Social Therapy and Autism Spectrum Disorders
Christine LaCerva, M.A., psychotherapist, educator and the director of the Social Therapy Group in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York, discusses the social therapeutic approach to unlocking a client’s developmental potential:
Q.: My child was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and I was told he would not respond to treatment or psychotherapy. Is that true?
A.: The short answer is that it depends on the type of therapy.
In social therapy, we deal everyday with the damaging effects of diagnostic labeling. With autism spectrum disorders, diagnosis too often has the effect of limiting what parents and others think they can do in terms of interacting with their child.
Parents often will not even attempt normal conversation with a son or daughter who has been so labeled. Instead of two-way communication, interaction gets reduced to a series of declarative instructions directed at the child — “Do this! Don’t do that!” — and little else.
When this happens, the child’s development and ability to grow are severely limited, too. Unless countermeasures are taken, the diagnosis can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy of limitations.
Social therapy’s approach to autism spectrum disorders
At the Social Therapy Group, we help families get out of the diagnostic box in which children (and their parents!) are trapped. Our clinicians relate to everyone as having the capacity to develop and perform ahead of themselves. We invite children to help co-create an environment that does not pathologize anyone due to a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.
We have been successful in this area because social therapy supports everyone’s capacity to be both who they are and who they are becoming. In other words, Social Therapy enables people to be comfortable in their own skin, but not afraid to grow, if they so choose.
Autism spectrum disorder may well be neurobiological. Nevertheless, as social therapists, we work hard to not interpret or predict based upon the child’s current performance repertoire. We relate to children and families as having the capacity to organize what’s happening in more creative and developmental ways, and as having the capability to transform the performance of their lives.
At the Social Therapy Group, we help individuals and families learn how to build an environment where relationality is key. In essence, it is helping all concerned look at the impact they are having on other people. In some cases it’s recognizing that there are other people. A diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder need not and should not be allowed to interfere with performance or continuous human development.