“The body does not experience itself as a whole, in the sense in which the self in some way enters into the experience of the self.”
(OK298)

In an autistic person, the senses are not filtered/calibrated/aligned/compensated, adding to the difficulty of dealing with this.

The self seems removed from experiences, resulting in the quality of witnessing rather than participating. Example: the acceleration of a powerful motorcycle. I actively compensate for it somehow, so I don’t really feel it.

Also, my deliberately not choosing emotion-laden words, as that would be “unfair”, so the description itself must serve to convey need. This didn’t work very well in my childhood.

The boundaries of the “self” seem further inside than this - sensory stuff seems to come in from the “outside”, rather than being at the boundary. Hmmmmm - maybe sensory stuff still does form the boundary, but for most people it’s filtered sensory stuff while for autistic folks it isn’t. Will one ride the extended sensory data outward, or retreat further inward from it?

Last revised: June 19, 2007
(c)2007 Dave Spicer
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