Product Description

The author addresses the question of how things are sensed using her experience as a person with autism. Williams sees perception as having three stages and argues that these stages are moved through progressively during development, to the detriment of the adult. Williams proposes adopting a more holistic viewpoint to provide a new perspective.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #453678 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 131 pages

From the Author
What Donna says about writing Text Books

I'm not an expert. I'm a social philosopher. As a sociologist, teacher and researcher, I try to avoid talking about pathology and look at processes. I take a stance closer to that of social psychology and raise the issues and perspectives that scientists then explore. My text books have become foundation texts in special education and psychology courses and have changed the treatment, education and educational environments of people on the autistic spectrum quite dramatically over the last ten years. My works are unapologetically controversial and about far more than autism spectrum conditions. I have written about sensory perceptual disorders and differences, cognitive and information processing differences, anxiety disorders, sensing and intuition, about identity, personality and co-dependency, about communication disorders and differences, about condition versus culture and most importantly about the person, individuality, daring and humility. I do not claim at any!
time that autism is any one thing, quite the contrary, I claim it is very diverse and far more like a fruit salad, the combinations of which differ from person to person as do the multitude of underlying causes and the wholistic means of addressing them. My books are read far outside of the autism world alone and as autism is merely normal processes with the volume turned way up, many of the issues I write about give non-autistic people surprising insights into themselves.

About the Author
Donna Williams was born in Australia in 1963 and raised in a working-class inner-city area in Australia. She grew up hearing words such as 'deaf', 'disturbed', 'crazy' and 'spastic', and like many able people with autism born in the 1960s and earlier, she wasn't formally diagnosed with autism until adulthood. As well as writing, composing, painting and sculpting, she lectures and runs workshops on autism all around the world. Donna is also the author of four autobiographies - Nobody Nowhere, Somebody Somewhere, Like Colour to the Blind and Everyday Heaven - along with several other books on autism, Autism: An Inside-Out Approach, Exposure Anxiety, The Jumbled Jigsaw (forthcoming) and a collection of her poetry, Not Just Anything: A Collection of Thoughts on Paper. These books are also published by and available from Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Her first international best-selling autobiography, Nobody Nowhere, is currently under option by a Hollywood film company. After 13 years in the UK, she now lives back in Australia with her husband Chris.

Customer Reviews

thought provoking
sometimes hard to grasp the intent of the writing but never the less it is informative and magnetic a real insight into feelings and experiences of an autistic person

Thoughtful and Fascinating
This is a book about the experience of sensing not the mechanics of perception... it is philosophy, not science. The basis of the book is the idea that most people move quickly on from sensing the world to interpreting it, but that autistic people either remain in the sensing stage or never quite fully let go of it. I identified with a lot of the thoughts and experiences related here and found it interesting and enjoyable to read. I think there are many people who might not 'get' where this is coming from though... from those who do not understand her philosophical approach and mistake it for bad science to those who take every word literally and mistake this for a book about the paranormal. This isn't a book suitable for everybody, but if you have enjoyed Donna's other books or are in to self analysis and exploration I think you'll find this delicious.