Child psychiatrist Sami Timimi and his co-editors are not reluctant to blow their own trumpets. Re-Thinking Autism: Diagnosis, Identity and Equality is heralded as ‘the first edited collection that is firmly located in the previously non-existent field of critical autism studies’. It is, according to the editors’ introduction, ‘a unique text, the first of its kind’, ‘new and of great importance’, ‘radical’ and ‘deeply challenging’. Though Timimi’s 2010 book The Myth of Autism caused offence because of its egregious errors concerning the family of the late Lorna Wing, it is extensively referenced here. Indeed both Timimi’s chapters in Re-thinking Autism (co-authored with Brian McCabe) are substantially cut-and-paste jobs from The Myth of Autism. This suggests that the radical critique of mainstream autism science has not developed over the past five years, and it gravely undermines claims for the novelty of Re-thinking Autism.
Notwithstanding its assertions about being innovative, Re-thinking Autism is heavily influenced by a trio of outmoded theories. The ‘social model of disability’ was propounded by Michael Oliver, Britain’s first professor of disability studies, in the early 1980s. According to Oliver, disability was not caused by individual impairment (‘the medical model’) but was the result of the lack of appropriate adjustments by society (1). While recognising the insights provided by this approach, in 2006 disability activist Tom Shakespeare pronounced it a ‘dead end’. In his view it had led to the neglect of the real difficulties faced by many people with disabilities (2).
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/ar ... KbRJ_KhHIU
Apparently early diagnosis is bad. Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of adults who have struggled for want of a diagnosis and appropriate help.
17 Feb 2017, 6:01 am
