Autism and the Search for the Self

Two traits of autism that are in the popular vernacular: 1) autism presents across a spectrum and 2) autistic people will not look you in the eye.

As for Number One, it is the norm for all kinds of human traits. Stating it reminds us that a label like autism is not a UPC (uniform personal code?) that guarantees the contents of the human inside. It is Number Two that is the foundation for this post, and also the foundation for the continuing research into the neurological basis for autism.

V.S. Ramachandran is a highly-regarded researcher into the mysteries of the brain and the nervous system. He writes for those of us who are fascinated on a practical level, and he has a wonderful sense of humor. His latest book is "The Tell-Tale Brain", published by W.W.Norton and Company. I recommend it highly to teachers, especially the chapters on mirror neurons and autism.

V.S., as those of us who would like to be his friend call him, has been involved in significant research that proves the link between non-functioning mirror neurons and autism. Mirror neurons are the elements of the brain that allow us to imitate what we see, sometimes called the "monkey see, monkey do" neurons. Autistic people do not have the same mirror neuron response to human actions as non-autistic people, making it difficult for them to adapt a standard of social interaction that we classify as normal.

However, what is even more fascinating - or frustrating, if you are a parent of an autistic child - is that mirror neurons function ideally in connection to an understanding of the concept of self. Without a concept of self, the ability to imitate appropriate behaviors is limited.

The word "autism" suggests a quality of self-absorption, exhibited through a failure to display interactions with others that fall somewhere in the spectrum of normal. I have thought for a long time that this meant an autistic person was overly interested in the self. This is true, but the framework for that interest comes from the inability to feel secure as a separate self. This explains why some autistic people subject themselves to head banging or other extreme sensory self-stimulation. They want to know that they are there, somewhere in there, functioning on at least a sensory level that gives some feedback for their separateness.

It is this link between sense of self and sense of others, according to current theories by V.S. and others in the field, that is missing for people with autism. Without a secure sense of self, a person can not allow that self to imitate other people.

It may be that forthcoming research will demonstrate that high-functioning autistic people, such as those classified with Asberger's syndrome, actually have a more functional mirror neuron network than those who are low-functioning. It still may be more limited than "normal", but it may prove to be the source of the different levels of functioning.

For those of us who depend so heavily on the principles of imitation in our profession, learning more about mirror neurons and the sense of self can be extremely helpful. If you are currently working with students with autistic traits, it is necessary.

April is Autism Awareness Month, the ideal time to explore and learn more about autism.

There are no "undecideds" at Juilliard.

Or at Curtis. These are the two most competitive schools in the country, and not just among music schools. They are the most competitive schools in the country, period, and they are populated with specialists.

A conservatory admissions staff doesn't care whether prospective students were on the debate team, prom committee or jai alai squad. The faculty doesn't have much interest in the number of AP science courses applicants took or the box tops they recycled for charity. They want performers - very, very dedicated performers.

It may be that the performing arts schools are the last bastions of specialization for undergraduates. Just watch your students run from practice to event to committee meeting to social gathering.

There is nothing wrong with being "well-rounded", as the expression goes, nothing at all. There are lots of well-rounded undecideds occupying seats in freshman writing classes across the country. They keep universities in business.

They don't keep conservatories in business.

The current economic situation is, once again, kicking us all in the "arts". Public schools are facing increasingly difficult monetary decisions, and we are certainly feeling the pain here in Pennsylvania. Non-profit musical organizations are struggling to keep their budgets in the black, or in a respectable amount of red.

Supporting the specialists who are taking the path less traveled is going to be up to us, the independent teachers, more than ever. We may be forming the line that connects the dots between a dream and reality. Let's do our best to be up to the challenge, to identify those who are willing to go the extra mile and help them along the way.

Let's also be gently honest with those who are undecided as to how narrow the road to musical success actually is.

A Pro-pain culture?

A few weeks ago I read a two-sided article regarding the validity of competitive cheerleading as a sport. The pro-sport author contended that cheerleading was a sport because the participants suffered injury and still had to perform, just like other athletes.

I kid you not.

In essence, sport was defined by its propensity toward harm. Hmm. I used to think that sports were touted as healthy activity. Humility strikes again.

I couldn’t help but wonder if there are musicians with the same mindset. I do know that the technical demands of music have increased considerably in the last 50 years. Eckart Altenmüller, musician, physician and highly regarded specialist in the medical problems of musicians, lists this as one of the major reasons for the increase in focal dystonias among musicians. (Music, Motor Control and the Brain, published byOxford University Press) Our challenges are simply harder than they were in the past, and we work harder to meet them.

Does that mean we should expect - even glorify – potential pain and suffering that comes from music making?

Unlike professional athletes, musicians rarely get sophisticated physical training as part of our development. We also don’t get paid if we’re placed on the injured list. Lots of us may not have any kind of health insurance at all. Others are, to quote the old song, “playin’ real good for free”.

Fortunately, there are groups like the Performing Arts Medical Association (PAMA),
“an organization comprised of dedicated medical professionals, artists, educators, and administrators with the common goal of improving the health care of the performing artist.” www.artsmed.org

And Andover Educators ™, “a not for profit membership organization of music educators committed to saving, securing, and enhancing musical careers by providing accurate information about the body in movement.” www.bodymap.org

There is also a stronger movement toward integrating what sports medicine specialists have learned with the requirements of the performing arts. The new president of PAMA is Dr. George Shybut, whose history includes work with professional athletes and musicians. Another example of training cross-pollination can be found at the website www.athletesandthearts.com.

However, none of this developing interplay does a service if the participants are cheering for pain.

Parental Pedagogy

If you haven't heard of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, I'd be surprised. In her family memoir, as she calls it, Chua describes a no-excuses style of parenting that demands nothing but excellence in all endeavors, and moms are reacting. Have we really gotten too soft on our kids? Are we wrong to accept that they won't excel at everything they do? Or are some of us as equally unaccepting of lower standards as Chua, denying our children anything that won't put them academically at the forefront?

Let's face it, moms, we are to blame no matter which route we take. We keep family therapists in business, just another gift to the economy.

Seriously, as both a mom and an experienced teacher, I have to admit that it is tougher and tougher to take a tiger's stance these days than when I started teaching 40 years ago. At that time and in that place, parents watched their pennies and wanted value for every one of them. The value in piano lessons was directly related to the amount of practicing each student completed. In a lot of ways, it was easier to be the tiger mother and the tiger teacher.

The expectations and circumstances have changed dramatically. There are more families with multiple income strains and therefore, even in the current economy, with greater ability to budget music tuition regardless of the progress of the student. There are certainly more activities that pull students away from the piano and more technologically magnetic forms of entertainment at home and on the go.

There are also more students who live in two or three different residences in the course of a week. A flute student can readily transport his or her instrument from home to home, but the piano student cannot. Not having an instrument to practice on is actually a valid excuse.

Quite possibly the biggest change is a greater awareness of learning challenges and the impact of interaction styles on students. More and more students are presenting with visual learning challenges, aural difficulties, and forms of autism. We want to help them - we really do! We don't always know the best route, but we do know that standing over them and growling will probably not alter their biology and neurology.

How can moms and dads help the piano student and teacher? First, please let your teacher know if your child has been identified with a certain type of learning challenge. We will probably guess sooner or later, but sooner is always better than later. That gives us time to lay a foundation for the way that particular child will learn and to investigate resources. Most of us are not trained in special education techniques. We have to do some homework.

Second, let us know if your child works best with a tiger or a kitten. We are human, and we sometimes choose the wrong mode. We are sorry when we do.

Third, give some thought to the kind of structure your child requires. Most students do benefit from a scheduled practice time. Most families benefit from a scheduled practice time as well. I know, I know - it is not always easy. However, it is generally easier to start with something more structured and tweak it as needs arise. Be aware that youngsters do not develop scheduling skills for many years. They need help.

Fourth, give some thought to the structure you require. If you need quiet time first thing in the morning, you may not want to awaken your budding pianist for early morning practice. If you are tired at the end of the work day and not patient enough to supervise practicing, set the alarm back 20 minutes.

Piano students spend far more time teaching themselves than teachers spend teaching them. This is how skills advance, by conscious repetition, which is sometimes fun and sometimes very challenging. Progress always requires discipline, which is an orderly way of learning, by definition. The style of that discipline may vary widely from family to family and even child to child. But without it, progress is unlikely if not impossible.

"It's music!"

Preparing for the annual recital is always a little nerve-wracking for students and teachers alike. My job as teacher is to focus on the positive by allowing the student to articulate what is going well, not just what needs to be improved. They have come to expect the question, "What did you like about that performance?"

As I finished playing secondo to a bright young girl's primo, I presented the same query. She looked at me with eyes full of delight. "It's music!" she said. This was the first time I had ever heard such a profound response.

Somewhere along the line, we lose sight of the simple joy of making music. Somewhere along the line, we become so concerned about the details of performance that we forget the sheer pleasure and privilege of making music.

Maybe this is why there are so many homemade performances appearing on YouTube. Surely some of these are attempts to gain attention and possibly fame, but I would like to think that there are many people who want to share the joy of making music with the wider world. "Look, I can do this! And I enjoy it!"

As the calendar year closes, I am reminding myself to return to the teaching studio with this motto in my head. Yes, it is my job to guide and correct and cajole and demonstrate. Why? Because it's music.

The irony of it all

Think about the music.

Honor the composer.

Listen to the sounds you are making.

Advice from past teachers is echoing in my head during recital season. After all the hours spent practicing and refining, there should be no doubt that the performance will be successful.

But there is doubt, and often plenty of it.

And then there is irony. In our classical training we are taught that the performance is about making the music as good as it can be. But what happens after the performance is about hearing praise for the performer, not the composer. I am still waiting for an audience member to say, "That Beethoven, what a genius!" Sure, they may say how much they enjoyed a certain piece, that it is a favorite or something they would like to hear again. Truth be told, they can hear their favorite pieces without ever leaving home, thanks to electronic access to music of all kinds.

Truth be told, they come to hear a certain performer play a recital live. And this starts with children in my studio. I can't fool myself into believing that townspeople would come to my studio recital to hear other people's children play, or to hear yet another arrangement of "Ode to Joy". They wouldn't, and they don't.

The challenge is to accept that the performance is not just about the music. However, it is not just about the performer either. A successful performance is about the performer at a given moment in time interpreting a piece of music written at another moment in time. Oh, yes, and an audience listening to the performance. It is the whole ball of musical wax.

The trick, if I dare call it a trick, is to find a conscious balance of these elements. A successful performance includes technical control, musical mastery, personal expression and communication with the audience. In other words, an inclusive awareness of the music, the performer and the audience.

Thinking about the music can be a great way to prioritize these elements, not ignore them, but prioritize them. After all, the music will not play it itself - at least not live.

This is a test. This is ONLY a test?

The screech preceding these words vibrates through my bones like a dentist's drill. I can't ignore it. That's the idea. I'm supposed to be alerted, alarmed, and aware that my life could be in danger. The reminder that this is only a test is designed to calm down my excited nervous system so I can return to enjoying the scheduled radio programming of classical music.

Today my mind is unable to move beyond the words only a test. For me, the word test is rarely an only. It is a challenge I am required to meet, or a determination of my skills by an outside judge, or, even worse, a recital.

When did I develop the idea that playing for others was more of a test than a pleasure? I suspect I connected tests to performances on my own as a young student. I heard the older students play and wanted to measure up. I don't remember my first piano teacher ever referring to a recital as a test.

Undergraduate school was a different matter. I was introduced to the jury process. A jury is a measure of a music student's progress from year to year, and it involves playing for faculty members. In other words, it's a test.

One of my wise friends asks the questions, "If this is a jury, who is on trial? What is the crime?" Taking that analogy further, I ask, "Am I the defense?" Usually, in my own mind, the answer is yes. I am defending my interpretation, my tempi, my dynamics, my pedaling. The problem is that I don't know what charge I am defending myself against until the verdict - the jury sheets or the critical feedback - are handed to me. It is only then that I know what laws I have broken. Thanks to the uncertainty of the sentence, I can become alarmed, alerted, and aware that my musical life could be in danger. All because I am playing classical music!

Reframing this experience to something more generous and more satisfying is part of my process, especially because I work in an undergraduate school. I am around the nervous - and often judgmental - young students who are laying their musical lives on the line for juried performances. It is part of my task to help them present confident musical performances, knowing that they are also required to survive the tests built into the structure of music school.

I remind them that music is a means of communication. Even the occasional mistake in speech and writing can be understood, as can the occasional mistake in musical performance, if the performance is NOT only a test.