Intersubjectivity and pill bottles

Several of my cyberfriends have written some fantastic posts on the concept of Intersubjectivity. Rather than reproduce their awesome work, check out these posts by Tammy, Niffercoo, Penny, and Kathy. For a very quick synopsis, I’ll just say that each person has a Subjective or personal view of something, and when we share our personal subjective views with each other (influencing our own and each other’s views as a result), that is called INTERsubjectivity.

For a quick word picture, intersubjectivity like an INTERstate: Interstates are roads that connect different states, making travel possible across state boundaries, vs an INTRAstate which would be entirely contained within the boundaries of one state, precluding travel across state lines. Similarly, Intersubjectivity allows for the sharing of personal subjective perspectives and experiences between multiple people, whereas intrasubjectivity (is there such a word? Hmmm.) would be keeping your perspective to yourself and NOT connecting or transmitting that idea to or with others (such as not commenting on my post). Clear as mud, right? Read my friends’ posts—they explain it better than I do!

What I really wanted to do was to share with you an example of the highly sophisticated Intersubjective development of a typical 19 month old—you guessed it—SB3. Yesterday afternoon, he had moved a chair over to the kitchen counter and was busy stacking pill and vitamin bottles (who said you need to spend money on blocks? Haha!). SB3 stacked them four bottles high, which was about as high as he could possibly reach. Then he turned and smiled at me, sharing with me his personal subjective thoughts—that he was proud of his good work--and checking out mine, making sure that I was as aware and proud of his accomplishment as he himself was (thus, he was being intersubjective).

Just a few minutes later, Habeeb got home from work. SB3 was still playing with the bottles. They’d fallen over and he was restacking them. He stopped to acknowledge Habeeb’s arrival, but then went right back to his very important work. In a few seconds he had his stack finished, and then the beautiful intersubjective dance began again.

First SB3 turned from his finished stack to smile with great pride at Habeeb, who was likewise enthralled with the architecture. Then, even though Habeeb was ‘with’ SB3 in the dance, SB3 quickly pointed at his stack of bottles as well, furthering highlighting his pride and joy. Then SB3 turned and looked at me again as well, still grinning from ear to ear and with a happy little chuckle to further highlight his great satisfaction and pride, making sure that I was in on the experience too, sharing his perspective and checking out mine (which he found matched his quite well—the proud momma and the proud boy!). I of course already knew that he was a good pill bottle stacker from moments before, but now SB3 wanted to share with me that daddy now knew it too, and that made it even bigger and better than before! SB3, even at just 19 months old, is already becoming a master of Intersubjectivity!

For some reason (or reasons), that development of Intersubjectivity breaks down somewhere early along the way for our kids on the autism spectrum. In fact, it’s more that lack of intersubjectivity that is “autism” instead of a set of specific and commonly listed behaviors (such as lack of eye contact or lining things up or having very short attention spans, all of which are behaviors common in autism, but far from universal in autism, whereas a lack of intersubjectivity is universal and is the contributing factor to all the varied behavioral symptoms, whether there is 'eye contact' or not).

The good news is that even though Intersubjectivity breaks down or fails to develop in the first place in autism, it IS repairable and can then continue to develop to higher levels and complexities, just as the brain continues to grow and develop throughout our lives. Approaches like RDI (Relationship Development Intervention) focus on helping the parents create opportunities for reestablishing the development of Intersubjectivity through repairing and working through the Guided Participation Relationship.

Most often that begins with re-establishing the first level of Intersubjectivity, a simple me-and-you-together or a we-go (as opposed to an ego), such as is seen in a first game of peek-a-boo with an infant just a few months old. By about a year old, infants have progressed to the second level of Intersubjectivity, often referred to as the beginnings of “joint attention,” where the child and the adult can both share their reactions with each other about some third and ‘outside’ object or event, such as the child pointing at a plane passing overhead to make sure mom sees it too. The child is aware that what he sees isn’t necessarily what mom sees, and that mom’s subjective perspective (whether she likes something or doesn’t) may not be the same as his own. Notice, the key is that both parties are sharing with each other their own personal subjective experiences and perspectives. A child with autism can be taught to point at something, or to look at something someone else points at, but that does NOT mean that the child is aware of and considering the other person's personal subjective perspective or feelings about the object pointed at. Following a point is a skill. Sharing perspectives the key to Intersubjectivity.

In SB3’s case, he was clearly demonstrating age appropriate levels of Intersubjectivity, making every effort to share his perspectives and experiences with us, making sure we understood where he was coming from, and making sure our personal perspectives and experiences made sense to him as well (for example, we could have been proud of his success, or angry that he was up at the counter again, or worried that he was playing with pill bottles—many possible reactions, any of which he could have understood, even if he didn’t agree with them himself—it just so happened we were proud and impressed with his towering building project too).

Now, if anyone would like to share their own personal intersubjective perspective with me and other readers of the blog, please leave a comment!