same energy that we need to explore, so “We have a dream . . .” As we heal and come to know who we are and as we stand for healing, diversity and understanding . . . and then we come to educate the members of the prevailing culture . . I have no doubt that the poisonous outpouring of nastiness by these people will dissolve before who we really are as we stand in our goodness, strength and gifts. “We Shall Overcome.”
*Many women within the Jungian fold have felt that the term, Animus, is negative as it means negative spirit. Jung has been called misogynist by some for so naming it. But the truth is that when it is completely unconscious it often functions negatively. As we become more conscious of our “power” we become more integrated and it helps us to be in the world in a free way that does not need men to substitute for what is undeveloped in women. I feel the concept should be renamed to take the “negative” value off of it, eliminate the nitpicking and get on with the discussion within women’s groups about how to heal women who need to claim their unconscious power.
Zarinangel, what you just wrote moved me both emotionally and intellectually. After reading your response to Ms. Marshack's "expert" perceptions of the Aspie man's capacity to relate to the opposite sex, I now find myself wondering whether that response Dr. Marshack sent me was really a "thank you so much for trying to understand the plight of these women, you're really a good person-AS or no AS- response, or just possibly a formulaic " false appreciation of your concern" response. Probably the latter.
Zarinangel, what you just wrote moved me both emotionally and intellectually. After reading your response to Ms. Marshack's "expert" perceptions of the Aspie man's capacity to relate to the opposite sex, I now find myself wondering whether that response Dr. Marshack sent me was really a "thank you so much for trying to understand the plight of these women, you're really a good person-AS or no AS- response, or just possibly a formulaic " false appreciation of your concern" response. Probably the latter.
It looked like a dismissive "pat on the head" to me, I'm afraid.
Trent wrote:[Zarinangel, what you just wrote moved me both emotionally and intellectually. After reading your response to Ms. Marshack's "expert" perceptions of the Aspie man's capacity to relate to the opposite sex, I now find myself wondering whether that response Dr. Marshack sent me was really a "thank you so much for trying to understand the plight of these women, you're really a good person-AS or no AS- response, or just possibly a formulaic " false appreciation of your concern" response. Probably the latter.]
I am afraid that I agree with Dogface. Marshack has to "appear" sympathetic because she has to sell workshops and books. I have been in this "business" for years and know what the therapist are up to and often won't admit it when they are trying to package their own perspective. It appears to me that she is making money on our pain and has a thinly veiled vendetta against her husband and all aspies. I know this type of woman and professional, have seen too much of it, and find it very upsetting the way that they get away with it.
I am not saying that all people who write books and lead workshops are bad. there are many good people out there who really do care. But I think she is trying to minimize damage by patting the poor aspie on the head.
And, I am not saying that what happened to her is not horrible. It was. I am not minimizing the pain that she went through and apparently, covertly still suffers. But how many Aspies have been hurt by NTs? And how many, truthfully NT women have been harmed by NT men? And further, what has NT society done to all the species and the planet???? Do we go out and pursue them with venom? Veil it in professional false theory that wlll have longterm ethical, legal and personal implications?
Do we Aspies have things that we can learn to keep growing on our path? YES! But so do all humans. . . "Physician, Heal Thyself." and in this case, "Psychologist, Heal thyself." Do the real work in your own mind and heart - don't subvert your anger into abusing a group that has been too abused. Any person in an abusive relationship needs to get out, heal and get on with their lives.[/quote]