On Autism. Response to My Critics

1 First, I apologize for my old-fashioned style of writing. In my paper I used “normal” instead of “neurotypical,” “autism” rather than “ASD,” and I did not provide an immense bibliography, quoting just the works I considered essential to my argument (but today a large bibliography is the mark of a serious paper). Just imagine; I still use terms like “hysteria,” which the DSMs did away with long ago! And I still use the term “obsessional” rather than “obsessive-compulsive!” Here I shall make amends and try to conform to mainstream “impact factor” jargon.

Secondly, before replying to my critics I shall try to situate this debate of ours on autism in a wider context. In the last 50 years in hyper-industrialized societies, autism diagnoses have increased twenty-fold (whilst those diagnosed as schizophrenic have “only” increased five-fold), leading to talk of autism epidemics. Today the common belief is that there are eight autistics out of every 10,000 children under five — whilst only a few decades ago autism was considered a rare pathology. Surveys assure that in the US there are six times more autistics than in other western countries! It's not credible that American society has such a remarkable ability to produce autistic children (assuming that autism is a product of the family and social entourage). The reason is simply that US psychiatrists are too “keen” on autism diagnoses;1 even though the inclination to diagnose autism more and more hastily is spreading throughout the industrialized world. Greta Thunberg too was diagnosed with Asperger's during a phase of depressive mutism.

In short, autism is a fashionable pathology. Ian Hacking (2010) spoke of a booming industry of narratives about autism, just like schizophrenia was fashionable decades ago, and hysteria (from which psychoanalysis drew its popularity) in the late 19th century. We should be asking why each era has its own psychopathology and why today it's autistics we choose to see everywhere. So, our debat