Handouts for WA: Special Interests

The Reasons for Special Interests

Functions of Special Interests

• Knowledge overcomes Fear (Liliana and spiders)

• Source of pleasure (superior to interpersonal pleasures, - addiction?)

• Means of relaxation calming

Functions of Special Interests

• Attempt to achieve coherence Putting things in order, categorizing

• Understand the physical world Science and the natural world (psychology)

• Comforting Certainty of facts and information

Functions of Special Interests• Create an alternative world from dinosaurs to

science fiction and fantasy worlds, in literature and Internet role playing games

• Sense of identity The interest defines who you are, being proud of achievements, Superheroes (Harry Potter) and respect

Functions of Special Interests

• Indicates intelligence The ‘wow’ factor• Facilitates friendships and conversation

British characteristics• Thought blocker for anxiety• Energizer when exhausted from socializing or

depressed• Career known for expertise (University)

• “ The best thing about academia is that we get paid to talk about our favorite topic and students take notes and feed back our words of wisdom at exams”.

Special Interests“I collect potato mashers. I think I have something over 500, all different. I know other people normally don’t get excited about potato mashers. However, sometimes I can tell from the time they spend looking at some of my potato mashers and how they handle them that they are interested”.

“Most people think my interest in mushrooms is strange”.

Emotions and the Special Interest

“My emotional range is quite extreme and somewhat rudimentary. However, when I engage in my special interest on my own, I can access a greater emotional realm and landscape that is wonderful and safe for me, in that context”.

Developmental Sequence

• Parts of objects/ sensory experience• Collecting objects• Collecting information• Person

• Each interest has a ‘use by’ date from hours to decades

Interests of Girls

• Intensity rather than focus• Boys toys or gender neutral toys• Dolls to replay and decode social situations• Literature• Soap operas• Being feminine• Friendships • Nature and animals• The supernatural

Special Interests

• Most of the happier times were during vacations which is why I love ships and trains (the only times when we would experience these things). These occasions were more secure and stable for me.

Special Interest

• Because the things I like are very minority interests and my dislikes are things most people like I have always been isolated.

• I was never interested in dolls or maternal things but spent hours catching small fish, tadpoles, amphibians and insects and keeping them in aquariums.

• I used to love digging up old animal bones out of the river bank and dissecting owl pellets. I still find these things fascinating.

Collections and interests

• Bendy toys• Animal bones• Vikings• Toads and tadpoles• Dandy Livingstone – Reggae singer• Trains• Ships and ferries (The Earl William)

Special Interest: Vikings• When I was about seven, I probably saw something in a book,

which fascinated me and still does. Because it was like nothing I had ever seen before and totally unrelated and far removed from our world and our culture. That was Scandinavia and it’s people. Because of it’s foreignness it was totally alien and opposite to any one and any thing known to me. That was my escape, a dream world where nothing would remind me of daily life and all it had to throw at me. The people from this wonderful place look totally unlike any people in the “real world”. Looking at these faces, I could not be reminded of anyone who might have humiliated, frightened or rebuked me. The bottom line is I was turning my back on real life and it’s ability to hurt, and escaping.

Preferences

• Although I don’t like typically male things like machines, technology and sport, I have also never been interested in typically female things either.

Preferences

• I prefer non fiction to fiction. Factual things are so much more interesting. Movies, novels, drama and comedy all seem so frivolous and trivial or the stories are always the same.

• Penny has several hundred fact books.

Art

• Her relaxation, talent and income• Drawings and sculpture• Self-taught• Working at night• A ‘night owl’

From Trains to Train Staff

• When I met my husband I was 16 and he was nearly 45.

Teachers Perspectives

• Attention to other activities.• Monologues make the child appear eccentric

and ridiculed.• A barrier to social inclusion.• The nature of the interest (weapons).• Benign eccentric or a pedantic bore.

Clinician’s Perspective.

• Diagnosis (a change in ‘persona’).• Morbid or macabre interests a sign of

Depression or bullying).• Progression from an activity for pleasure to a

compulsive act (OCD)• An addiction• Using the interest in CBT

Reducing or Utilizing the Interest1. Controlled Access

• Time limit using a clock or timer.• Scheduled times for access.• Subsequent activity is enjoyable.• Quality time to indulge in the interest with

a parent.• Sign for treatment for high levels of anxiety

2. Unacceptable Interests.

• Potentially dangerous, illegal or likely to be misinterpreted.

• Explanation using a Comic Strip Conversation.

• Modify the interest (poisons to the digestive system).

• Replacement interest.

3. Constructive Application

• Motivation and learning (reward, activity incorporates the interest).

• Prizes and certificates.• Removal of access as a punishment.

3 Constructive Application

• Employment.• Private tuition.• A means of making friends.• Learn the contextual signs and explanatory

comments and questions.

Society’s Perspective

• Originality in Science and Art

• Engineering ability• Mathematics and science• Music and fine art• Imagination• Animals

“If the world was left to you socialites, we would still be in caves talking to each other” Temple Grandin