12   October 2025 would have been Donna Williams’ 62 nd birthday — a day to remember not only an extraordinary woman but also a mind...

The term “alexithymia” was coined by psychotherapist Peter Sifneos (1973) to describe a relative constriction in emotional functioning, poverty of fantasy life and inability to find appropriate words to describe their emotions. For lack of a more suitable term, he called these characteristics ‘alexithymic’[ 1 ]. Since that time research investigating the alexithymia construct has considerably broadened: Alexithymia  is a multifaceted personality trait characterised by difficu

The Diagnostic Difficulties Chronic pain is quite common in autism , yet it is often unrecognised (and undiagnosed). The diagnosis of...

Overlapping symptoms and differences Psychosis Psychosis is not a diagnosis in and of itself but rather a cluster of symptoms present in...

Distinguishing between hallucinations and “hallucinations” Hallucinations are said to be false perceptions that occur in the absence of...

Sometimes sensory hypersensitivities are misinterpreted as extrasensory perception (ESP) as ‘normal’ people not only fail to see, hear,...

A painful truth Sensory stimuli can be experienced very differently by autistic individuals. Just because we may not feel something, it...

Autistic people have unique ways of communicating and interacting that are rooted in their unique ways of thinking and experiencing the...

The Intense World Syndrome and other ‘sensory theories’ Although already in the very first descriptions of autistic children, researchers...

In autism, there is laughing/giggling and ‘laughing/giggling’. There can be numerous reasons to laugh, which are difficult to understand...

Why can’t my child speak? It was estimated that about one third (Bryson 1996) to one half (Lord & Paul 1997) of autistic people never...

We assume that language is necessary verbal (i.e., comprising of words). That is why we say that children are verbal if they can talk (no...

At about the same age all typically developing children, no matter what culture they are born into, manifest similar patterns of speech...

According to some researchers (e.g., Ramachandran 1995), it is mirror neurons that allow us to "read" and understand another's...

But do they? Giacomo Rizzollati and colleagues (1992) conducted experiments on monkeys, recording signals from parts of the frontal lobes...

Can’t start – can’t stop Another problem autistic individuals experience is ‘inertia’ (Dekker 1999) – difficulty in starting, stopping,...

Autistic people are said to be (severely) impaired in their ability to empathise with other people which is reflected in the...

It is not as simple as ABC When we come across a behaviour that’s difficult, there’s a popular method that’s used to help parents and...

Thomas, a 12-year-old autistic boy has a long history of some features of anxiety and depression. For the past several months, he has...

Insisting on ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you’ vs. Talking to the wall Some autistic children need an intensive interaction style that...