Guiding Principles for a Course on Autism

July 5, 2016

Early on in my process of designing my Critical Perspectives on Autism and Neurodiversity course for the undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies program at California Institute of Integral Studies, I asked myself the question, “What are the most essential and indispensible guiding principles any course on autism must follow, in order to ensure that the course truly remains grounded […]

Read the full article →

Autism and the Pathology Paradigm

June 23, 2016

It’s the Summer of 2016, and it’s been exactly five years since I wrote “Throw Away the Master’s Tools: Liberating Ourselves from the Pathology Paradigm,” which has since become one of the foundational pieces of literature on the neurodiversity paradigm. “Throw Away the Master’s Tools” first saw publication in the Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking anthology in January 2012, […]

Read the full article →

Foreword to Defiant

May 30, 2015

Below is the foreword that I wrote for Michael Scott Monje Jr.’s novel Defiant. Defiant is available directly from Autonomous Press, and from online retailers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble (though it’s better for small publishers if you order from them directly), and from your coolest local bookstore if you ask them to carry it. I’m […]

Read the full article →

Neuroqueer: An Introduction

May 2, 2015

I coined the term neuroqueer in a paper I wrote for a grad school class in the spring of 2008. Over the next several years, I played with it in further grad school papers, in private conversations, and in the ongoing development of my own thoughts and practices. The concept of neuroqueer, or of neuroqueering […]

Read the full article →

Neurotypical Psychotherapists and Neurodivergent Clients

December 3, 2014

I’m often asked if I have any words of advice for psychotherapists and other professionals, on working with clients who are autistic and/or otherwise neurodivergent.  Why, yes. Yes I do. And I’ve been meaning for some time to type up some of those words of advice and make them publicly available. The push that I needed finally came from Sarah […]

Read the full article →

Neurodiversity: Some Basic Terms & Definitions

September 27, 2014

New paradigms often require a bit of new language, and his is certainly the case with the neurodiversity paradigm. I see many people – scholars, journalists, bloggers, internet commenters, and even people who identify as neurodiversity activists – get confused about the terminology around neurodiversity. Their misunderstanding and incorrect usage of certain terms often results in […]

Read the full article →

Ripples of Goodwill: An Interview About Aikido

August 25, 2014

This is an interview with me about aikido, intended for an audience more or less unfamiliar with the art. The interview was conducted way back in February 2011 by Monika Broecker, a colleague of mine in the field of somatic psychology. Monika had an intention to publish this interview in some local magazine, but that […]

Read the full article →

Advice to Young Autistics: Stick Around and Be Awesome

August 21, 2014

In the summer of 2012, shortly after my wedding to my fabulous wife, someone involved with the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism blog heard from a teenager who’d been newly diagnosed as Autistic. Learning that she was Autistic had devastated this young woman; because the mainstream discourse about autism is so negative and stigmatizing, she thought that it meant […]

Read the full article →

Letter to an Autistic Aikido Student

July 26, 2014

I’ve been teaching aikido for more than three decades. As far as I know, I’m the most advanced Autistic aikidoka (aikido practitioner) in the world. There are few enough people at my level in the art that if there were another Autistic close to this level, I’d almost certainly have heard about them by now – […]

Read the full article →

What Is Autism?

March 1, 2014

How many websites are there that have a page called something like “What Is Autism?” or “About Autism”? How often do organizations, professionals, scholars, and others need to include a few paragraphs of basic introductory “What Is Autism?” text in a website, brochure, presentation, or academic paper? I’ve seen so many versions of that obligatory […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries