The definition may differ for autistic people, as with lining up toys, spinning wheels, etc.

Autistic people are sometimes said to “treat people as objects”. But what is a simple object and what can be interacted with?

A system can be manipulated as an object: an autistic child acts out in school, and is put into time out, and experiences peace and quiet. So while some feel that autistic folks can’t be manipulative, maybe the real distinction is that we do not understand the subtleties?

This, to me, is one of the more annoying aspects of dealing with neurotypicals. What’s this crap about “the” world and “its” objects? Someone needs to sit this author down in front of “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” for starters, then have, say, a panel discussion about imposition - vs. - negotiation of reality. A nice followup to that would be presenting a series of objects to a panel of autistic folks to hear what our various definitions of them are. A salient example of “divergence of definition” in popular culture appears in Woody Allen’s “Sleeper”, where Allen’s character awakens after hundreds of years and is in one scene presented with a series of objects (ancient to the investigators, contemporary to him) to identify...

Last revised: June 22, 2007
(c)2007 Dave Spicer
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