Marga Vicedo’s book, Intelligent Love outlines a story of contested scientific authority. It describes how a mother of an autistic child is seen as an unreliable source of scientific authority and it describes her fight against prevailing scientific wisdom which eventually results in the testimony of the mother being given scientific legitimacy. Intelligent Love thus outlines the personal story of a mother who fought to go from being demonised to being valued.
The main historical figure in Vicedo’s book is Clara Clairbourne Park. After describing her early life, the narrative focuses upon the birth of her fourth child. Upon realising this daughter is not developing like her other children Clara sought scientific advice. Clara found, however, that psychologists and psychiatrists started doubting her qualities as a mother. Drawing upon psychoanalytical theory, some suspected Clara was too meticulous to love naturally and felt this caused her daughter to be autistic. Despite periods of self-doubt, Clara rejected these claims and sought out alternative ways to understand herself and her child. She eventually found scientists who did value her views and eventually she found others who had been similarity excluded. This eventually led to collaborations and later to the founding of organisations where parents advocated on behalf of their autistic children. By the end of Vicedo’s history, Clara Park is a respected authority on autism, being taken seriously by many scientists, parents, autistic individuals and the general public. Vicedo initially switches between two different narratives, one focussing on Clara Park and one focussing on scientific developments in psychiatry generally and autism in particular. The latter narrative sometimes affects the former because Clara Park finds herself reacting to scientific developments. However, eventually these two separate narratives collapse into one because Clara Park herself starts to influence the development of science. This book will be of use to those interested in the history of autism, giving an overview of the development of modern notions of autism and a close history of a specific individual within that history.
Major themes in the book are the changing positions on who has authority in knowledge production, and what sources are considered objective. Mothers of autistic individuals were not only considered unreliable witnesses, but also considered to harm their children. As such, the mother was considered a scientifically relevant object for her supposed causal role in her child being autistic but she is taken as having no insight into the nature of autism nor into the way in which her child is autistic. For example, Clara Park took detailed notes about her child but to some psychoanalytically orientated professionals this was evidence of her lack of intuitive mothering. Later in the narrative psychology becomes more data driven and Clara Park’s precise observations of her daughter were now considered valuable. Clara Park thus came to be seen as having an insight into autism and her daughter, giving her a level of authority in knowledge production. A related aspect is how the creation of a network helped promote this alternative source of authority. Parents of autistic children formed a network from which they could challenge scientists and put forward their own experiences as a legitimate form of scientific knowledge. People who are interested in psychology, psychiatry and the human sciences more generally can find valuable material in Intelligent Love on changing views on sources of authority in knowledge production, the value of observation, the development of networks within science, and the role of individuals without scientific training in scientific research.
The general narrative makes claims to which some neurodiversity advocates may object. Firstly, Clara Park speaks on behalf of her daughter. Some would argue that it is unethical to speak on behalf autistic individuals since it de-powers the autistic individual. Secondly, some would argue that Clara Park should not have tried to change her daughter, including using invasive techniques like Applied Behaviour Analysis, and should have instead accepted her daughter for who she is. Vicedo is aware of such concerns and argues that Clara Park was not unethical because she gave her daughter a choice in what changes she wanted to make and how they would go about making those changes. I feel the book gives a good case study on which neurodiversity advocates can test their claims. It would be interesting to know if many neurodiversity advocates feel Clara should not have tried to make her daughter interact more with the external world.
In relation to criticisms, I think there are a few areas where more historical detail and context would have been helpful. First, there was discussion about separating autism from childhood schizophrenia. I felt that more detail on the diagnosis of childhood schizophrenia would have been helpful to understand how, or indeed if, the diagnosis of autism was an improvement over the diagnosis of childhood schizophrenia. For example, the way in which childhood schizophrenia was considered to change over time, the employment of subtypes of childhood schizophrenia (such as Bender’s pseudodefective, pseudoneurotic and pseudopsychotic), and that some considered childhood schizophrenia to be a continuum, were not discussed. I believe that the diagnosis of childhood schizophrenia is more complicated and more sophisticated than Vicedo suggests. Secondly, there was much positive discussion of psychologist and parent advocate Bernard Rimland’s 1960s concepts of autism. However, I feel that Rimland’s concept of autism is more problematic than Vicedo suggests. Rimland believed that about only one in ten children considered to have childhood schizophrenia actually had autism. Vicedo does not discuss what should be made of those nine out of ten children who were considered to have childhood schizohrenia but did not fit Rimland’s notion of autism. If I am right that the diagnosis of childhood schizophrenia is more sophisticated than Vicedo suggests then perhaps Rimland’s notion of autism was too restrictive to be an improvement over childhood schizophrenia.
