Autistic phenomenology: past, present, and potential future

We are now at a transition point in autism conceptualisation, science, and clinical practise, where phenomenology could play a key role. This paper takes a broad view of the history of phenomenological perspectives on the autism concept and how this has evolved over time, including contemporaneous theory and methods. Early inquiry from a clinical perspective within the tradition of classical continental phenomenology, linked closely to the consideration of schizophrenia, is contrasted with emerging observations of child development and a period in the second half of the twentieth century of scientific inquiry into a behavioural autistic phenotype where there was little or no phenomenological aspect; a phenotype that has determined the recent scientific and clinical conceptualisation of autism within current nosology. We then mark a more recent reawakening of interdisciplinary interest in subjective experience and phenomenological inquiry, which itself coincides with the increasing prominence and salience of the neurodiversity movement, autistic advocacy, and critical autism studies. We review this emerging phenomenological work alongside a contemporaneous clinical phenomenology perspective and representations of autistic experience from within the extensive literature (including life writing) from autistic people themselves; all perspectives that we argue need now be brought into juxtaposition and dialogue as the field moves forward. We argue from this for a future which could build on such accounts at a greater scale, working toward a more co-constructed, systematic, representative, and empirical autistic phenomenology, which would include citizen and participatory science approaches. Success in this would not only mean that autistic experience and subjectivity would be re-integrated back into a shared understanding of the autism concept, but we also argue that there could be the eventual goal of an enhanced descriptive nosology, in which key subjective and phenomenological experiences, discriminating for autism, could be identified alongside current behavioural and developmental descriptors. Such progress could have major benefits, including increased mutual empathy and common language between professionals and the autistic community, the provision of crucial new foci for research through aspects of autistic experience previously neglected, and potential new supportive innovations for healthcare and education. We outline a programme and methodological considerations to this end.

Who Really Needs a ‘Theory’ of Mind?

According to the theory-theory account of understanding other minds, children develop a succession of theories of mind that, just like scientific theories, postulate abstract coherent mental entities and laws, and provide predictions, interpretations and explanations. These, in turn, enable them to interact successfully with other people. Individuals with autism or Asperger’s syndrome are said to be unable to theorize about other minds, resulting in difficulties in relating to the people around them. This paper explores the possibility that we can reconceptualize the assumed relationship from the other direction, proposing that it is misleading to construe the task of achieving social understanding as a logical, scientific one. Rather, it will be suggested that typical children do not have to theorize that there are minds as they can immediately experience other people’s intentions and feelings within their affective, co-regulated interactions with them. High-functioning individuals with autism, on the other hand, do need to engage in theorizing about mind if they are to bridge the gap that exists between themselves and other people. In support of this argument, this paper presents findings from an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of ten published autobiographical accounts written by individuals diagnosed with either high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

Reading Minds or Dealing with Interactional Implications?

The psychological model known as Theory of Mind (ToM) claims that people get along by reading others’ minds, and that one can test how good they are at it by asking them to report on what they themselves, and others, believe or think. This article rehearses objections to both of those propositions. The fundamental objection is that ‘mind-reading’, as a criterion of ordinary mundane competence, sets the bar impossibly high. It assumes a referential theory of meaning, where claims about ‘mind’ and mental terms like ‘beliefs’, ‘thoughts’, and so on, can in principle be checked against a known object. A discursive reading would reject this and start from the proposition that people get along by judging what their interlocutor is visibly doing, as meaningful action. On this reading, ToM’s alleged test of competence is impossible. When we see people use mental terms, we ought to see them as doing something, not reporting something. I give examples from ordinary talk and from the talk of people with an alleged Theory of Mind deficit.

A Relevance-Theoretic Account of the Development and Deficits of Theory of Mind in Normally Developing Children and Individuals with Autism

This paper argues that positing a Theory of Mind and mindreading abilities in particular is necessary in order to be able to account for the development and possible impairments of communication in normally developing children and individuals with autism. To account for the different impairments that people diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit, what is needed is a refinement of the levels or degrees of mind-reading abilities that are usually posited in the literature. Instead of the two-tiered system of first-and second-order mind-reading abilities, there is a need to propose several other layers of meta-representation to account for the comprehension of different communicative events, such as metaphors, under-and overstatements, direct and indirect speech acts, lies, deceits, humour, jokes, irony and sarcasm. This paper assumes a relevancetheoretic perspective to explain deficits in communicative abilities in individuals with ASD. It suggests that the pragmatic impairments specific to autism can be accounted for by the role of context retrieval in the comprehension and production process, especially those related to knowledge about the speaker.