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7:32pm June 4, 2014

People on both sides of the language debates claim that nobody gets called an idiot diagnostically anymore.

I don’t know about anymore.  The elderly psychiatrist who diagnosed me with autism is retired, possibly dead for all I know.  And I know that his age had something to do with it.

But I can say that I am a living breathing person who has ‘idiot’ in my diagnostic records.  Particularly, 'idiot savant qualities’.  Idiot savant was the old word for savant syndrome.  Savant syndrome is a step away from what they call splinter skills, a term I actually find more offensive than idiot savant.  And what my shrink was trying to say, was that there was an extreme discrepancy between my impairments (the “idiot” part) and my abilities (the “savant”) part, possibly so extreme as to almost qualify as a savant in some areas.  He got this impression from doing a developmental history and then running me through a large battery of tests.

I have mixed feelings about idiot.

As a diagnostic term, I find it offensive.  It was an insult long before it was a diagnostic term.  For them to have picked up an insult and made it into a diagnostic term for certain people (and there was never agreement on how to divide up people into idiots and non-idiots), makes me very angry.  It was always an insult.  It was not a diagnostic term turned into an insult, it was an insult turned into a diagnostic term, and that made it worse.

Do I blame my particular doctor for using that phrase?  Not really.  It was the language he knew.  He had language impairments too, and it was probably difficult for him to change what language he used.  Especially language he learned early on during his training.  As a fellow person with language impairments, I can’t fault him for groping around for the right word and coming up with 'idiot savant qualities’ a lot.  At least he didn’t say 'splinter skills’, which I still find more offensive for some reason.

As far as everyday people using the word idiot, I couldn’t care less.  I know, the fact that it’s been used in my diagnostic papers is supposed to make me more aware of how it can hurt people.  Maybe it does.  And it’s not like I’ve never been hurt, deeply, by ableist uses of the word 'idiot’.  I just don’t think all uses of the word 'idiot’ are ableist in nature.  I think words have many meanings and contexts, and I am offended by some and not others in the case of 'idiot’.

I think which words a disabled person finds offensive are going to be very individual to that person’s life experiences.  And that rather than claiming that the disability community – or even the people directly affected by these words in a diagnostic context – has a unified opinion on the matter, it would be better to show the many opinions we have and let people make their own choices.

Notes:
  1. slepaulica said: in my language we call them “island skills” and right now on the local university website in their disability policy, it says autistic students can only attend if they have them.
  2. karalianne said: Splinter skills - maybe because it implies that you shouldn’t have those skills at all and they aren’t tied to anything in particular about you? And maybe just because splinters hurt when you get one in your finger or whatever.
  3. baskingsunflower said: I always thought that what words a marginalized person calls themselves (whether reclaiming a slur or whatever) is up to the individual, and said words can only be used by the people in said group
  4. withasmoothroundstone posted this