social interactions with others. Rudolf Steiner’s 1924 lectures from the Curative Education Course give us valuable inforRudolf Steiner drawing from the Curative Education Course. mation on the spiritual characteristics and therapies for children who have ASD. Sandroe, one of several children described by Steiner, had characteristics remarkably similar to some autistic children seen today. Steiner said the following about Sandroe: “We have to do here with hardening of the organism. When the boy wakes up (in the morning), the astral body and the I organization cannot dive down into the organism as they should.” Steiner was also speaking about Sandroe in the following remark: “Whereas in the boy before us, the bones of the skull have been pressed together by a blow to the head from outside (he had a very difficult delivery with a breach presentation requiring forceps). There will as I said be great difficulty in achieving any enlargement of the head; but some improvement might nevertheless have been attained.” It can be postulated today that Sandroe might have benefited from Cranial Osteopathy that is available and given by a trained physician with reduction of the compression of his brain due to his narrowed cranium. Dr. Margaret Sorrell reported research on autistic children who had some form of brain compressions due to birth trauma and benefited with Cranial Osteopathy (March 2008 in The AAO Journal). Sandroe’s overall mental ability improved with curative eurythmy therapy, speech and art therapies, anthroposophical remedies, and a pedagogical education. There is a need to avoid the known and probable causes of ASD so that normal Ego-organization development can occur in the growing child especially up to 2½ to 3½ years of age. Ultimately the Ego-organization while the child is developing must be able to convert, master, excrete, or make one’s own every foreign stimuli or substance that enters the body. If this is not possible, these foreign substances or stimuli may hinder normal Ego-organization development, and some form of ASD may occur. The autistic child will need therapies that will help the the “core being or the Ego-organization that guides the soul (astral body), to incarnate into the life and physical bodies. An early diagnosis of ASD by a qualified physician is the best time to begin appropriate therapies for the child.
Different forms of therapies are discussed in my abovementioned paper. A child with ASD may have many gifts and abilities, but the care givers can help bring out even more of his or her inner potential for a more fruitful life. Dr. Basil Williams has practiced medicine for more than forty years. He practiced Anthroposophic Medicine since l980 until retiring in 2002. He lives in the Harlemville, NY, area and works to encourage the development of anthroposophic institutions especially Anthroposophic Medicine, Biodynamic agriculture, and Waldorf education. He has traveled and lectured extensively.
Addictive Behavior in Children and Young Adults: the Struggle for Freedom, by Raoul Goldberg, MD
review by Meg Spencer Gorman This “book for every bookshelf” is important for anyone who has dealt with addiction, has family or friends involved in addictive behaviors, or is a professional in fields dealing with addiction. Using his lifetime of successful experience as a medical doctor and therapist, Dr. Goldberg approaches addiction as a process arising out of unsatisfied needs and gratification. Addiction develops when the gratification becomes too powerful to resist, and a person loses the self-determination to decide what is good for her or him. To some degree all humanity is caught up in some aspect of the addictive process. As Dr. Goldberg puts it, “We lay out a lifelong struggle between wanting to gratify our lower soul nature and controlling this with our higher human resources….This is the main game of human evolution, and it is within this life spectrum of dependency that addictive behavior needs to be understood.” Dr. Goldberg then explores how addictions arise out of the unmet needs in a human biography especially out of our lives as young children. To be effective counselors or supporters in this area, we need to become excellent observers, which he calls “awakening to the deep experience” of the other. In the simplest terms this means observing an object, in this case the growing human being, as carefully and as consciously as possible. In a process Goldberg characterizes as enter, exit, and behold, we work with an addicted individual by using conscious imitation so that we can slip into the skin of the other to feel how the individual perceives the world. Then we move away from this experience and observe the after image of it as best we can. This helps bring deep insight to the situation. It is important not to see a young person as helpless and ourselves as the solution. “This violates the summer issue 2013
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