"I guess I just like liking things"
In order to understand autistic viewpoints on autism, we first need to understand the dominant narratives in the field, and how autistic people respond to them. The first of these is the medical model, which is influential in disability history as a whole. You likely won't even see this as a "model" at first, because it is simply the way that things are, and it's easy for the system behind it all to fade into the background. There is obviously so much history that involves disabled people as a whole which I am glossing over here, though Disability Materials hosts some of my favorite resources on these topics.
One of the most signifigant influences on societal conceptions of autism in the past decades has been Theory of Mind (ToM). Simon Baron- Cohen, Alan Leslie, and Uta were the first to write theorizing that a lack of ToM had an integral role in what autism was in 1985, with "Does the Autistic Child have a Theory of Mind?" in 1985. ToM has defined autism research, special education, and general rhetoric for decades, and Baron- Cohen in particular has gained notoriety throughout the field.
In 1993, Jim Sinclair wrote Don't Mourn For Us, which he also delivered as a speech to autism researchers and families of autistic children. this was a game-changer when it came to autistic people demanding the right to participate in the field of autism, and rejecting the idea that autism is something to correct, cure, or be ashamed of. It is not a long read and definitely worth looking at in full.
A major issue of ToM, in my opinion (and that of autistic researchers we will look at) is that it is self-perpetuating. To determine, unilaterally, that autistic people are fundamentally unable to understand the thoughts and minds of others and label them as "mindblind" discounts their expertise and opinons on their own conditon, and leaves allistic people as the arbiters of autistic rhetoric.
So the medical model and ToM that grew from it have been the dominant narrative, but autistic people need a framework of their own that can explain the social and communicative differences that ToM attempts to. From this, the Double Empathy Problem (DEP) is written about by Damian Milton in 2012 with "On the Onological Status of Autism: The Double Empathy Problem" .
Milton is so precise in not only his ideas but his delivery, and manages to write some of the most scathing academic work this world has ever seen. The article opens like so:
Socrates: ...Can you point out any compelling rhetorical reason why he should have put his arguments together in the order that he has?
Phaedrus: You do me too much honour if you suppose that I am capable of divining his motives so exactly. (Plato, 1973: 78).
The crux of the article is that while basically everything up until this point has focused on the perception of social defecit through autistic people's interactions with non-autistic people and how to remedy this issue by changing the behavior of autistic people, they've ignored the fact that they don't seem to understand autistic people very well either. The misunderstanding goes both ways, hence the name "double empathy problem".
In a sense it is a 'double problem' as both people experience it, and so it is not a singular problem located in any one person. Rather, it is based in the social interaction between two differently disposed social actors, the disjuncture being more severe for the non-autistic disposition as it is experienced as unusual, while for the ‘autistic person’ it is a common experience. The ‘empathy’ problem being a ‘two-way street’ has been mentioned by both ‘autistic writers’ (Sinclair, 1993) and NT writers alike (Hacking, 2009), yet despite such protestations, the ‘lack of theory of mind’ myth persists.
So basically, social disjuncture happens between both people involved in an interaction, and non-autistic people have a more profound experience of it when interacting with autistic people than vice-versa, because we're used to it. Our way is different, and we know that, so it becomes an expectation in social interactions. And well, feeling this disconnect and immediately pathologizing it in the other person doesn't seem like the most empathetic stance either.
The ‘theory of mind’ and ‘empathy’ so lauded in normative psychological models of human interaction, refers to the ability a ‘neuro-typical’ (NT) individual has to assume understandings of the mental states and motives of other people. When such ‘empathy’ is applied toward an ‘autistic person’ however, it is often wildly inaccurate in its measure. Such attempts are often felt as invasive imposing and threatening by an ‘autistic person’, especially when protestations to the contrary are ignored by the NT doing the ‘empathising’.
Redefining Critical Autism Studies: a more inclusive interpretation
This work is a great bridge from where we were in 1993 with Sinclair's work into today.
The Re-Thinking Autism Network suggests that autism is purely a cultural construct lacking the qualities to be a ‘natural kind’. This ignores how autism runs in families, the flourishing distinctive autistic culture and the importance of self-diagnosis to autistic persons’ sense of well-being. Autism is a diagnostic category distinguishing certain human behaviours, similar to how maps signpost specific geographical variations. Autism Studies is intrinsically interdisciplinary, as autism is contextualised, particularly in the dynamics of autistic persons, who often have other diagnostic labels, impairments and other myriad forms of human diversity. Hence, CAS has to be interdisciplinary focusing on intersectionality, such as how culture contributes to certain interpretations of autism.
A discussion of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) would take much more time and research, and I'll get to it one day. For now, I find this articleby dog trainer Carol Millman to be a great entry point for those who aren't familiar with ABA.
For one thing, none of them—or any of the information I’ve found from the ABA discipline–make any reference to the autistic person’s emotions or well being. It’s all about increasing certain behaviours and decreasing other behaviours, as if their student were a passive recipient. Dog trainers don’t talk about systematically altering behaviour as if the dog weren’t a thinking, feeling, sentient being.
Let me know if this is helpful or what else I can add!