I don’t work in the field and I am not autistic. I have a daughter who is, and just recently spent holiday times with a family that also has members who are. I

I don’t work in the field and I am not autistic. I have a daughter who is, and just recently spent holiday times with a family that also has members who are. I don’t think neurotypical people can really empathize. I am saying this as someone who have had altered states of consciousness with psychedelics. It is not the same thing, but it was a different enough experience that I know that people who have not taken psychedelics or have had visionary experiences, cannot really relate to my experiences with altered states of consciousness, and those attempts at “empathizing” are shallow. There are two kinds of things when we talk about empathy. One is the kind of empathy that comes from shared experience, and I doubt neurotypical people can really have an inkling of what it is like without having experienced altered states of consciousness. The other kind of empathy is where one recognizes that the other person is suffering. The reasons and circumstances by which someone suffers is unique to the individual person, but what is shared universally is that each person has suffered. Rather than empathizing with someone by saying they are a “little” or “a lot” autistic, it’s more precise to look at the person before you, in the present moment, and share the experience of suffering. If we are talking about therapy, the author makes a great case for clinical outcomes being biased towards mitigating the impact an autist has on other people, and not the impact to the autist herself. The whole point of explaining the spectrum like a spectral signature rather than a gradient is to have a better framework for helping people.