The Empty Autism Theory

There’s an idea I’ve been tossing around in my head for some while, which I’ve been calling ‘The Empty Autism Theory’.

It’s about how many neurotypicals view autistics – ie, that they see us as somehow ‘empty’ of all the things that NTs have, whether that be intelligence, thoughts, feelings and emotions, empathy, social sensitivity, a sense of humour, communications worth listening to, the capacity to feel pain or to love our fellow human beings, or even just basic humanity.

So in their eyes, we’re devoid of anything worthwhile, or if we do have anything inside us, it’s a sort of echoing chaos of misery, from which NTs need to ‘rescue’ us. So their job, as they see it, is to ‘fill us up’, to ‘give’ us these things, after which we will be ‘fixed’, and ‘just like normal people’. It isn’t always explicitly framed or stated that way, but the underlying message is pretty clear.

I see it in many areas, in the attitudes of schools, government programs, in books and movies and TV programs about autism, and hence also in the public image of autism. It’s in all the assumptions made about us, eg that we don’t look people in the eyes because we ‘have no interest’ in other people, or that our meltdowns are somehow ‘just random’. It’s in how they don’t bother asking us what we want or need, even if we can talk, because they’ve already decided that we don’t have anything worth listening to, we’re simply to be filled up with whatever they’ve decided we lack.

It’s also evident in the professional language and research, where we’re described as ‘deficient’ in this, or ‘lacking’ in that. We don’t have ‘theory of mind’, or we display ‘weak central coherence’, and so on. The diagnostic criteria focuses almost exclusively on our lacks and deficiencies and abnormalities. It’s even in areas you wouldn’t expect, for instance the infamous ‘research’ project which deemed autistics as ‘lacking in social reputation management’, rather than simply as more honest than their NT counterparts. 

Moreover, this view of autism has been there from the start. Kanner first described us in terms of ‘disturbances of affective contact’, ie we ‘didn’t care’ about those around us. He was the first to suggest the ‘refrigerator mom’ theory of autism which others like Bruno Bettleheim later took up. Even Asperger described us in terms of our ‘deficiencies’ in social/communication skills. 

And then there was Lovaas’ infamous characterisation of us as ‘not fully human’, when he said that “you start pretty much from scratch… with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense… but they are not people in the psychological sense… You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person.” Thus ABA from the start was based on the ‘empty autism’ idea – push the autism out of the kid by filling them up with NT-type ‘skills’, and hey presto! No more autism!

It’s evident too in how, whenever autistics challenge ‘warrior’ parents of autistic kids about how they regard and treat their children, we get shut down and attacked – the whole ‘you’re-not-like-my-kid’ and ‘you’re-too-high-functioning-to-know-what-real-autism-is’ stuff is based on the idea that the ‘real’ autistics are somehow ‘different’ (read: empty/deficient) from those of us who can talk, or at least communicate online. Even at the same time as some of them are defending themselves by claiming we’re ‘lacking in theory of mind’, so ‘unable to understand’ where these ‘poor parents’ are coming from! At a very basic level, it’s a profound ‘othering’, a psychological theft of our humanity. 

It’s also evident in the presumption that we simply need to learn how to ‘behave like normal people’, and our problems will all be magically solved. So if we do a social skills course, and we still have problems, it must be because of some resistance or ‘deficiency’ on our part - because, after all, they’ve “done all they can for us”.

Now we know that we’re not empty. That in fact we’re full – full of sensory reactions and unruly emotions that demand our attention and sometimes interfere with our learning, wonder at the physical world around us (even if we’re not budding scientists or computer programmers), joy in our ‘special’ interests, a straightforward honesty, puzzlement at what seems like bizarre behaviours of other people, priorities that don’t include things like small talk, not to mention distress at the way we’re treated, whether or not we can vocalise it. And more. Much more. 

I don’t know what to call the opposite of this ‘empty autism’ theory though. I’m hesitant to label it ‘the fullness of autism’ theory – it’s not only that we’re ‘full’, it’s that we’re both complex and under stress. But I don’t want to call it ‘complex autism theory’ either – as this would undoubtedly be twisted and pathologized and used against us. So I’m not sure what to call it – once again, the language of NTs fails to adequately describe the autistic reality.

What I do know is that, once again, I’m forced into the realisation that nothing less than an entire reframing of the public understanding of autism and autistics is necessary. Only when it’s seen that we are not ‘empty’ of all the things that make people human, can real progress be made. Because as has recently been noted, the public image of autism is based on us in varying degrees of distress, and is thus distorted, the signs of our distress taken as symptoms of our autism, ie as givens with our ‘disorder’. And that stress can be traced back directly to the Empty Autism theory, and the resulting misunderstanding and pathologizing of autism and autistics.

And it’s time for all that to stop. Time for the empty autism theory to be laid to rest, and for our humanity to be seen and accepted, and for our part in the full range of human diversity to be embraced. Our very survival depends on it.