Brains come in different types and they're all normal.
Interpretation
Diversity in brain function is natural and should be accepted.
This quote by Simon Baron-Cohen emphasizes the notion that variations in brain types are a normal part of human diversity. It encourages acceptance and understanding of different cognitive styles, suggesting that differing ways of thinking and perceiving the world contribute to the richness of human experience.
In practice
In a discussion about neurodiversity at a psychology seminar.
When I first started in this field there were all kinds of stereotypes about autism, as if these were children from another planet, or children who had been brought up by wolves, that they weren't part of our population and were somehow separate.
Empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble. It is effective as a way of anticipating and resolving interpersonal problems, whether this is a marital conflict, an international conflict, a problem at work, difficulties in a friendship, political deadlocks, a family dispute, or a problem with a neighbor.
Well, in the general population, we find differences between the typical male and typical female. For example, males seem to be more interested in systems and females seem to be more interested in people and particularly people's emotions.
Empathy is a skill like any other human skill - and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.
There are people with Asperger's whom I've met who certainly would be very upset to learn they'd hurt another person's feelings. They often have very strong moral consciences and moral codes. They care about not hurting people.
If we treat another person as essentially bad, we dehumanize him or her. If we take the view that every human being has some good in them, even if it is only 0.1 percent of their makeup, then by focusing on their good part, we humanize them. By acknowledging and attending to and rewarding their good part, we allow it to grow, like a small flower in a desert.
The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone.
I have never known a patient to portray his parents more negatively than he actually experienced them in childhood but always more positively--because idealization of his parents was essential for his survival.
We like to think there is this core of human nature β that good people can't do bad things, and that good people will dominate over bad situations. Infact, when we look at the Stanford prison studies, that we put good people in an evil place, and we saw who won. Well, the sad message in this, is in this case is the evil place won over the good people.
In psychology and behavioral economics, people have shown that if you just describe options in a certain way, or make some features of a situation salient, you can get people to do and even see what you want. You don't have to be a Jedi to manipulate people's attention.
Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they're no good.
It's during dream sleep where we start to actually take the sting out of difficult, even traumatic, emotional experiences that we've been having. And sleep almost divorces that emotional, bitter rind from the memory experiences that we've had during the day.
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