AUTISM & Chinese Medicine - Re-Thinking Diagnosis

It’s true that a lot of insight has come from the likes of western science and has produced a working symptomology on the topic. It is not my intention to demean this incredible labor of research. Theirs has been a labor of love. My gratitude is incalculatable as are its benefits. By now we are familiar with the western symptomology. Months ago however in doing research on alternative and complemetary therapies I stumbled into a paper by Chinese Medicine fellow Mary Majebe, albeit slightly dated, that rocked my world. Majebe, I discovered, had performed the simple grace of systematizing a Chinese Medicine symptomology for autism, demonstrating its correspondence to the western one. This simple, brilliant extrapolation is based on her years of experience with autistic children including observations on the results of physicians in Chinese hospitals adminastering acupuncture. What Majebe tells us, using the Chinese diagnostic system of course, is so accurate I almost blew my top.

I remember when I first came to see my Chinese physician Susan. I assailed her with questions. I remember her telling me “the thing that I see consistently in almost every autism patient that I’ve seen is kidney deficiency” and not only that but kidney deficiency related to major “heart imbalance” or “deficiency” and also to the liver organ. That wasn’t a scientific observation on her part, and she hadn’t previously read Majebe’s work on autism. Susan just happened to be highly observant. After making a pulse diagnosis she informed me that I had some heavy heart-kidney-spleen deficiency, with a stroke of liver deficiency. Not to mention a broad “qi deficiency” effecting the entire system, but that heart-kidney-spleen pattern was its source. The next day I searched for every source of information which I could in the english language on autism and Chinese Medicine – the knowledge on the topic is hithero limited, but that’s when I found Majebe’s Autism and Chinese Medicine.

Mary Majebe, with her more systemic observations had determined that autism could approached in TCM as a heart-kidney-spleen pattern of deficient qi, although causing major malfunction in other areas of the body and psyche. In other words, hers was virtually the same as my diagnosis by my doctor’s estimations. Majebe graphs three circles each representing the imbalance of these organs. She claims that area of overlap between these imbalances is “the area where autism can occur” (Majebe 99, p. 25).

These Causal potentialities for the autistic imbalance within the Chinese framework are lifted directly from Majebe’s bubble graph. (Majebe 99, p. 25) -

Kidney Imbalances Heart Imbalances Spleen Imbalances
Constitutional Factors - Constitutional Factors -Constitutional Factors
Fear or Shock - Shock or Anxiety -Poor Nutrition
Spleen Qi Deficiency - Immunizations - Antibiotics
-Over-pensiveness
- Obs./Compulsive Behavior

She also offers us a typical Chinese symptomology of these imbalances as if on their own – not necessarily related to autism - although, miraculously, pretty much describing it (Majebe 99, p. 26). That is to say, if you put together the diagnostic information for imbalances of these particular organs, you happen to get a list of problems virtually identical to the western symptomology of autism. Therein is a taste of the eerie legitimacy of TCM – my physician could “feel” where my qi was imbalanced by placing three fingers on the pulse or simply by waving her hand over an organ without touching it – and the combined description happens to be as accurate as the combined efforts of countless western autism researchers, whose most useful contribution was to provide the same criterea. No doubt; if you are someone at all familiar with the physical and psychological intracicies of autism, you’re going to find this amazing.

Kidney Imbalances Heart Imbalances Spleen Imbalances
-Enuresis -High Startle Reflex - Poor Appetite
-Slow Development -Sleep Difficulties - Colic
-Excessive Fear -Speech Difficulties - Food Cravings
-Poor Emotional Connections - Excessively Spitting Up Milk
-Aphasia - Obs./Compulsive Behavior
-Inappropriate Laughing - Frequently Ill
-Impaired Social Interaction
-Poor Eye Contact

Lets examine the meaning of each of these organs for a bit. Further information about all the organs in TCM is provided with profesorial eloquence by Ted Kaptchuck in The Web That Has No Weaver: “The Heart is responsible for appropriate behavior, timely interactions, and being suitable to the context” he writes (Kaptchuck 02, p. 88). The heart, like all organs in TCM, corresponds to what we think of as being the heart but is not necessarily the physical organ itself. The heart is also the container of the “shen” or spirit. It is called the emperor organ for a good reason.

“The Heart Spirit ensures the timing” Kaptchuck explains, “The Heart Spirit ensures picking suitable places for particular actions”. The heart organ is what supports a person to relate to the external environment, namely to other people. You know and love someone who is living with autism, or you are like me and you enjoy a high functioning version of it – and you are thinking; the heart in particular, our own central nervous system of the emotions in TCM, so obviously has everything to do with it. TCM even advocates that extreme deterioration of the heart organ can result in aphasia and other issues with communication.

I know that as an autistic individual I am a member of a club comically terrible at picking suitable places for particular actions. I know as an aspie what it is to be challenged relating to the world outside of the self. I know from the heart and could repeat every item on Kaptchuck’s list and make an “I” or an “we” statement: “When the Heart Spirit is disturbed, one has symptoms such as insomnia, situational anxiety, and inappropriate or even bizarre behavior. Discomfort with situations and people often has to do with the Heart, as do the somatic correlates of anxiety, such as sweating, blushing, being flustered, and palpitations” (Kaptchuck 02, p. 89).

The Kidneys then are the containers of Jing, the essence, if you remember, that element of a person out of which enfold natural life cycles and growth. The Kidneys “rule birth, development, and maturation” (Kaptchuck 02, p. 83). Jing is “the primordial seed of the life process, the life process itself” (Kaptchuck 02, p. 84). The child with autism is either slow to develop or doesn’t develop at all. The Jing is the primordial seed. With autism Jing is trapped. Perhaps the Peter Pan particle, there is no motivation as such to grow and to change. I still remember specifically the sensation of walking down only a few blocks away from my house at the age of thirteen. Being only a few blocks out of my element was terrifying and shattering. I had no sense of direction and a difficult sense of space. There was simply no desire to experience anything that comparatively far out of my comfort zone of reading and books and imaginative abstraction. Whatever kept me there had two major ingredients, namely stagnation and fear.

Finally the Spleen, storing the “consciousness of potentials” [or ‘yi’ spirit] “is responsible for considerations of options, pondering, possibilities, and making final decisions. It is the source of motivation and creativity. If the spleen is healthy, a person has clear thoughts, can make decisions, and has the insight to faithfully support the needs of other people and situations” (Kaptchuck 02, p. 79). Classical wisedom continues to grab us with a precision we are not used to in literature about autism: “A harmonious spleen enthusiastically engages the world. If the Spleen is unbalanced, a person can worry easily, have difficulty making decisions, be mentally unclear and confused, be excessively helpful, or just feel bored and uninterested” (Kaptchuck 02, p. 80). Whereas the autistic person hardly engages the world sometimes only as much as absolutely necessary, is possessed of constant fear and anxiety, is mentally unclear and confused.

There is a Defeat Autism Now dvd presentation which illustrates this state of affairs more beautifully than I ever could. A mom tells the story of the recovery from mental-somantic dispair of her autistic son, who comes to her one day and says, as if well planned and with a lot of intention, “momma, i’ve just come back from the dead”. Autistic people are constantly making some attempt to describe their experiences of leaving and coming into different states of mind and being. To learn to interact with normative society requires a major shift in awareness. Or, more broadly, a giant leap into the dark. I would like to suggest that the success of autism therapies and approaches depends on an expansive willingness, curiosity even, to do the same...

This is part of a longer, investigative piece [“Bridging Heaven & Autism] based on Traditional Chinese Medicine and the literature of an avant-guard of autistic self-advocates. Autism is being treated in hospitals across China with TCM today, including acupuncture.