Donna Williams (1)Besprekingen

Amazing book!!
A first person telling of an autistic life. Searing in parts, heartwarming in others, but always a stark telling of the reality of the author's life.
I found it a stunning window onto the life of a person living in the same world as me, but living differently. The writing is so clear and transparent.
I was in awe of the author - to live such a difficult life, and to be able tell the story so vividly and compellingly!!
Published 30 years ago, when autism was not widely understood (or diagnosed), I'm sure that Ms Williams played a out-sized role in lifting the understanding of autism in both the professional and broader communities.

A riveting account of autism from an insider's perspective.

stupendo!!! di fronte ad un vissuto simile rimango senza parole e capacità di commento....Dio unicamente sa il perchè di questi vissuti e destini...
Grandissima Donna Williams!!!

non ho parole per descrivere la sensazione che si prova leggendo questo libro.....mi sento una nullità di fronte alla normale vita quotidiana e alle sfide insormontabili che alcune persone devono affrontare nei piccoli gesti del vivere.....
Dio nostro, un giorno ci spiegherai perchè a ciascuno il proprio destino??

stupendo!!! di fronte ad un vissuto simile rimango senza parole e capacità di commento....Dio unicamente sa il perchè di questi vissuti e destini...
Grandissima Donna Williams!!!

non ho parole per descrivere la sensazione che si prova leggendo questo libro.....mi sento una nullità di fronte alla normale vita quotidiana e alle sfide insormontabili che alcune persone devono affrontare nei piccoli gesti del vivere.....
Dio nostro, un giorno ci spiegherai perchè a ciascuno il proprio destino??

Still reading. Lots of this book isn't relevant to me but the stuff that is is really helpful in developing insight into the way the autistic mind works in practical detail.

Wow. Definitely recommended reading for therapists and teachers. Maybe not recommended so much for loving parents, because Donna Williams credits her mother's bad parenting for giving her (Donna) the strength to develop her own identity in the world. In that way it reminds me of [b:Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's|454856|Look Me in the Eye My Life with Asperger's|John Elder Robison|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1189907494s/454856.jpg|2119898], written by John Elder Robison and influenced by his brother, Augusten Burroughs. Heartwrenching, heartwarming, and educational.

Expands on the themes of "Autism: an inside-out approach". Puts forward a theory of sensing which explains how people with autism perceive the world. Explains how people with autism experience the emotional and physical worlds differently.

Discusses autistic spectrum disorders as being, not a single entity, but as the combination of a whole range of often unrelated conditions from mood, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive and tic disorders, to dependency, identity and personal issues, information processing, sensory perceptual problems and gut and immune disorders. It empowers and challenges families to look at what they can do to alter their child's environment and address the combination of underlying of underlying issues that up the tempo of each person's 'autism'. It provides carers with the information they need to navigate the expanding autism 'marketplace' and demand the right tools for the job. The author also confronts society's reluctance to embrace diversity and puts up a challenge to professionals to recognise the various conditions that lead to an autistic spectrum diagnosis, and deliver a more effective service to those in need.

Continuing Donna's account of her battle with autism. The sequel to Nobody Nowhere.

Written by a person with autism for people with autism and related disorders, carers, and the professionals who work with them, this is a practical handbook. Exploring autism from the inside, it show clearly how the behaviours related to autism can have a range of different causes.

This book is a fascinating, courageous and true story by a young woman about her childhood. Donna Williams has autism and yet has managed to develop into a perceptive and thoughtful adult who has the ability to look at her own reactions and write about them in a manner that is accurate and detached and, at the same time, intensely personal and full of feeling.

I'm glad I read Temple Grandin's "The way I see it" before reading this. The contrast is absolutely fascinating. Although Donna Williams is quite a bit younger than Grandin (fairly close in age to myself as far as I can work out), this book is very clearly a product of a much earlier era. In fact, the experiences described make me wonder if Australia was way behind the US in its understanding of autism.

Temple Grandin depicts a very logical, scientific background for autism, making it seem clear, straightforward and normal. The foreword to "Nobody nowhere" makes a great, unknowable mystery of it. Where Grandin focuses on ability, the forward to Williams' book focuses on disability. Williams is made to appear as a fascinating specimen and her achievements as being wonderful - for someone with a disability. In fact, Williams writes deeply, feelingly (most of the time) and thought-provokingly; she doesn't need to be judged against a lower standard.

There is one thing I really do like about this book. Grandin pushes responsibility to conform onto the person with autism. She encourages individuality, but only insofar as it does not get in the way of conformity with society's norms. That's fair enough, but it leaves me a bit uncomfortable at times. Williams champions the inherent value of a person as they are, without need of meeting someone else's standards of acceptable.

One thing does fascinate me. As soon as Williams described her "wisps" I recognised them immediately. I still see them occasionally. Mine (I assume) are a result of "litter" at the back of my eye. I like to watch them too. But as for the spots, well, um, doesn't everybody see them???

This is quite a challenging book for me to review. It is an autobiographical account by an Australian girl called Donna who has "characters", as she terms them, named Carol and Willie.

Donna adopted the identity of these "characters" at times of need, Willie appeared to her when she was about two and "was no more than a pair of piercing green eyes whcih could only be seen in the darkness". Willie became the self Donna directed to the outside world, with his glaring eyes and clenched fists. Willie had "a look of complete hatred". Carol was a girl Donna met at at early age who brought her home to her house. Donna wanted to live in Carol's world. When Donna became Carol, she smiled and laughed, and could act "relatively normal". Donna disappeared and Carol "took the stage".

It would be interesting to learn how Donna's condition with her role-playing characters compares with that of those suffering from multiple personality disorder or whatever the correct term is nowadays.

Though Donna may have had several symptoms characteristic of autism, such as problems with the understanding of certain concepts, she did succeed in establishing several amazingly close, though perhaps absolutely short-term, relationships both as a child and an adult, the adult relationships being with others suffering from similar difficulties as herself. But what I'm trying to say is, I don't connect autism, which is a condition where you not only have your own inner world, as I suppose Donna did, shut others out and often never even learn to speak, with a person capable of fluent speech and who establishes deep relationships. In fact reading this book makes me ponder over the whole matter of diagnoses - I have to think rather that according to the various ways we were treated/abused as children, we all suffer from various flaws in character, and when several/many individuals are discovered to possess a group of similar such flaws, this is then dubbed to be a particular "disorder". In fact, no matter what, we are all individuals, differing considerably from each other.

Donna had various flaws and difficulties, but worked on all these by herself in order to turn into a more normally functioning human being. She explains to us her various cognitive problems, strange patterns of behaviour, etc, etc and it was a long process for her to make her own diagnosis, working as stated mainly on her own, though she did at one point find a nurturing friend and kindred spirit in the form of a psychiatrist, whom she herself sought out.

She has a keen intellect and among her achievements completed a university education.

Her mother was abusive, her father weak and passive, and the whole family (she had two brothers) was thus dysfunctional. The book was complete with photos of Donna as a child and later, and of her brothers and auntie. It was a bit shocking for me that the cover photo of Donna at the age of 3 or 4 is the spitting image of a photo of myself at the same age.

The book is well-expressed, though still I haven't managed to comprehend the way Donna's mind worked and how she processed her early experiences. In the final pages Donna explains her various symptoms, their causes as she understands them and their symbolic meanings.

It bothered me somewhat that the book had no chapters, ans this somehow made it seem a bit chaotic, as though her various experiences, chaotic in themselves, were piled up on top of one another and thrown towards us with no interludes.

An interesting book from the psychological point of view, and well worth reading.

I was mesmerized by this book and stayed up most of the night to finish it. It gives an accurate accounting of how it is to live as an Autistic person and how they interact with others. Ms Williams tells of her life as it includes Ian, a male friend suffering from Autism and how the learn to relate to each other and to the world they choose to livein. It also is very honest in telling how we in society label as retarded and even worse names to such individuals with this condition. Because I have had 2 grandsons who are autistic, it was especially interesting to me to see inside of such a person, as my grandsons are unable to articulate as this author does. We all are blessed that Ms Williams is able to put into words her feelings and her experiences, and hopefully all readers come away with a new awareness of how quickly we judge others without knowing all of what that person is living with and learning how to cope. I had to keep reminding myself that this was not about multiple personality disorder, as some facets of the disease of autism creates personalities needed to function in the world, similar to the mental disorder of MPD. This is where the similarity begins and ends, as they are two different diseases/illnesses.
I recommend this book highly to anyone curious, in a relationship with or just needing more information on Autism. Donna Williams is not to be missed as an author and I am looking forward to more from her.

A fascinating look at autism from the inside.

Quoting my review of her first book Nobody Nowhere:

Donna was severely abused as a child, which may have caused many of her brain problems, or which may have resulted from her brain problem's and her mother's inability to cope with those problems and related behaviors. Throughout the book (and in later books) she is hardly ever, if at all, properly cared for, and almost never even supervised. She never could read people or situations and had no idea of the horrible dangers she put herself in; it's amazing that she avoided those dangers at all sometimes, but sometimes she didn't, and ended up raped or in several long-term abusive boyfriend relationships.

Surely this woman has issues; her difficulties arising from autism were only compounded exponentially by the neglect and abuse she received from the world around her.

The story is so horrific at times that one begins to wonder.

One began to wonder a great deal during Somebody Somewhere. I read no further than this book and have no interest in the rest of the series.

Donna was severely abused as a child, which may have caused many of her brain problems, or which may have resulted from her brain problem's and her mother's inability to cope with those problems and related behaviors. Throughout the book (and in later books) she is hardly ever, if at all, properly cared for, and almost never even supervised. She never could read people or situations and had no idea of the horrible dangers she put herself in; it's amazing that she avoided those dangers at all sometimes, but sometimes she didn't, and ended up raped or in several long-term abusive boyfriend relationships.

Surely this woman has issues; her difficulties arising from autism were only compounded exponentially by the neglect and abuse she received from the world around her.

The story is so horrific at times that one begins to wonder.

Nobody Nowhere by Donna Williams is an interesting first-person account of her experiences growing up as an autistic.

Deaccessioning from my collection as I won't be re-reading it.