Lucy Blackman

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This article is about Lucy Blackman the Australian author. For the British woman who was murdered in Japan in 2000, see Lucie Blackman.

Lucy Blackman (b. 1972 in Melbourne, Australia) is a university educated author with autism. She received a BA (Hons) in Literary Studies at Deakin University in Geelong, and subsequently a M.A.

She was the first functionally non-verbal person with autism in Australia to become a published author with her book Lucy's Story (2001). Having begun to use typed communication in adolescence Lucy progressed to being an independent typer via the controversial communication technique of Facilitated Communication through Melbourne's DEAL communication centre, run by Rosemary Crossley, beginning at the age of 14.

As an adult Blackman has given public presentations on her experiences with autism and the importance to her of facilitated communication in having given her a voice. Blackman's ability to communicate via typed communication is, today, undisputed. Advocates of facilitated communication believe Blackman's case provides strong evidence supporting the claim that this technique is a viable pathway to communication where verbal speech may otherwise never develop.

“ I find it difficult to understand why other people are more interested in the process of what I produce than the content. ”
 
— Lucy Blackman , [1]

Lucy Blackman authored a chapter in the book Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone. In the introduction to her chapter, Douglas Biklen writes:

In all my personal interactions with Lucy Blackman, I have found her opinionated, articulate, humorous, ever so candid, and always ready to challenge my ideas or anyone else's. In her chapter, these qualities persist. At several points, she suggests that my questions are from a nonautistic perspective and therefore not about topics that she would herself choose to discuss; she seems to find mine annoying, For that matter, she questions other normate takes on autism as well. For example, she points out that if experts insist on focusing on communication impairment and social interaction as diagnostic markers for autism, then the field may fail to notice other factors that lead to these "peculiarities" (Blackman's term).[1]

[edit] Works

  • Review by Christi Kasa-Hendrickson in Facilitated Communication Digest, The newsletter of the Facilitated Communication Institute vol.9, no.1, 2001 Syracuse University
  • "Reflections on Language" by Lucy Blackman, pp. 146-167 in Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone ed. by Douglas Biklen. New York University Press, (2005) ISBN 0814799280
  • "Strategies to Teach Improved Behaviours to a Non-Speaking Adolescent and Adult Who Had Not Received Formal Early Intervention" by Lucy Blackman and Mary A. Blackman. Presentation with video at The ARMS Global Autism Conference, Brisbane (2006) Abstract

[edit] References

  1. ^ Biklen, Douglas, et al. (2005). Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone. New York University Press, p. 145. ISBN 0-8147-9928-0