Mutuality and the education of people on the autism spectrum: the role of social psychology

When reviewing educational research related to autism, it is clear that it is dominated by biological and psychological concerns, with autism being defined as a developmental deviance, dysfunction, and deficit. This perspective has become a hegemonic view to base notions of ‘good autism practice’ upon, with critical social psychological explanations being lost under the sheer mass of research from this viewpoint. Educational practices are described as ‘interventions’ and as ‘remedial’ and ‘compensatory’, focusing only on perceived functional deficits and refusing to acknowledge the possibility of autistic strengths or any attempt to harness them; the lack of such a focus, being of concern to autistic writers such as Sainsbury (2000). Such literature overemphasises the transformative ‘power’ of cognitive psychology to inform practice, whilst giving no account of autistic subjectivities. The social model of disability is thus ignored, and the autistic individual is framed within the ideology that they are in need of discipline and control (Foucault, 1973). This paper presents a theory of autism on a social psychological level, utilising the theories of Garfinkel (1967) and Goffman (1955, 1959, 1963, 1974) in particular, highlighting the need for a change in focus from a behaviourist paradigm to that of an interactionist perspective based on building a mutuality of understanding.