Neurodiversity, identity, and hypostatic abstraction

Abstract

The Neurodiversity (ND) movement demands that some psychiatric categories be de-pathologized. It has faced much criticism, leading some to despair whether it can ever be brought together with psychiatry. In this paper, we argue for a particular understanding of this central demand of the ND movement. We argue that the demand for de-pathologizing is the rejection of (paradigmatically) autism as a hypostatic abstraction; the ND movement is committed, first and foremost, to the reconceptualization of autism not as something one has, but as something one is. We distinguish between two senses of autistic identity —one pre-reflective, and one social and political— operative in this reconceptualization. This understanding of the ND movement is centrally about a rethinking of the relation between a subject and a psychiatric label. It is not about reconceptualizing psychiatric categories in terms of advantageous variations, as we believe critics fear. Our understanding of what the ND movement is asking for has the noteworthy consequence that many of the most influential criticisms of the ND movement are missing the mark and worries about the impossibility of reconciling the movement with psychiatry are unwarranted.