Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently by Steve Silberman

27 reviews

dwarrowdams's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

An amazing read that gave a clear overview of the history of autism and looked towards the future. Incredibly well-researched and important.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Child abuse, Medical trauma, and Child death

Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Antisemitism, and Physical abuse

Minor: Homophobia, Suicide, and Transphobia

bethanieawp's review against another edition

dark informative inspiring sad slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse

Minor: Animal cruelty

melodywithbass's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

3.0

Out of date now (2023), overly long, and a bit emotionally manipulative. The ending was surprisingly brief and weak. Attempts to present Asperger as a good guy on tenuous interpretation of his words. Very much a snapshot of a moment - worth reading as a historical text but not as a primary source on autism, or even as your first pop-sci introduction.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Forced institutionalization, Child abuse, and Ableism

tinyplanet's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative slow-paced

3.5

Well-researched and well-written summary of the history of autism to ~2010. It was not a fun read. It unfortunately felt like a long account of how autistic people (and people with other developmental disabilities and mental illnesses) have been abused, stigmatized, imprisoned in institutions and mental asylums, denied education, infantilized, sterilized, tortured, and murdered, with some breaks to show autistic people in a symp thetic to positive light. Silberman did cover the history of the nascent autism self-advocacy movement in the United States and interviewed many autistic people and their families.

The book is white- and Western-centric, primarily focused on Austria, the UK, and the US, where most formal research on autism has been done. Silberman does include the voices of some girls and sometimes autistic mothers, plus Temple Grandin. There are some mentions of Japanese families, but very little said about minorities in the US or lower socioeconomic classes.

Silberman attempts to let the facts stand for themselves. In doing so, he does not take a strong stand against some of the figures who committed abuses. Asperger is presented as Nazi-lite. Electrocution is clearly bad, but the insidious frameworks that ins ired such a "treatment" are not fully confronted. Inference is required to identify all of the issues that Silberman presents.

This book may have the most content warnings of any book I have reviewed, although none of it is gratuitous.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Bullying, Confinement, Physical abuse, Ableism, and Child abuse

Moderate: Mental illness, Emotional abuse, Antisemitism, Genocide, Grief, Self harm, Suicide attempt, War, Medical content, Transphobia, Violence, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Torture, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Minor: Miscarriage, Fatphobia, Abandonment, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Addiction, Excrement, Panic attacks/disorders, Hate crime, Murder, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Religious bigotry, and Vomit

feynmaniac1729's review against another edition

challenging reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

I wouldn't recommend this to most neurodivergent people. It's a decent summary of the modern history of autism, but often devolves into a mode of "look at how horribly mistreated were/are the neurodivergents," which I personally found more triggering than educational. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse and Ableism

maximauve's review against another edition

hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Antisemitism, Child abuse, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Abandonment, Colonisation, Medical trauma, and Classism

changelingreader_adrian's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Abandonment, Medical content, Medical trauma, Homophobia, Child abuse, Ableism, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, and Self harm

Moderate: Suicide, Violence, Classism, Antisemitism, Torture, Medical trauma, Hate crime, and Racial slurs

Minor: Xenophobia, War, Panic attacks/disorders, Gore, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Religious bigotry, Miscarriage, and Transphobia

music_teacher's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

4.25

The book was extremely informative and really brought the history of autism to light. The characters are fascinating and the history is truly amazing. I really recommend this book. If I suggested any changes it would be that the title doesn’t make it clear enough that it’s basically a history of the discovery/delineation of ASD.  Also, there is a lot of background info that probably could have gone into footnotes/endnotes instead. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse

It is not a manual for teachers or parents.

ren_the_hobbit's review against another edition

dark informative sad medium-paced

2.75

Honestly disappointed. For a book that promised both the history and future of neurodiversity, very little of the book was about the future. Only the last chapter which was one of the shortest. In addition, it mentions a few times that people of color, lower socioeconomic status and women are under-diagnosed and under represented but didn’t go into detail why or attempt to find their stories. Finally, it talks about how autism in the future will be lead by autistic people, but barely mentions their points of views or stories. The part about WWII and it’s affects on the spread of ideas were interesting. But then it went on and on naming every white autistic or possibly autistic man in the 1900s who invented something.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, and Ableism

Moderate: War and Mental illness

ashklaass's review against another edition

hopeful informative medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Mental illness, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Child abuse, Medical trauma, and Medical content