Lovely little essay on neurotypical privilege

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Anything written from a remotely post-modern perspective or from the viewpoint of critical theory in relation to ASD tends to get ignored - even on Wrong Planet. Some articles can be fairly "inaccessible" given the arcane terms and highly academic language used. This little essay avoids that, reflecting on the imbalances of power that exist between therapists and the ASD community, and the way the existence of that power imbalance is ignored and swept under the carpet by the therapeutic community, despite the adverse consequences for the clients.

http://neurocosmopolitanism.com/

The website as a whole covers a range of neurodivergent thinking in brief though refreshing essays. Broadly speaking, it reflects my own views to a considerable extent.

Psychology once again is proven to be a complete farce. There are no citations for evidence on any of his essays. I really wish the whole psychology field would implode on itself, so, we can get some real research done and stop waste money and time on their bull.

EDIT: I just read through his bio and found out this bull is all about to sell books, workshops and courses. I hate people like him just stating his ideas as facts without any peer-review to make a quick buck.

?? It's an expression of his personal views, not a research paper. I can't quite see your point - he too is severely critiquing the reigning paradigm of positivist psychology, not defending the status quo. And he isn't selling me anything. I think he has an interesting perspective, he has stepped outside the status quo and looked in and described what he sees.

What is the "real research" that you want to see done? What topics, from what perspective?

If you look at his professional website, one can observe that he is following the latest scam of making up stuff to sell it to people scam. Next, his wife is a "copywriter, editor, marketer, and organizer" which means she is an expert in selling complete bull. Also, if I am wrong in my judgements then for someone who was has degree than he is just plain lazy. I have even seen youtube videos cite their work and why can't a man at his level source some evidence to back his ideas up. To conclude, from my judgement he seems to be in it just for the money.

What sources exactly does he need to cite? This is an opinionated piece, not an academic paper.

The concept of neurotypical privilege seems so obvious to me, and fundamental to any future for the neurodiversity "movement", which began over 20 years ago with Jim Sinclair's speech "Don't Mourn for Me". And where has it got? Absolutely nowhere - in over 20 years. I am saddened by that, but not at all surprised.

Some days even on Wrong Planet, I feel as if I have stepped through the Looking Glass. It seems clear to me that if neurotypical solutions worked for us, they would have worked by now. Yet it seems to me that there is a kind of huge blindspot to this, a resistance within the ASD community itself to the confronting idea that a psychology created by neurotypicals for neurotypicals is and has been damaging to the neurodiverse. It seems that the kind of psychologies which have been so unhelpful are still seen and proposed every day as as a solution, and in some cases as the only solution... because neurotypicals say it is. There are relatively few dissident voices here to that mindset.

As long as the neurodifferent allow themselves to be defined by how they are not neurotypical, and therefore candidates for "treatment", to be made as "normal" as possible, then the neurodiverse movement will get nowhere in the next 20 years either; new people will be writing the same old here on Wrong Planet, if it is still in existence.

Someone mentioned Retts Syndrome today in another thread to do with male-centricism in diagnosis. Retts has been removed from the DSM 5, on the grounds - as I understand it - that it is genetically inherited therefore it does not belong there. If someone here on WP has made the observation that autism is also genetic, and therefore should not be there either, then I have missed it; I apologise for the oversight if it exists. The implications seem obvious to me.

But my wider point is don't these things matter to most people on the spectrum? Are they not seen as important? Does the lack of interest in meta-issues like neurodiversity and psychological, cultural and economic oppression reflect a widespread apathy and defeatism here, or are they simply considered irrelevant or consigned to the "too hard" basket?

Is the self-referencing that is supposedly a paramount feature of autism at the bottom of this - wider issues beyond the largely personal concerns are barely worthy of attention? Or is it the perception that autism = "flawed being" and is irreparable so why bother? What is it? I am really puzzled.

That's the first thing I've ever read using the phrase "check your privilege" in anger which wasn't a pile of bull. In fact I agree with almost everything they said. The part on qualifying NT people to work with neurodiverse seemed a bit extreme, but maybe it only seemed that way because I've been so heavily conditioned to accept being the faulty one even though I don't fully agree with that. I think NT experts on neurodiversity are a lot better than they used to be.

When I finally put a label on what seemed like a mysterious and unexplained phenomena in my life. I decided two things.

- This is not a disorder, it is my neuropathy.
- I do not need to seek treatment because it's not a disease to be cured.

Part of removing that seat of power is to stop playing into it by calling it a disability/disorder and seeking treatment for it.
It's just a different way of perceiving and thinking, that you can learn to compensate for, if you find your life outcomes are lacking. That the exact same option I had when I believed myself to be neurotypical.

Im beginning to conclude that Aspies are better off helping Aspies rather than NTs helping us

NTs really cant relate to us and possibly never will

You consider that accessible and free of jargon?

Read some of it. It's worthy liberalism of the highest order.

This is an amazing article. It hits right into the philosophy of the matter and still remains incredibly applicable.

Your comment is as refreshing as a nice cup of tea

Privilege is a condition of social power, and power can be used positively as well as negatively. Some people throw "check your privilege" around as if all power, and anyone who is in a position to exercise it, is automatically unmindful or unaware of their privilege, and simply by possessing it will misuse it; this may be why (like me) you have found it problematic in the past - used in that way the assumptions are so global that it becomes a meaningless slogan. Yet privilege exists, and to globally deny that it does - especially in psychology and psychiatry - is equally fatuous. I have seen tremendous misuse of that privilege in my lifetime, from the dual perspective of insider and onlooker.

I can remember the distinct day I stopped being an insider who didn't check her privilege. It took a very shocking event, so confronting that it could not slip by my conditioned consciousness. 1982: A woman who had been gang raped and thrown in the street was in an hysterical state when found by the police, and when she told them what had happened, they took her to a very old style lunatic asylum - the nearest "hospital" to the place where she had been brutalised. She was promptly sectioned by the psychiatrist on duty there, drugged and ignored. I found her a few days later, in a terrible state, completely ignored by the staff - as if she wasn't even there.

That was the day I checked my privilege, even though I wasn't one of her oppressors in any active sense. But I was part of a system that was, however much I challenged its fundamental assumptions about women and madness. Nothing was ever done to seek justice for that young woman, by any of the authorities that "handled" her. She was thereafter handicapped by the label of committed patient and further dehumanised. I would like to think that her terrible experience was an isolated event, but it wasn't. And because of her, my own views on what I was part of began to change radically.

I have no patience with unthinking and untrue parrot slogans like "all whites are racist" and that's where check your privilege has been abused in a way that reflects prejudice and ignorance. But the fact that people misuse it doesn't mean the privilege doesn't exist or that we are justified in ignoring it for that reason.

The lesson from addiction recovery is that the most able addiction counsellors are former addicts, who completely understand the inside world of addiction and the spiral into powerlessness that addicts fall into. "Normies" - as the drug world calls people without personal experience of addiction see it through an entirely different set of windows. Because the windows are transparent, they don't realise that the windows are there.
Though motivated by goodwill, they try to apply solutions that work in the normie world, eg exploring past trauma. This is useless in addiction recovery. It actually reinforces the desire and rationale for using.

Thank you. Your disapproval confirms my impression that this article has value

Sinclair's opinion piece (blog?) is wishful thinking.

Despite changes in counselling training to consider cultural differences, there is really no emphasis on therapists to consider nuerodiversity within the current diagnostic pigeonholes they classify their clients under.

Mental health workers are no different to the general public in terms of individual bias in relation to conforming to majority forms of cognitive processing. Divergence in thinking is simply viewed under the prism of pathology rather than diversity.

Put simply, if a person can't cope/function in NT society then the medical model is applied by a therapist in assessing/treating the outward expression of neural differences as symptoms that need treatment. For instance stimming.

The question is one of social inclusion where manifest differences in outward behavior is accepted by the wider society rather made into a "pathology". These are currently one of the reasons why more autistic people are not employed in meaningful jobs.

[quote="cyberdad"]
Despite changes in counselling training to consider cultural differences, there is really no emphasis on therapists to consider nuerodiversity within the current diagnostic pigeonholes they classify their clients under]


You hit a big nail on the head here, Cyberdad. In the last twenty plus years, these counselling students have been taught that they must achieve "multicultural competence" above all else, or they will not be fit to practice.
That competence is very narrowly focused on people from different countries, cultures, religions - multicultural in a very literal sense. Neurodiversity is merely skimmed over if it is mentioned at all, and is not considered relevant to competence in the same way - though of course it is; the omission is telling..


[The question is one of social inclusion where manifest differences in outward behavior is accepted by the wider society rather made into a "pathology". These are currently one of the reasons why more autistic people are not employed in meaningful jobs.[/quote cyberdad]

Quite so. They are not invited nor encouraged to look at this issue from the perspective of the pathologised "symptom" as a natural behaviour for autistic people, as part of the human spectrum. The windows thing again: they can't see them so they aren't there. What you can't see or understand doesn't count...