On Neurodiversity: Or, How to Help People without Calling Them Broken (Part I)
The Pathology Paradigm Most of us have a basic idea of how psychological interventions work. The “disordered” person has a deficit, a deficiency. We intervene to eliminate or reduce the deficit, improving the “disordered” person’s ability to function in the world. Ultimately, we want to eliminate the “disorder” entirely if possible. It’s neat and logical. We can refer to this set of ideas and assumptions as the pathology paradigm (see Walker, 2013). There’s also a number of serious problems with…