Last year I was in northern Sweden and lectured. There I met a colleague, Daniel Påhlsson, who liked my car metaphors. So he gave me a wonderful car metaphor that even has its own sketch. It hardly gets any better! I thank and bow and write this blog post. All …
Sometimes I get a parking ticket. Sometimes because I’ve parked too long, sometimes because I’ve missed a sign (it is difficult with date zone parking right?) and sometimes because I’ve taken the risk. That’s how it is. But I have discovered that when you get a parking ticket people have …
Sometimes I meet staff who have entered into a heightened safety awareness. They describe the people they work with as being dangerous and are constantly on their guard. They might remove anything that you could hurt yourself with or that might be thrown. I do not deny that people with …
The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written a wonderful book with great relevance for psychiatric care, general care and school settings. It’s called Frontiers of Justice. In the book she says that all pedagogy and care is about removing autonomy. We do this when we decide that the person we …
There are many different ways to describe autism. Some of the ways we normally use are actually diagnostic criteria, which are not always pedagogically relevant. Therefore, I distinguish between defining symptoms (used in diagnostics) and descriptive symptoms (which provide more information and often are pedagogically relevant to a greater degree). …
The principle of responsibility is derived from Bernhard Weiners work. It states that The one that takes responsibility gains influence This means that if we want to be able to influence anything we need to take responsibility. Of course that is not an easy task. It’s easy enough when we …