Birger Sellin (1995): I Don't Want To Be Inside Me Anymore: Messages From an Autistic Mind. New York: Basic Books.

now i am going to write a song about the joy of speaking
a song for mute autistics to sing in institutions and madhouses
nails in forked branches are the instruments
i am singing the song from deep down in hell i am calling
out to all the silent people in this world
make this song your song
thaw out the icy walls
make sure you aren't thrown out
we will be a new generation of mute people
a whole crowd of us singing new songs
songs such as speaking people have never heard
of all the poets i dont know of one who was mute
so we will be the first
and people wont be able to shut their ears to our singing
im writing for my silent sisters
for my silent brothers
we want people to hear us and give us somewhere
we can live among all of you
live a life in this society

(opening poem, Sellin)

It is a special pleasure for me to introduce you to Birger Sellin's book - for many reasons. On a personal level, I feel something akin to pride: having introduced Sellin's1 mother, Anne Sellin, to facilitated communication in July 1990, Sellin is the first person who started to use facilitated communication as a result of my work in educating others about facilitated communication. I also feel a special allegiance: having read Sellin's writings in German originally -- only now, with this edition, in English -- I feel a sense of knowing. He writes in my mother tongue about things I care deeply about, giving me a sense of understanding people with disabilities in my home country.

I Don't Want To Be Inside Me Anymore is an exquisite expose of Sellin's thinking about himself, about his disability, about loneliness, about the society that surrounds him, and about his quest to educate all of us about autism. Arranged in a diary format, the book begins with his earliest "setwork exercises" in 1990 and shows how he gains his own voice, step by step. We get the sense of participating in his growth.

A popular book in Germany, Sellin's book has been translated into many other languages, including Japanese, Dutch, French, and now English. There is a reason for such success. He not only reveals his world of autism to others on the outside, he also does so in deeply touching poetic style. His words clearly and loudly contradict the notions some might hold of people with autism: Notions of lack of thinking, feeling, or command of language simply do not apply. A passage about autism, Sellin's desire for inclusion, and the difficulty of achieving his wishes in our society can illustrate:

really understanding is an important step seeing how things work
just why people do them as they do
perhaps do things for sensible reasons
do what is right
but how can a person really know
what a sensible reason is
how can a person know
how things work
if he is shut out of society
and doesnt know important words properly
all on his own
he puts together wonderful explanations for himself
totally crazy rough hewn answers
buckets full of garbage
just to get some understanding is my aim
understanding and experience
ive rediscovered a burning hunger for knowledge from understanding
a hunger for the ideal right conduct
a passionate desire
to be one with people who know
to be one with the ordinary people who lead lives without any confusion
just like a valuable essential respected other person like a person with dignity
and beings like others
like sweet important children who are loved by everybody
although they do really silly things
like a simple really important wonderful being a child
chosen in the world
to lead a happy life resolutely in joy
like anybody else
like a simple person functioning okay" (p.115)

Clearly, Sellin thinks and feels deeply about his connections with the society within which he lives and expresses his thoughts with succinctly poetic language, not wasting any lines in getting to the point.
Reminiscent of Donna Williams' descriptions of the experience of autism, Sellin writes this passage to Christoph, another young man with autism who also uses facilitated communication:

from your poem i can feel
you are a withoutme poet
i like your poem very much
it comes from the depths of our autistic world
it has the true colors of our world
i will write you a poem about the joy of
being able to express yourself
i love language
it makes the inner world flower
it sends thoughts bold as an eagle into dimensions of your most secret inner dreams
it links those of us trapped in our loneliness
i am glad of your poem
it is like an ethereal transfer of lost thoughts within our worldly being that is controlled by
reason and under torture
i thank you in heartfelt earthly friendship and affection
good wishes from birger without himself but with you"
(p.220)

In all of his writings, Sellin allows us a glimpse into "our world", the world he shares only with Christoph and others with autism, a world he sees as lonely and fearful; a world he sees as opening up with the words he now can use to describe it. He has a fierce desire to no longer "be inside himself" and writes about it with sheer eloquence.

Sellin, having published this book and having been the focus of fc-related media attention in Germany, continues to live in his little house with his parents and his younger brother. He takes private lessons in subjects he enjoys, and currently his self-injurious behavior is under control with medication. His writing is central to him. This is how he puts it at the end of the book:

dear readers
thank you for getting right to the end
for persevering with my works
you would be wrong to think i am a great personality
i am only a withoutme figure who has stepped out of the darkness
of the autistic world to make contact with human citizens of your kind in the world
but i cannot take part in your life because my world still holds me prisoner
i am still looking for the way out to you
i long to do important things and i am racking my brains to think how someone can be freed as it were from prison
writing is my first step out of that other world
and i am glad that now a book has been made of it
i wish you a simple but internally whole and very loving life
your dark nonperson birger
(p.225)