Robert Chapman

The neurodiversity movement is a social movement that emerged among autistic self‐advocates. It has since spread and has been joined by many with diagnoses of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and developmental coordination disorder among others. By reconceptualizing neurodiversity as part of biodiversity, neurodiversity proponents emphasize the need to develop an ‘ecological’ society that supports the conservation of neurological minorities through the construction of ecological niches—that is, making space for all. This is an alternative to the drive to eliminate diversity through attempts to ‘treat’ or ‘cure’ neurodivergence. So far, neurodiversity theory has not been formally adapted for psychotherapeutic frameworks, and it is not the role of the therapist to make systemic changes to societal organization. Still, there is room for fruitfully drawing on a neurodiversity perspective for therapists working with neurodivergent people in clinical settings. Here, we draw on the example of autism and synthesize three key themes to propose the concept of neurodivergence‐informed therapy. First, the reconceptualization of dysfunction as relational rather than individual. Second, the importance of neurodivergence acceptance and pride, and disability community and culture to emancipate neurodivergent people from neuro‐normativity. Third, the need for therapists to cultivate a relational epistemic humility regarding different experiences of neurodivergence and disablement.

In psychiatry, mental dysfunction is typically framed in relation to models that seek to be continuous with physiology or evolutionary biology and that compare individual fitness to a broader functional norm. Proponents of the neurodiversity movement, however, challenge the pathologization of minority cognitive styles and argue that we should reframe neurocognitive diversity as a normal and healthy manifestation of biodiversity. Neurodiversity proponents have thus far drawn on social-relational models of disability to challenge the medical model of disability, but they have not developed an alternative functional analysis to replace conceptions of neurological dysfunction or impairment. Here I clarify and defend the neurodiversity perspective by drawing on ecological functional models that take relational contributions to collectives, and group functioning, into account alongside individual functionality. Using the example of autism as well as recent developments in the study of cognitive diversity, I apply these models to human mental functioning and argue that what I call the ecological model has greater utility for research and practice than the leading psychiatric functional analyses of mental functioning.

Typically, although it’s notoriously hard to define, autism has been represented as a biologically-based mental disorder that can be usefully investigated by biomedical science. In recent years, however, problematic findings regarding the biological underpinnings of autism; historical research examining the shifting nature of the categorization; and a lack of biomedical utility have led some to suggest abandoning the concept of autism. My interest here is the possibility that autism may remain a meaningful and helpful classification even if it lacks scientific validity and biomedical utility. After arguing that accounts of autism as a psychiatric classification are unsustainable, I draw on feminist philosopher Iris Marion-Young’s distinction between groups and serial collectives in order to account for the reality of autism as a social category, best framed in terms of a social model of disability. When it is taken as a serial collective, I argue, we can coherently understand autistic people as forming a marginalized minority, disabled in relation to the specific material and social contexts, yet in a way that avoids neuro-centric commitments. Autism is thus real and valuable for political and ethical rather than biomedical reasons.

(2020). Representing the Autism Spectrum. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 46-48.

Autism is often taken to be a specific kind of mind. The dominant neuro‐cognitivist approach explains this via static processing traits framed in terms of hyper‐systemising and hypo‐empathising. By contrast, Wittgenstein‐inspired commentators argue that the coherence of autism arises relationally, from intersubjective disruption that hinders access to a shared world of linguistic meaning. This paper argues that both camps are unduly reductionistic and conflict with emerging evidence, due in part to unjustifiably assuming a deficit‐based framing of autism. It then develops a new Wittgensteinian account—autism as a different form of life—which avoids these issues. Rather than autistic systemising being the basis of autistic cognition, it is taken to be a reaction to pre‐epistemic and semantic anxieties that come with developing as a minority within a different form of life. This re‐framing can provide a coherent account of the autistic mind, and has significant conceptual, practical, and ethical implications.