In this article, I argue that the history and philosophy of autism need to account for two kinds of autism. Contemporary autism research and practice is structured, directed and connected by an ‘ontological understanding of disease’. This implies that autism is understood as a disease like any other medical disease, existing independently of its particular manifestations in individual patients. In contrast, autism in the 1950s and 1960s was structured by a psychoanalytical framework and an ‘individual understanding of disease’. This implied (...) that autism was not a distinct disease but an idiosyncratic and meaningful response of the child to a disturbed development of the ego. These two kinds of autism are embedded in and reveal two very different ‘styles of psychiatric thought’. (shrink)

Autism research is facing profound difficulties. The lack of clinically valuable translations from the biomedical and neurosciences, the variability and heterogeneity of the diagnostic category, and the lack of control over the ‘autism epidemic,’ are among the most urgent problems facing autism today. Instead of encouraging the prevailing tendency to intensify neurobiological research on the nature of autism, I argue for an exploration of alternative disease concepts. One conceivable alternative framework for understanding disease and those we have come to call (...) autistic, can be found in the work of neurologist Kurt Goldstein. His person-centered approach provides radically new ways to investigate and intervene with the behavior we are accustomed to explain by the elusive entity called autism. (shrink)

One of the central aims of autism research is to identify specific neurodevelopmental mechanisms that cause and explain the visible autistic signs and symptoms. In this short paper, I argue that the persistent search for autism-specific pathophysiologies has two fundamental difficulties. The first regards the growing gap between basic autism science and clinical practice. The second regards the difficulties with demarcating autism as a psychiatric condition. Instead of the unremitting search for the neurobiological basis of autism, I suggest that basic (...) autism research should focus on experiences of impairment and distress, and on how these experiences relate to particular behaviors in particular circumstances, regardless of whether we are dealing with an autism diagnosis or not. (shrink)