Editor's Note: Eugene Marcus will be one of the keynote presenters at the 1998 Facilitated Communication Conference in Syracuse, May 4-5.

My goal in this paper is to define how I view success in fc, and make sure that professionals defend my right to do that. I know some who make it their goal, but we need others.

How many ways are there to measure success in the course of a lifetime? Before we are born, we are successfully fertilized and successfully carried to term. Those successes are clear, but nothing after that really is. Very few success stories are agreed on by everyone. Before I could use FC, my success could only be measured by how often I did what I was told. How that just burns me up, to think that I was considered most successful at those times when I was least myself.

My success in fc became a matter of concern when I became involved in the struggle to unmuzzle my fellow silent thoughtful multitudes. At first, I had to approach success by somebody else's standards and play by their rules. But having played that game for a winning season, I now want to play a new game,with new rules of my own making.

In my heart, when will I have succeeded at FC? New rules: nobody gets to score the game but the player. And I want full control of how my victory appears in tomorrow's newspaper.

Doing validation practice is difficult and frustrating. The most realistic success any of us can hope for is when we get things right every now and again. But that leaves us open to the constant threat that at one moment when things are not going just right, we will suddenly be captured and made to look foolish in our moment of failure or weakness.

So what will the new measure of success for FC be? The most important part is that it be one person's personal "Youre really good at this!" I need to be judged for my accomplishments. (I dont need any team of experts to tell me I am autistic, and disabled, and slow, and compulsive, and nervous --I figured those things out doing time on the planet.)

I may need the help of experts to help me track my slow practice and eventual mastering of a personal goal. But the kind of experting I need is one few people in human services know how to provide. Finding those kinds of experts makes discovering America seem easy. They are rare but worth the search. Shedding the judgmental mask and being human is not easy for somebody who has worked hard to notice tiny details about other people and been paid well for their experting that way. That makes real sense, though we should recall that those people tell the truth but tell only a small piece of the truth.

How can these experts really help us on our way? There are ways that will make their experting better for us: for example,

1. When they try lots of different things, not just their favorites.
2. When they form opinions, but don't for a minute confuse them with facts.
3. When they make sure to share their thinking with us before writing permanent reports.

Great help will come from those who go beyond respecting us to actually accompanying us on our journeys. The presence of a greatly respected professional can make the difference between a meeting where we get listened to and one where we get talked about. The presence of a greatly respected professional can also lead to monstrous damage if that person does not respect us. Greatly respected professionals must open themselves to needing our permission to be our spokesprofessionals. (Spokesprofessionals are those who speak out at our request with our words and their degrees and big vocabularies. Really, they dont exist -- but they should!)

After we have a group of spokesprofessionals -- well trained, networked with us and with each other, and managed to get past their embarrassment at not acting like the other professionals -- we will really be able to make good progress in this work. My hope is that those of you who have already been our true friends in fc circles will become spokesprofessionals.

People with college degrees are often listened to well, and it will be many years before a lot of us have those degrees. Research is a good career, but getting into that fraternity requires answering hazing questions that terrify me. So for now we require spokesresearchers as well as other spokesprofessions.

So lets think together, we fc speakers and our great friendly professionals, and see if we can arrive at a shared vision of success. In thinking that I am going to be a lifetime candidate for somebody's definition of failure, I need to know that I deal with professionals who can do two things simultaneously: see my accomplishments as real even when they are not common, and be my fellow brainstormer in discovering why they are not common.

Success is the American dream, but in that dream it means big house, beautiful wife, and adoring children. By that definition I will never succeed. But going to a job that I love, having confidence in my own ability to win after many losses, getting to choose my own small and big decisions and having those choices respected, those are my successes.

Some people will say that such successes can only happen because of other peoples' help, so they are not my successes. But success always involves other people. That is why more people remember General Eisenhower than the man who tried to win the war for the Japanese in the jungle by himself. (Some experts would consider that poor soldier the only one who had really validated his soldiering ability -- and in a way they are right, but only in a very pointless way. )

Please know that every person who struggles can find his own way to succeed; but only that way which he chooses for better or worse as his own way will make both his successes and his failures truly his accomplishments. When I finally become an independent liver, it will be because that is the path I chose many years ago. If I had not decided to be that kind of person, my progress would have led me deeper into knowing my slavery, monstrous slavery, not freedom. Making the difference is possible for brave silent people and our loyal spokesprofessional companions.

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