danielle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shrimpchipsss) wrote2023-07-01 09:09 pm
shrimpchipsss) wrote2023-07-01 09:09 pm
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Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, PhD
What a gift this book has been to my life.
I read Unmasking Autism late last year on the recommendation of my friend who, like me, is an older sibling to an autistic younger brother who had to go through the now very controversial and at the time new and ‘leading edge’ ABA therapy. This therapy is basically training on how to repress any neurodivergent instincts and fake a neurotypical personality and in its worst forms looks like what training a dog looks like. The therapy was invented by the guy who came up with conversion therapy so you get the picture, he loved to dehumanize people, and to completely neglect what those people actually experience or think and make them comply with society's idea of “normal.”
My friend and I have had long talks about how at a really base level it is a good thing to equip people with the basic tools of knowing certain social scripts because how else do you navigate a society that isn't set up for you? But that the problem with the therapy is that it stops there and fails to accommodate for the neurodivergent person's needs, instead punishing them for not complying to the social scripts that are meant to be a tool and not the rules of existence.
One of the important things the book points out is the concept of the social model of disability vs. the medical model of disability, that it is the failure of society to not be something everyone can participate in, not the medical condition of the individual. This framework is helpful because it’s also about the way no one lives up to neurotypical standards all the time and so these standards hurt us all (same idea as bell hooks on patriarchal masculinity and the way those standards hurt everybody).
I was also really floored by the weird unexpected grace afforded by knowing that people might be subclinically autistic (or insert diagnosis here) so while you might not qualify for a diagnosis you may share enough struggles that you belong in the community. Which is just gratifying bc whether im "ADHD likely" or my brain has just been destroyed by the internet or Both there are more ways I can accommodate myself.
Though the more time passes the more I think I probably have inattentive ADHD, these things run in families after all and ADHD and autism have a lot of overlaps and are referred to as sister conditions (there’s also the whole AuDHD thing I’ve seen online a bit for people who have both). It would explain a lot about my college experience and things like the way I’ve struggled to sleep my whole life. Something about a delay in melatonin production in the brains of autistic and ADHD people?
Anyways. The book is also wonderfully about gender and queerness and race since, you know, autism and social norms, and Devon Price is trans and really works to constantly bring up and center trans and queer people and people of color, and to point out gaps in research and in diagnosing patients, which is Very Nice in a psych book, like such a relief that it is not blisteringly cishet and white.
I recommend this book a lot. My brother read it too and it gave us both a lot of language with which to talk about our childhoods with our parents even if they still don’t really get it. It was one of those books that the entire time I was reading it I kept having the uncanny feeling that my life was being read back to me.
I read Unmasking Autism late last year on the recommendation of my friend who, like me, is an older sibling to an autistic younger brother who had to go through the now very controversial and at the time new and ‘leading edge’ ABA therapy. This therapy is basically training on how to repress any neurodivergent instincts and fake a neurotypical personality and in its worst forms looks like what training a dog looks like. The therapy was invented by the guy who came up with conversion therapy so you get the picture, he loved to dehumanize people, and to completely neglect what those people actually experience or think and make them comply with society's idea of “normal.”
My friend and I have had long talks about how at a really base level it is a good thing to equip people with the basic tools of knowing certain social scripts because how else do you navigate a society that isn't set up for you? But that the problem with the therapy is that it stops there and fails to accommodate for the neurodivergent person's needs, instead punishing them for not complying to the social scripts that are meant to be a tool and not the rules of existence.
One of the important things the book points out is the concept of the social model of disability vs. the medical model of disability, that it is the failure of society to not be something everyone can participate in, not the medical condition of the individual. This framework is helpful because it’s also about the way no one lives up to neurotypical standards all the time and so these standards hurt us all (same idea as bell hooks on patriarchal masculinity and the way those standards hurt everybody).
I was also really floored by the weird unexpected grace afforded by knowing that people might be subclinically autistic (or insert diagnosis here) so while you might not qualify for a diagnosis you may share enough struggles that you belong in the community. Which is just gratifying bc whether im "ADHD likely" or my brain has just been destroyed by the internet or Both there are more ways I can accommodate myself.
Though the more time passes the more I think I probably have inattentive ADHD, these things run in families after all and ADHD and autism have a lot of overlaps and are referred to as sister conditions (there’s also the whole AuDHD thing I’ve seen online a bit for people who have both). It would explain a lot about my college experience and things like the way I’ve struggled to sleep my whole life. Something about a delay in melatonin production in the brains of autistic and ADHD people?
Anyways. The book is also wonderfully about gender and queerness and race since, you know, autism and social norms, and Devon Price is trans and really works to constantly bring up and center trans and queer people and people of color, and to point out gaps in research and in diagnosing patients, which is Very Nice in a psych book, like such a relief that it is not blisteringly cishet and white.
I recommend this book a lot. My brother read it too and it gave us both a lot of language with which to talk about our childhoods with our parents even if they still don’t really get it. It was one of those books that the entire time I was reading it I kept having the uncanny feeling that my life was being read back to me.