Asperger's & Bullying.

Last night I dreamed that I was back among the bullies, that there was one man who was sneering and denigrating me and taking away my means of working. It was depressing and unbelievable, yet very familiar. Those kinds of things have actually happened to me and as much as I hate it, I'm still trying to work out a pattern of getting beyond other people's rubbish and rubbishings.

Bullying is the sort of thing which can occur in response to a condition like Asperger's Syndrome. For the Aspergian, ordinary communicative signals may be difficult to read. Then, when misinterpretations flourish, inappropriate honesty is no help at all. Neither is any form of curiosity which ranges beyond a group mind.

Flying into Melbourne one evening long ago, I was met by a few friends.

It had been a long flight and someone asked me how I'd passed the time.

'I read the Book Of Daniel from The Old Testament,' said I.

They looked at me with what I realised later, was some horror.

It took me more than a year to realise I'd got myself mixed up with people who, while they were nice enough to meet me at the airport, inexplicably, they had no interest in Biblical Studies.

I suppose if I'd mentioned The Book Of Daniel to Nick Cave or Bob Dylan (had I known them) or to any number of mystically inclined folks, it might have been the start of a most interesting conversation but I hadn't encountered such folk back then.

It was also three years before my first encounter with Dr Norm Habel whose Comparative Religions study course would bring such joy and it was also a good three decades before I learned about Asperger's Syndrome.

Thinking back to those ancient Melbourne days, I'd have been better off lying. If I'd said that I spent the flight absorbed in various trashy magazines , that would have been acceptable, but even if I'd had the wit to think of that, my automatic corrector would have jumped up and stopped me.

I wasn't much bullied at school. Initially I was in a sort of daze, didn't hear or notice anything except my own thoughts which were basically about how I thought children SHOULD be treated.

We were at least read to at home and I remembered those stories better than I remember my first few clouded years of school, where I only ever woke up to find myself in Serious Trouble with some Teacher or other.

I was well into Primary School and considered to be Hopelessly Retarded before I finally learned to read for myself and that only came about because we had a sporty relative who'd got into the newspapers. Thus I learned that the written page wasn't solely fancy and talking toys.

Reading brought momentous change and suddenly my lack of social skills didn't matter so much.

The Library became my refuge, although every so often I'd emerge with an idea for a new Playground Game, teach it to anyone who would listen, and play joyously for a few weeks until my mind would again wander off of it's own accord and then I would follow the said restless mind back to its place in the Library.

Fortunately my Mother was a Teacher and she made sure that other staff members let me read what I liked.

When I was in my early twenties, I visited my Mother who was still teaching at that same School and I was astounded to note that two of my games were still being played by a younger generation of kids.

I felt that even if I hadn't studied what I'd wanted to study, that even if sport and injury took a great deal of my time and created far too much attention, that there were still ways I might one day fit in once I got over my breakdown.

Even without the Doctor's diagnosis and the horrid drugs he gave me, and despite my mind's different kinds of pacings, things had gone seriously wrong in my adolescent years and whether it was called Neurosis or anything else, I knew that things wouldn't work for me until I escaped my family. It's obvious that so strong an impulse will mean a necessity to re-discover the family later and I more or less did and have developed compassion for the kinds of messes which can skew the lives of perfectly nice people. In my teens and early twenties, I was chiefly aware of confusions and broken pathways.

I'd had no particular desire to perform at Sports. It just happened, an inheritance from a very sporty Grandmother I suppose, but suddenly there was all this attention and turmoiled feelings of all kinds abounded. My siblings were furious. Jealousies and rivalries seemed to pour themselves in front of me. I think that the first serious bullying I experienced was from my younger siblings and the more I tried to escape, the more relentless it all became.

And all that time our Daddy was out drinking and gambling all our family money including the money that was supposed to have taken me to Private School to learn Classics and Art and so forth and, as I'd imagined it, to quietly compete only if I felt like it!! A small Country Area School offered no such opportunities. I was the only one in my Intermediate class to pass English after our Teacher taught us the wrong books. I was the only one who had (accidentally) come across the books and poems we were supposed to have studied.

We may all know and begin to understand the extent of our own problems without really comprehending the situations of those close to us. Thinking and writing of those times makes me realise how much our Mother suffered then. It wasn't simply that she'd lost the life of Culture that she craved and was working three jobs to keep food on the table. The worst part of it was that the person she loved was a bit of a Bounder.

It's strange how love may anaesthetise the obvious. It was us kids and especially me, the gawky grump who she blamed for her unhappiness. I've had my spell of work in schools. I came home glazed by Personality Onslaught, she came home with her armour still bitterly intact.

As the psychological tensions increased so my temper shortened and the only way I could make people leave me alone was to think of nasty things to say which, while they were things I didn't mean, were fairly striking on account of my rapidly increasing literary repertoire, so I was branded with the bully brush too and that was odd because any occasional experimental skirmish into bullying ways was always a failure for me. (My timing was always frightful, there'd be an older sister around the corner or my chosen victim would just laugh and jeer back.)

The one or two times I accidentally succeeded at being truly mean I regret utterly.

Yes I was bitterly jealous of some children, but after one or two bouts of name calling, even those feelings faded into my curiosities about behaviour and it was as if my Schoolmates and Teachers were all characters out of someone else's book.

As a small child our brattish next door neighbour beat me up regularly. She was smaller than me but she had me terrorised. I ran to my mother crying one day to say that Little Miss had threatened to bash me again and my Mother said,

'Well, bash her back!' I was astounded. Such an idea never occurred to me.


In the end I didn't bash her. I got myself a coat hanger to help me face her off and tremblingly told her that I would bash her back if she took one more step. Arming myself probably wasn't a good idea because she was aggressive and I wasn't. It could have been very bad but I was unexpectedly lucky.

Just as I got ready to throw down the coat hanger and run for my life she backed off. I was astounded.

A Counsellor I've been seeing recently explained to me that all bullies are in fact cowards, so maybe that's our explanation here. (I think it should be said here though that not all cowards are bullies. For some of us peace-loving souls, bullying is too risky. As an older person though, I do argue back in the face of attack these days.)

(Question, is the early cowardice and basic urge to flee one reason I found I could run at speed in later days?)

Anyway, my life's path was pretty much set then. Retreat back to the Ground of Knowledge at every opportunity. Emerge renewed. Try something else. Talk with people who understand. Try not to explain too much. When people look glazed, it doesn't mean they are interested. If you find a good game, then you might be able to talk others into playing it. In the meantime, keep learning.

I guess the point of going back to the family is important, because by now there have been several occasions when I've got to the point of loving another person very much and suddenly again I'm under attack. There also came particularly strange times during the Nineties and beyond when I was seriously endangered.

That has been a very strange set of experiences especially if I've brought my verbal talents to bear because then the bully will claim it's them that's being bullied and well they are more convincing these so-called 'normals'.

I've learned more than I ever expected to know about Psychology in the meantime because of course there are plenty of books about Domestic Violence and so on.

To consider how a person constructs meaning in their lives one must focus on notions of Good and Evil. I thought that sort of thing to be clear cut and decided for myself that such forces are a sort of continuum relative to circumstance.

But if someone bashes or begins a campaign of slander and if they assume that my only good is to acquiesce, then I must disagree and I must get beyond the situation that those kinds of precepts landed me in. I wish it was as easy as a coat hanger backed up by bluff, but it isn't, so I'm searching through my options.

I've had a phase of reading the Biographies and Memoirs of successful people. That is satisfying. Recently I pulled out some of the more mystical books from the Seventies. My Library is a bit of a shambles after the violent incidents and much of it is lost but I still have some books on the Kabbalah.

Now there are a few interesting pathways there!

Essentials from Other Worlds

On the Fourth of July 1978, I bought a blue exercise book with the intention of recording my dreams.

The year before, I'd begun to study Comparative Religions at Adelaide Teacher's College in South Australia. The first year previously had been an astounding journey through the Religions of the World, Ancient, Modern, World, Tribal, Secular, Theistic, you name it.

If that seems to be an unlikely field to cover in one year, I must add that we had a stunning teacher, Dr Norm Habel. Norm's work was extensive even before he began to teach Comparative Religions. He'd started out as a Pastor in the Lutheran Church, and then as an Old Testament Scholar, he went on to publish many works, most notably a commentary on The Book Of Job.

My previous years had been a time of Breakdown, Turmoil and Bad Medicine, during which time my daughter was born in early 1973. It was also when I completely lost faith in Government Processes, The Media, My Christianity and You Name It.

Crawling gradually into a new reality and reading the works of various mystics, I was astonished to find the words of the Gospel coming into my mind constantly...'Judge not lest you be judged' etc etc. The words of Jesus had a new startling impact, but over time, I found I could not longer relate to the Church of England, my old well-beloved Religion.

(Much later I tried, but they'd changed the Service the week before and the Service was a shambles.)

In the years following my Religion Studies, I felt my daughter should have some experience of a Spiritual life. We were living by then in a small country town and I took her to the Methodist Church. They were without a Pastor for the first year and the services were gamely taken over by the members of the congregation. It was wonderful to hear these simple hearted people struggling to communicate aspects of their faith using examples drawn largely from television. The Folk Religion stopped when they got a stern Pastor and I left the services to attend to my studies.



The Religion Studies course, well, I heard about from a friend who passed on a pamphlet he'd picked up in the Theosophical Bookshop.

Out of curiosity, I turned up at the Teacher's College that first week of term, taking my small daughter along. She wanted to play, she needed my attention and eventually I went outside and listened through the door and I found myself to be hooked.

Norm Habel is a most extraordinary speaker, a rhetorician in the old sense, a story teller and one of the most charismatic and knowledgeable performers I've ever encountered.

In terms of learning, it was as if I'd come across a cache of precious jewels.

Fortunately the receipt of the pamphlet coincided with the introductory lecture.

As a result of that inspiration, I found baby sitters from my circle of friends and began to attend Adelaide Teacher's College twice a week. Even the notebooks I still have from those times sparkle with astounding phrases and poetic summaries of the various philosophies. It was almost too much to be virtually converted to a new Religion twice a week, but it was also too exciting to avoid. Norm was able to speak from within all these different aspects of human spirituality and communicate the world view, the rituals and living reality of culture after culture.

I knew that I'd got hold of something important, a way of understanding with a great potential to heal.

The following year offered another brilliant teacher, Dr Basil Moore. We began with Religion and Philosophy, and again the atmosphere of excitement and challenge was inspiring. The following term's Religion and Sociology seemed more mundane and I skipped a term, impatient for the third subject of the year, Religion and Psychology.

One of the most exciting books of that year had been Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. Like most of his class, Basil was fascinated by the experimental teaching techniques suggested by author Robert Pirsig. Basil therefore decided that the term's work should be driven by the class. Accordingly, he set a list of theoreticians on the subject and included himself in a programme whereby each of us would prepare two papers relating to an aspect of Psychology and Religion and we would then read our papers to the class.

(Basil would take this further in a later year by not simply grading our essays for us, but dividing our marks between his grading, the average suggested by classmates and the grade we'd decided for our own work. The final mark would be an average of all three. I recall that I was the only student whose classmate averages hovered between the barely passed and the high distinction.)

When it came to Religion and Psychology, I fell into disadvantage, or so I thought, almost from the outset.

When it came to the second date, I couldn't attend. I can't recall why. Either my daughter or myself had fallen ill. I only remember my frustration that the class was going ahead without me.

Whatever was wrong was righted by my attendance for the second week, but my pleasure in attendance received a severe blow. All of the proposed papers were taken except two.

The two papers left for me to puzzle through were both to be on the subject of Carl Gustav Jung and that was strange. The previous year I'd missed a class where topics were shared out also. My fellow students and even Norm had suggested I might be interested in Ancient Egyptian Religion and I'd said 'No way', (having previously encountered a few maniacs who were obsessed by the same).

Back then, I missed a class or I was late, and yes, I ended up doing my paper on Ancient Egyptian Religion and it was totally fascinating.

The same people I'd come to dislike with regard to strange ideas of Ancient Egypt were also mad about Jung.

I decided then and there with all the arrogance of youth, that I would do my utmost to disprove Jung.

Hence the Blue Notebook.

The first dream, as I predicted, was mish mash, the most important factors being that I was on a road, I got stuck in sand and was embarrassed and upset. At the end, perhaps the most important point, 'I'm looking for my family.'

I'd studied Freud for awhile during my University years. The University time had been disrupted by a breakdown and wrongly prescribed largactyl as well as several distressing confusions. I didn't think that Freud had all the answers even though the conception of the Unconscious was a fascinating idea. What more could Jung say?

I managed to write the more general paper which dealt basically with Jung's theories and his time and place, but when it came to the second topic, I was stuck. "What was Jung's influence on Modern Science." OK, I'd read overviews of Scientific Theories, I looked at Scientific Magazines in the library and I'd never given up on my interest in Biology, but as for the 'influence' on Science by someone I perceived as more mystical than Freud ever was, I was stuck.

I managed a kind of presentation for the class outlining the ideas of how Science was seen in the Nineteenth Century and quoted Jung's allegations that he too was a Scientist, but it wasn't much. I complained to Basil that Jung's work seemed to range too widely for me to summarise his influence on anything (if he had influence at all) and if he didn't have an influence, then why?

Ah, Education was a brilliant force in my life back then. My teachers decided that the third year of Religion Studies would include a 'Special Topic' subject where the student could put together a thesis on a topic of their choice.

Although Basil taught Educational Psychology, he felt that he wasn't expert in the area of Religion and Psychology and the following year, the Department hired an American expert on Jung who also knew a lot about Hinduism. That was very exciting until the moment I met the new chap. Yes I checked my notebook since I wrote all this. Stephen Gadsen was his name.

We were introduced and we found that we had not one word to say to each other. Other staff and most specifically, the expert on Indian Religions found themselves in the same boat. It turned out that he hated our College, he didn't like us and he loathed Australia. Where his dreams lay we had no idea because he was out of there in a few weeks. Some things don't work out. I never even dreamed of him. Should I google him?

In the end it was Basil, the hard headed Marxist who supervised my Thesis, which turned out to be no end of a Good Thing.

Unwillingly, I'd launched myself into a sea of Jungian information which I still felt to be profoundly irrational. I continued to write out my dreams and along the way I gave up any idea of disproving Jung.

When I brought my work to Basil, I was running it by a Logician with an enormous knowledge of Philosophy and philosophies. Basil helped me to phrase many notions I found irrational so that at least the intentions of the statements were clear. That year also, I noticed that there would be an Australian Association For The Study Of Religions Conference hosted by our College. Recklessly, I put my name down to read my glimmer of a Thesis toward the end of the year, plenty of time, as I thought.

That's another story.

I write of all this because I recently contacted the AASR again and am now again on their mailing list.

I write of all this too to explain the work with dreams. Last year, for the first time I stopped writing my dreams and the loss of that particular habit felt very strange to me indeed.

The last dream written in the mauve book was recorded on 28/9/08. It involved the former Principal of the Teacher's College, the person who eventually amalgamated all the Teacher's Colleges into The South Australian College Of Advanced Education.

Occasionally, from time to time, I've stopped writing the dreams, sometimes for six weeks or so, but never for this long. I should add that in December last year, I was seriously ill from Dental infections, a phenmenon which has become something of a national illness in Australia since the Howard Government removed the major proportion of funding for training in the Dental area.

I hadn't quite imagined that I would stop writing the dreams. I'd bought a new pink dream book long before I ran out of the mauve book and I kept opening the new book wondering if it would stay unfilled. The dreams in the mauve book had been sagas, many of them exhausting. Somehow it had all become too much.

Then, on the 9th of May this year, (the anniversary of my little sister's death in 1994), I dreamed that I was with my now adult daughter who was reciting Wordsworth.

Suddenly we were both surrounded by a group of very wonderful people who were concentrating their strength onto us and I decided that that dream was a pretty good one with which to begin anew.