I myself am of two minds about it. On the one hand, I'm very appreciative of shows like Extraordinary Attorney Woo and the contemporary diagnostic criteria which does seem to assist many people who otherwise wouldn't get very far in this world. There is definitely some sort of disorder called "autism," and you know it when you see it.
On the other hand, Autism Spectrum Disorder basically doesn't exist, it was designed specifically to cover as many possible definitions of Autism such that nearly anyone, under the right circumstances, could be labeled as Autistic and be given expensive treatment, and I think there is something dangerous in people self-identifying with this label as it only feeds into the larger psychiatry-industrial complex. It's similar to depression--some people legit can't get out of bed in the morning, but the drugs we use to treat it are handed out like candy, are not approved to be used for the terms that they are, and don't even perform better than a placebo.
The problem isn't that some people are "neurodivergent" and others aren't, and neurodivergent people shouldn't be ashamed and should embrace their label. The problem is that everyone is neurodivergent--everyone is "perverse," as Freud famously elucidates in his theory--its just that those who are labeled as "other" under the system get exploited, and everyone else, for fear of the same fate, hide all their psychological proclivities from everyone except from their most intimate acquaintances. And there are some who are lucky enough to avoid both fates, but they are rare among the ruling class, and the commonality of ostensible abnormal psychology among the working class is considered a "problem" to be solved by endless mental health facilities, treatment programs, etc. meanwhile the real pains of being a working class American forces many into addiction, and what they are offered can do nothing much to alleviate the underlying problems which led them there (often times problems, as in the case of the opioid crisis, generated by the very corporate structure which also drives people to treatment for their addiction).
I learned about all what you discuss because I wanted to find a genealogy of "Autism" as a why of critiquing it as a medical category. But I don't know, as I said there is definitely some constellation of symptoms and ways of treating them that would fall under an Autism diagnoses, its just that how such a diagnoses came to exist was not through some pure empirical scientific process but a historical, social process that can't be disassociated from the other socio-economic realities.
He criticises the "autism spectrum" saying that it "is a convention that changes over time and belongs more to the history of science than neurobiology" (a rather scathing remark but put it in an understated way)
On the other hand, he insists that "prototypical autism" should be retained as a real target of scientific investigation, and he proposes that our failure to discover its causes (despite immense research funding into the project) is largely due to going astray by broadening its definition (through the "autism spectrum") to the point that it is approaching meaninglessness
For a different viewpoint, see Lynn Waterhouse et al – https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40489-016-0085-x – who argue the whole category of "autism" (whether a broad "autism spectrum" or a narrow "prototypical autism") is a dead-end, and researchers ought to abandon it and look for new concepts to replace it with. In her book, she proposes (as a temporary measure) replacing "autism" with phenotypes of neurodevelopmental social impairment – which unlike "autism"/"ASD", are only defined in terms of deficits in the social communication domain, but allows those deficits to coexist with deficits in other domains (repetitive behaviours, restricted interests, impulsivity, attention deficits, dyspraxia, dyslexia, epilepsy, intellectual disability, etc)
And then there's Sami Timimi et al's book "The Myth of Autism" which, as well as criticising the science of "autism" (as Waterhouse and, to a lesser degree, Mottron do), goes beyond that to criticising it as a cultural construct, arguing that the harm it causes outweighs its benefits
> The problem isn't that some people are "neurodivergent" and others aren't, and neurodivergent people shouldn't be ashamed and should embrace their label. The problem is that everyone is neurodivergent
On the other hand, Autism Spectrum Disorder basically doesn't exist, it was designed specifically to cover as many possible definitions of Autism such that nearly anyone, under the right circumstances, could be labeled as Autistic and be given expensive treatment, and I think there is something dangerous in people self-identifying with this label as it only feeds into the larger psychiatry-industrial complex. It's similar to depression--some people legit can't get out of bed in the morning, but the drugs we use to treat it are handed out like candy, are not approved to be used for the terms that they are, and don't even perform better than a placebo.
The problem isn't that some people are "neurodivergent" and others aren't, and neurodivergent people shouldn't be ashamed and should embrace their label. The problem is that everyone is neurodivergent--everyone is "perverse," as Freud famously elucidates in his theory--its just that those who are labeled as "other" under the system get exploited, and everyone else, for fear of the same fate, hide all their psychological proclivities from everyone except from their most intimate acquaintances. And there are some who are lucky enough to avoid both fates, but they are rare among the ruling class, and the commonality of ostensible abnormal psychology among the working class is considered a "problem" to be solved by endless mental health facilities, treatment programs, etc. meanwhile the real pains of being a working class American forces many into addiction, and what they are offered can do nothing much to alleviate the underlying problems which led them there (often times problems, as in the case of the opioid crisis, generated by the very corporate structure which also drives people to treatment for their addiction).
I learned about all what you discuss because I wanted to find a genealogy of "Autism" as a why of critiquing it as a medical category. But I don't know, as I said there is definitely some constellation of symptoms and ways of treating them that would fall under an Autism diagnoses, its just that how such a diagnoses came to exist was not through some pure empirical scientific process but a historical, social process that can't be disassociated from the other socio-economic realities.