The Story Unfolds

Introduction

In February 1999, Lincolnshire Care Services (Heath Farm), England, Lincolnshire’s first Residential and Specialist Centre for adults with autism and Asperger Syndrome, made a unprecedented and innovative step forward in employing a 52 year old High Functioning Asperger Syndrome woman as a full time member of staff working with autistic clients, her progress closely monitored with interest by the London broadsheet newspaper, The Daily Telegraph.

Avril’s Background

Avril Jenson, who can demonstrate autistic savant abilities includes in her previous employment record working with the Ministry of Defence, a driving instructor with a 96% pass rate in Nottingham, a researcher with a top financial analyst company, and a private nurse, Heath Farm being her first full time job since her autism was acceptably recognised after a late appraisal at the age of 40. Avril has experienced many vicissitudes in life including a bereavement of a son with autism who took his own life having being failed to be recognised as autistic at the age of 3 when his mother brought his circumstance to the attention of Social Services who declared him as deaf.

Such sociological experiences, and traumas have only gone to underline the importance and worth of speaking out as a doyen and spokesperson for autistic survivors, both leading by example in the face of social adversity and archaic stigma and as a voice who can clearly express themselves on the subject of autism from the vantage point of personal and empirical experience, a living testimony to the possibilities of autistic endeavour and achievement.

The Family

Avril has a 22 year old son who is also recognised as being on the autistic spectrum (an Asperger) and has managed to come through mainstream schooling. In 1996 he aspired to becoming the 1996 British kickboxing champion before a bus accident brought him from out of the sport through injury and a setback in physical health, and who has turned his problematic sleeping hours to an advantage by developing a noticeable talent to demonstrate an acknowledged professional ability as an upcoming DJ. In December, Ben was such a DJ for one night conducting a 5 hour set at the Heath Farm Staff and Clients’ Xmas party for a Unit with Asperger Service Users. Furthermore, Avril has two grandchildren who are also on the autistic spectrum.

Her husband Malcolm was also employed at Heath Farm involved with young Asperger adults, having spent over a previous year working in a Challenging BehaviourUnit there. Mr Jenson, who has worked previously in both local and national television and the music business, spent a prolonged period when younger at a retreat for Tibetan refugees at Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire in Scotland and under the patronage of an authentic Tibetan lama learned the way of Tibetan Buddhism and its emphasis and understanding of attested multifarious levels of consciousness and the study of Mind from an Eastern perspective, his personal and private research over the last decade presenting a valid case for a tangible connection between various Schools of the Eastern Buddhist’s search for enlightenment and the unfolding and ongoing evolution of the autistic consciousness as evinced in the common aspiration of turning within, detachment and elaborate ritual.

A book titled “Buddha and The Autist”, that could not have been written without the insight and assistance from his wife, is expected to be published and available by late Spring, and has been referred to by the best selling author of “Anthropologist on Mars”, New York neuro-psychologist Oliver Sacks, as a liable fascinating book.

The ‘Inside Outsider’

Avril, whose personal interests are in the field of physics, cybernetics and semantics and whose ambition is to visit the atomic particle accelerator (or “atom crusher”) at Cerne, Switzerland, still struggles with the focus of attention that can be put on her, and will shy away from all forms of praise, such a consequence can precipitate a 3 day traumatic delay. Referring to herself as a “inside outsider”, her abilities to provide information from what she refers to as her “department” seems to confirm Oliver Sacks’ much publicised clinical work that has led to speculation that mathematics, aesthetics and music amongst other sciences and arts can be perceived not only as logical systems, comprehensible through rational deduction, but as “landscapes” which the mind can survey instantly, such are the complexities of the autistic mind.

Brothers & Sisters

Avril refers to all autistic persons as her brothers and sisters, and states that she is in each and every one of them. Currently she works alongside, primarily, 9 clients classified classic autists with learning and severe learning difficulties. In the past, autistic persons seem to demonstrate a silent knowing and familiarity even upon initial meeting with Avril, and she has been able to provide information for parents about their children’s condition, explaining the reasons for their behaviour patterns and advising re-adjustment in their lifestyle that has satisfied parental needs. In January, one such mother of a 27 year old classic autist has stated her belief that her son is now being brought more into this world from out of his autistic cocoon thus decreasing his long term epileptic seizure rate.

The Boston Higashi School

In July of 1999, both Malcolm and Avril were kindly invited to the acclaimed Boston Higashi School, Massachusetts, USA, (who were recorded the previous year during an independent evaluation by observers stating that interaction among the Higashi Students at all grade levels exceeded any previous experience with children with autism) and a great friendship struck up, whereby currently the Principal and Executive Director Robert A Fantasia has begun to enter into frequent and regular correspondence with the Jensons. Mr Fantasia was very keen to receive Avril’s opinion about the running of his school, and her expressive consent, and has presented her an option to landscape their gardens in trust that it would therefore appeal also to fellow autists.

So Who’s Normal ?

Much of the information that Avril would like to disseminate to interested parties is the emphasis and relevance that geometry plays in the life of the autistic person and their structured relationship with all about them. Let us consider the following: The origin of the word “normal” is from the Late Latin “normalis” from Latin, made according to the carpenter’s square, rectangular, from “norma”. The simple implication of a rectangle - a parallelogram with a right angle - points us into the area of geometry, the mathematics of the properties, measurement and relationships of points, lines, angles, surfaces and solids. If we may borrow from the interaction here with the words “normal”, “geometry” and “relationship”, it could be seen that normal relationships must therefore be found within geometry, the autistic persons relationship with all around them a strict geometry in a world where public opinion bases what passes as normal simply on appearance alone.

In sixty years or so, the autist has been, in the main, unable to speak for itself. Great numbers of clinical observations tell us what the autist is seen to do, but offers up little or no reason as to why. Professionals are but watching, unable to garner understanding of the autist’s motives or reasoning from behind their side of the glass plate. The behaviour is alien to our thinking. As understanding of autism seems now ensconced in the Dark Ages of the 1940’s of the last millennium, the task of unravelling the mystery of autism is edging towards the responsibility of the geneticist, an area possibly slightly less mysterious than that of the terrain of the neurologist. It may be a good idea to look closer to home and give floor space toaccommodating autists themselves.

Behaviour Study

To this purpose, in 1999, Avril made a study of the 30 or so recognised behaviours displayed by autistic children and went into her autistic realm to seek rationalised explanation from the autistic world or consciousness for all of them. It is her hope and further aspiration to offer individual help or advice to any parents of autistic children or carers who are willing to accept that helpful counsel can emanate from capable autists themselves with a foot in both worlds.