Boards
Did anyone watch 'Storyville: The Horse Boy' last night about the autistic kid?
Very interesting. Basically this 4 year old kid had terrible behavioral problems and an inability to interact with society and the toilet.
But one day he ran into his hippy dad's stable and got on great with the horse - something he'd never done before. And remembering them from his journalistic days, his dad decided to take the family to Mongolia to meet some shamans (who treat their tribe members with weird diseases as 'special' instead of 'different').
After a hard slog, they met one, he performed a ceremony and lo and behold, the next day the kid was potty trained, the tantrums stopped and he was riding the local reindeer unaided.
I'm normally very skeptical of these programmes, but it was genuinely fascinating to see the transformation over night.
A psychologist reckoned a large part was down to the acceptance and understanding ancient tribes have of conditions Western society label 'abnormal' and the interaction the child enjoyed whilst there. And apparently 80% of all shaman are people who have had weird neurological diseases and then been 'healed' / grown out of them.
It was really interesting, anyhow... Might be on iPlayer.