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A review by tobyyy
The Abomination by Jonathan Holt
3.0
3.5 stars
This was a mostly enjoyable read, a military slash legal thriller slash murder mystery.
The one thing that dinged my overall rating down from 4 stars was this sentence: “After his kidnap, he’d been diagnosed as having a form of autism which amongst other things made him incapable of empathising with other people” (p.364).
Ummm. WHAT.
1) People with autism/autistic people FEEL EMPATHY. I am so tired of hearing this stupid stereotypical assumption that neuro-atypical people are incapable of empathy just because they don’t demonstrate it the same way that neurotypical people do.
2) You don’t “develop” autism after a traumatic event. It’s not PTSD. Don’t make it sound like the two are linked.
And then later in the book, the brilliant hacker character is talking with an eminent psychiatrist who confronts the hacker’s “inability” to have close personal connections and suggests medication and CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) to address that.
Again — NO!!! CBT may be helpful to address fallacies and cognitive distortions related to not having close personal connections/relationships. Also helpful to address any self-esteem issues or loneliness/depression related to the world being an unforgiving place for people who are not neurotypical. But for someone with autism, to actually address the concrete lack of meaningful relationships? Social skills training and psychoeducation and DEFINITELY NOT MEDICATION unless it’s for a comorbid issue like clinical depression or anxiety (which was not made explicit in the book, so it’s just me extrapolating now).
Why do people try to use therapy, psychiatry, and related things in a book without actually doing their damn research? It’s NOT THAT HARD to find sources for the information I’ve provided. God. A huge pet peeve of mine is authors who skimp on their research and because mental health is a “popular topic,” they decide that the articles they’ve read on Facebook or Buzzfeed are sufficient. Ugh.
This was a mostly enjoyable read, a military slash legal thriller slash murder mystery.
The one thing that dinged my overall rating down from 4 stars was this sentence: “After his kidnap, he’d been diagnosed as having a form of autism which amongst other things made him incapable of empathising with other people” (p.364).
Ummm. WHAT.
1) People with autism/autistic people FEEL EMPATHY. I am so tired of hearing this stupid stereotypical assumption that neuro-atypical people are incapable of empathy just because they don’t demonstrate it the same way that neurotypical people do.
2) You don’t “develop” autism after a traumatic event. It’s not PTSD. Don’t make it sound like the two are linked.
And then later in the book, the brilliant hacker character is talking with an eminent psychiatrist who confronts the hacker’s “inability” to have close personal connections and suggests medication and CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) to address that.
Again — NO!!! CBT may be helpful to address fallacies and cognitive distortions related to not having close personal connections/relationships. Also helpful to address any self-esteem issues or loneliness/depression related to the world being an unforgiving place for people who are not neurotypical. But for someone with autism, to actually address the concrete lack of meaningful relationships? Social skills training and psychoeducation and DEFINITELY NOT MEDICATION unless it’s for a comorbid issue like clinical depression or anxiety (which was not made explicit in the book, so it’s just me extrapolating now).
Why do people try to use therapy, psychiatry, and related things in a book without actually doing their damn research? It’s NOT THAT HARD to find sources for the information I’ve provided. God. A huge pet peeve of mine is authors who skimp on their research and because mental health is a “popular topic,” they decide that the articles they’ve read on Facebook or Buzzfeed are sufficient. Ugh.