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I read this the other day and concluded that "psydiversity" is yet another academic wading in to tell people struggling for their rights that they're doing it w

by hkt 5y ago

I read this the other day and concluded that "psydiversity" is yet another academic wading in to tell people struggling for their rights that they're doing it wrong. The idea of the immutable self is definitely fiction, but it is a useful fiction which we use to prevent people trying to "cure" autism so we can instead be accepting and humane. It shifts the onus of change onto society instead of the individual, and ties in neatly with the social model of disability by doing so. By tacitly attacking the idea of the immutable self, the author opens the door to "cures" for autism, homosexuality, and a variety of other things which we're currently forced to accept. It may be the case that all that is solid melts into air but academics like this one accelerate that process instead of slowing it.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
This looks like the classic "science vs. humanities" war. It's a humanities person (now a disciple of Focault, who they of course take pains to mention) attempting to take leadership of a social movement. It's fundamentally parasitism. (I want an article about what the Prophet Mohammed said about autism, and how we can make a better, more Islamic social movement. ... Actually we can probably find a Catholic analogue of that, if we look.) They make this clear in the following disingenuous paragraph: > Historically, both ‘psy’ and neurosciences have been mobilised to justify large-scale social injustices in democratic countries, from confinement to forced sterilisation and hormone treatments to ‘cure’ aberrant sexualities. We must be under no illusions here. However, it doesn’t make sense to denigrate one and eulogise the other. Indeed, often it’s psychologists taking a ‘softer’ approach to human motivation that’s served to ward off more draconian approaches to brain-based difference. For example, when eugenicists such as Carlos Blacker in the UK equated ‘mental deficiency’ with social and economic redundancy after the Second World War in order to advocate for sterilisation, it was psychologists such as Neil O’Connor and Beate Hermelin who argued that psychological and social intervention was always preferable. It's disingenuous because it says > it doesn’t make sense to denigrate one and eulogise the other. but then it immediately goes about setting up associations of badness with the "hard", sciency, "brain" approach (which, y'know, led to eugenics), and of better-ness with the "soft" "psy" approach, which is more "embedded in a historical context". Let's be clear what this is: It's a power-grab by a humanities person who wants to colonize this new identity-group on behalf of his field. It's the highbrow left-version of the thing Trump does when he tries to convince "ordinary (white) Americans" that they should go with him, and his ideology. It's a grifter showing up in the hopes of riding you to a career.
- hkt 5y ago
  I hate your tacit attack on the left, but you're right. This is someone building a CV at the expense of a community. They should be ashamed.
  - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    Man, don't let the academic cult of Focault define what "the left" has to mean. Saving-the-planet and not-eating-the-poor do sound like good ideas. Thanks for seeing past the apparent ideological difference though.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  The paragraph is very poorly written (as is much of the article) but it's essentially trying to point out that the "brain based" approach to mental differences doesn't really have a cleaner history than the fuzzy, socially-focused, 'psy' approach. The whole article reads like pointless nitpicking to me; there's plenty to criticize about the neurodiversity movement but it's very implausible that most of its advocates wouldn't be very clearly aware of the points OP is trying to make. The overall approach OP is trying to push here seems rather disingenuous, tbh.

by hkt 5y ago

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago

This looks like the classic "science vs. humanities" war. It's a humanities person (now a disciple of Focault, who they of course take pains to mention) attempting to take leadership of a social movement. It's fundamentally parasitism. (I want an article about what the Prophet Mohammed said about autism, and how we can make a better, more Islamic social movement. ... Actually we can probably find a Catholic analogue of that, if we look.) They make this clear in the following disingenuous paragraph: > Historically, both ‘psy’ and neurosciences have been mobilised to justify large-scale social injustices in democratic countries, from confinement to forced sterilisation and hormone treatments to ‘cure’ aberrant sexualities. We must be under no illusions here. However, it doesn’t make sense to denigrate one and eulogise the other. Indeed, often it’s psychologists taking a ‘softer’ approach to human motivation that’s served to ward off more draconian approaches to brain-based difference. For example, when eugenicists such as Carlos Blacker in the UK equated ‘mental deficiency’ with social and economic redundancy after the Second World War in order to advocate for sterilisation, it was psychologists such as Neil O’Connor and Beate Hermelin who argued that psychological and social intervention was always preferable. It's disingenuous because it says > it doesn’t make sense to denigrate one and eulogise the other. but then it immediately goes about setting up associations of badness with the "hard", sciency, "brain" approach (which, y'know, led to eugenics), and of better-ness with the "soft" "psy" approach, which is more "embedded in a historical context". Let's be clear what this is: It's a power-grab by a humanities person who wants to colonize this new identity-group on behalf of his field. It's the highbrow left-version of the thing Trump does when he tries to convince "ordinary (white) Americans" that they should go with him, and his ideology. It's a grifter showing up in the hopes of riding you to a career.

hkt 5y ago
I hate your tacit attack on the left, but you're right. This is someone building a CV at the expense of a community. They should be ashamed.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  Man, don't let the academic cult of Focault define what "the left" has to mean. Saving-the-planet and not-eating-the-poor do sound like good ideas. Thanks for seeing past the apparent ideological difference though.
zozbot234 5y ago
The paragraph is very poorly written (as is much of the article) but it's essentially trying to point out that the "brain based" approach to mental differences doesn't really have a cleaner history than the fuzzy, socially-focused, 'psy' approach. The whole article reads like pointless nitpicking to me; there's plenty to criticize about the neurodiversity movement but it's very implausible that most of its advocates wouldn't be very clearly aware of the points OP is trying to make. The overall approach OP is trying to push here seems rather disingenuous, tbh.