The normalisation agenda and the psycho-emotional disablement of autistic people

Within the dominant discourse of the medical/behavioural model of autism, the autistic person is framed as being incapable of ‘self-surveillance’, a potentially dangerous individual ‘lacking in empathy’, and in need of external and potentially coercive techniques in order to manage and control their ‘challenging behaviour’ (albeit with the caveat of attempting to instruct the autistic person to be able to ‘manage their own behaviour’ more ‘appropriately’).

This paper explores the philosophical underpinnings of the ‘normalisation agenda’ (whether implicitly or explicitly manifested) in the treatment of autistic people, and the disabling effects this agenda has had on the ‘invasion and occupation’ of the autistic ‘lifeworld’. Beginning with an exploration of the diversity of ‘dispositional social equilibrium’ that neurodiversity represents, and how attempts to ‘normalise’ autistic behaviour to non-autistic standards could send the autistic person into a state of personal ‘disequilibrium’ and alienation (anomie) from oneself, with resultant affects on ‘problems in living’ and psychological ill-health, this paper continues with a deconstruction of the use of ‘Applied Behavioural Analysis’ (ABA) as a technique utilised in the education of autistic people, and the political divide this has created between some parents of autistic children and autistic self-advocates. The paper concludes by utilising the notion of ‘psycho-emotional disablism’ (Reeve, 2002, 2004, 2011) to investigate both the internalised oppression of autistic people attempting to ‘pass as normal’, and the strategies employed just to be credited as someone capable of the social agency to resist. This paper concludes by arguing that the ‘personal tragedy model’ and resultant ‘normalisation agenda’, supported by some of the world’s largest autism charities, and the resultant need induced in parents of autistic people to ‘behaviourally modify’ them, has not only led to the psycho-emotional disablement of autistic people living in society today, but also their family members.