Pervasive Developmental Disorder Management: A Discussion

Bio-psychological dimensions of Raymond

Discuss about the Pervasive Developmental Disorder Management.

The title of the movie comes from the childish corruption of Dustin Hoffman’s character name, although the movie centers on the evolution of Tom Cruise’s character. It s the journey of his selfish being to a gentleman who is emotionally matured up and steeply evolves with the help of interactions with his brother, Raymond. Charlie on one hand, is a fast-speaking, vacuous emotionally and a sports car importer. He is in an uncompromising condition where he has been left estranged by his wealthy father and living on the verge of financial failures. Charlie finds it hard to connect with anyone around him including his girlfriend, Susanna and he realizes that he has a brother who is an institutionalized autistic savant who had been named as the beneficiary of his father’s fortune.

If we talk about the picture in capsule, then one can essentially say that we get a glimpse of Charlie’s nature in the very first five minutes of the movie where his intent full eye just wish to make big money and live the fun life forever. Then he was informed about the death of his father with whom he had lost connection for the past 45 years for a very trivial issue. He then realizes that his father’s fortune had been give to his brother, Raymond. On realizing that his brother is somewhat mentally challenged, he demands for fifty percent share in the donation as he is one of the sons. In order to cement his voice and get the fifty percent share, he kidnaps his own brother and it is while the cross-country journey that Raymond helps Charlie explore his own inner self.

Raymond suffers from Autism which affects his memory (which is fantastic), emotions, his persona, mental processing and also his speech. Autism, if we understand this term with regards to the Autism Research institute owned by Dr. Rim land then one can understand that, Autism is something which begins right from the very first years in a person’s life. Most of these autistic people appear normal in appearance but they mostly invest their time in solving puzzles and portraying a disturbing behaviour which is not similar for kids of the age of a child suffering from autism. Cases with lesser severe Autism are diagnosed with a Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) or say the Asperger’ Syndrome. The later once have a normal speech but they have different autistic behavioural and social problems (Metonymy, 2011) .

Talking about the psychological aspect

Our character, Raymond has a very rare and special condition wherein severe mental disorders and autistic behaviour people have certain islands of intelligence and wit, these specialities stand out and at times we even tend to forget the overall handicap. For a matter of fact, every one in ten person suffering from Autism, have such remarkable activities in different fields. Although, savant syndrome mostly occurs in CNS injuries.

In the beginning, of the movie Charlie feels that Raymond is actually faking his entire problem as he was not able to realize that what Raymond was going through is a biological disorder.

In the movie, we see that when Charlie turns on hot water for Raymond, he feels scared and frightened. Now this is something which is caused due to childhood trauma. When both of them were small kids, Charlie used to give Raymond a bath and while bathing, he used to scold him which left a permanent mark on Raymond

One who has interest in Autism can easily observe that there has been a hike in the rate of childhood Autism by 78% in the past one decade. Now to cal Autism as an evolutionary step can be matter if choice but yes Autism definitely has some evolutionary advantages. Now for example, in the movie, we see that Raymond was able to correctly count the number of toothpicks in just a single glance. He counted the correct number of 246, although the pack has got 250 toothpicks. Charlie told him that it is nice, he was close enough on which the waitress replied that he was accurate as fur toothpicks were still there in the packet.

Autism had affected Raymond’s behaviour also. This had made him fall apart from everyone and especially his brother, Charles. Raymond did not entertain changes and was happy with a fixed schedule and strict deadlines for each work. Like for example, when we saw that Charlie was trying his best to push Raymond on to an airplane, Raymond busted like a small child does and was obstinate not to board the plane (ALCHEssMIST., 2013) .

Raymond was good at storing information and then when required retrieving the information in an efficient manner. Like for example, we could observe in the movie that Raymond was able to memorize an entire part of the phone book and he could also calculate equations at a very high speed but on the other hand, Raymond could not decipher the very basic of things and he thought price of a candy and car both were $100 (O’Guinn, 2012) .

Behavioural perspective

When it came to social interactions, Raymond was totally different when compared to Charlie and throughout the movie we find that Charlie approaches Raymond for doing different things. We also find that Raymond was not comfortable or even able to catch the jokes in a social gathering. One of the most hilarious situation was when he kept on asking, “Who is on the first base?” he did not understand that it was meant to be a joke

In the beginning, we see that both Raymond and his brother, Charlie lack a humanistic touch, of course both had different reasons but as we are concerned with Raymond alone so we will talk about him in detail. Raymond in the starting was an anti-social person and did not like any new person in his life, this was visible in the very first quarter of the movie where we find that he is possessive about his stuff and does not like to share or discuss it with anyone. When Charlie starts exploring his books, Raymond does not like it and insists him to keep back the books. Although a the movie goes by, the country journey and all other days with his brother, helped him in realizing an emotion called as love and he was able to find a connect with Charlie and even miss him while they are parting. In short both Charlie and Raymond were able to experience personal growth the level might be different but they both do gain it.      

Now if we get a patient who is somewhat like Raymond then first things first, we should not try and change his internal processing of thoughts and going about things. This we have learned from the cognitive behavioral thinking theory. Our therapy for our patient should revolve around curbing and initiating activities which acquire certain type of behaviors. Our therapy or our intervention on client would focus more on reinforcing and punishments which can cause immediate affect and consistent too. It is pivotal to keep in mind that interventions do not require any abstract thinking (this point is essential for clients such as children and developmental disorders, which in our case is perfect), now we can go about our business in three ways-

Now talking about our second in of defense, or second theory which we would be using for our client is the existential humanistic theory. This theory of ours is based on 19^th century Existentialism philosophy. This theory revives around concepts that life is importantly useless and boring without the human element in it. A human being has the capability to  of changing and controlling their own lives and that any human being is deliberate and intentional in their choice of acting upon something, one of the major assumption which we make for our client under this theory is that every individual who visits is independent and unique. One need to question their own self like what is the purpose they have in life, how are we actually passing it through. One needs to live in present and not past nor future and even Raymond needs to take control of his disorder and let his brain be agile. Anyhow, even if we are not able to change his opinion and make him realize what we want to, we would be more than happy not to hinder his own choice, as one ought to have place to go about or things to do independently. It is one’ own duty to understand that they are responsible for their own lives. Our therapy would be including some of these things or even all:-

Humanistic perspective

Our third theory is named as the relational theory and t has evolved out of a number of theories ad processes such as object relations, psychoanalysis, inter personal theories, feminist psychoanalysis and self- psychology. It is a subtle variation from focusing on one self (super ego, ego, and id) to more focus on interactions. Under this theory, we will like to take care of our client in three manners:-

Pattern of relatedness and attachment- this marks the importance of quick relationships which mark a blueprint for all the future interactions

Pattern of subjective experience- it is essential to understand that all the relationships are influenced by the manner in which we understand ourselves, the expectations of these interactive relationships and others.

Self regulation- this refers to all the problems related to both behavior and inner experience

To so essential for a therapist to understand that as per this theory, they are an observer and participant where emphasis is on the participant side and observing the non-verbal communications. Therapist is required to be on their toes and they should be able to assume the next reaction and be apt in replying quickly.

Now let us discuss the limitations of the aforesaid theories which we have provided.

First of all let us discuss about relations theory under which by the time we will realize that there is no clear cut practice model which makes the examiner go bewildered and client does not feel condiment about the entire procedure. This model does not integrate or think about race, ethnicity, male, female, class or sexual orientation of our client. Hence, it is required that we keep mixing it up with more personal questions and create a plan and got about it in a regular manner.

Our client showcased that he was a afraid of changes, self centered and highly active in puzzles but he did give himself an opportunity to improve and with the right set of theories and guidance, we might be able to guide him though this process and feel proud about it. This paper has made an attempt to understand three essential theories of understanding us in a much better manner. He was resilient to any new change and as was the case i movie, we see how fixed his schedule was and any discrepancy made him go mad and din dot like it personally. For eg, the airplane scene or when Charlie tells him to go to sleep and stop riding books, we see that he is all set with secondary light and as soon as Charlie leaves the room after switching off lights, he takes out his flashlight and uses it for learning names and contacts in the book, which he successfully showcased next morning in front of the waitress (O’Guinn, 2012) .

Conclusion

We have learned a great deal about Autism, through this move and also about our three theories namely existential, cognitive and rational theorems. The movie in all was a good to watch movie, which made us realize values of basic things in life and along with that it made our course work interesting and easy to understand.

ALCHEssMIST. (2013). Raymond Babbitt (Savant Character In Film Rain Man) 1988. Retrieved from https://alchemipedia.blogspot.in/2010/01/raymond-babbitt-savant-character-in.html

Metonymy. (2011). Rain Man: The Journey of Charlie Babbitt. Retrieved from https://ageer370.wordpress.com/rain-man-the-journey-of-charlie-babbitt/

O’Guinn, K. (2012, 9 30). Retrieved from A Psychological Analysis of Rain Man: https://prezi.com/m4drm78-eneb/a-psychological-analysis-of-rain-man/