Disturbing Behaviours: Ole Ivar Lovaas and the Queer History of Autism Science

Gibson, Margaret F.; Douglas, Patty

doi:10.28968/cftt.v4i2.29579

Cited by 38 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…9. The link between what we take to be an infringement on autistic rights and an infringement on queer rights is historical as well as conceptual-see an analysis of texts by Gibson and Douglas (2018). 10.…”

Section: Notes)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical Concerns with Applied Behavior Analysis for Autism Spectrum “Disorder”

Wilkenfeld¹,

McCarthy²

2020

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal

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This paper has both theoretical and practical ambitions. The theoretical ambitions are to explore what would constitute both effective and ethical treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the practical ambition is perhaps more important: we argue that a dominant form of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which is widely taken to be far-and-away the best "treatment" for ASD, manifests systematic violations of the fundamental tenets of bioethics. Moreover, the supposed benefits of the treatment not only fail to mitigate these violations, but often exacerbate them. Warnings of the perils of ABA are not original to us-autism advocates have been ringing this bell for some years. However, their pleas have been largely unheeded, and ABA continues to be offered to and quite frequently pushed upon parents as the appropriate treatment for autistic children. Our contribution is to argue that, from a bioethical perspective, autism advocates are fully justified in their concerns-the rights of autistic children and their parents are being regularly infringed upon. Specifically, we will argue that employing ABA violates the principles of justice and nonmaleficence and, most critically, infringes on the autonomy of children and (when pushed aggressively) of parents as well.

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Section: Notes)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical Concerns with Applied Behavior Analysis for Autism Spectrum “Disorder”

Wilkenfeld¹,

McCarthy²

2020

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal

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“…It is also worth noting that Løvaas’ work has been utilised in the development of interventions aimed at sexual and gender non-conforming young people in the 1970s. Although this is lesser known than his work on autism, it illustrates how the application of behaviourism in the form of ABA reinforces the idea of ‘particular kinds of humans (i.e., non-autistic and gender conforming) as normal and others as in need of containment and/or improvement’ (Gibson and Douglas, 2018: 3).…”

Section: Autism and The Pathologisation Of Self-advocacymentioning

confidence: 82%

Pathological demand avoidance: What and who are being pathologised and in whose interests?

Moore

2020

Global Studies of Childhood

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The term ‘pathological demand avoidance’ was first coined in 1983. In recent years, diagnostic tools have emerged to enable practitioners to identify, name and treat pathological demand avoidance and, at least in the United Kingdom, there is an increasing number of children who attract this label. In addition to what are defined as the core ‘deficits’ of autism, including assumed difficulties in social communication, difficulties in social interaction and restrictive interests, children with pathological demand avoidance are thought to have an extreme anxiety-driven need to control their environment and control the demands and expectations of others. This article will argue that we must exercise extreme caution in accepting the validity of pathological demand avoidance and will suggest that it can be seen as an attempt to psychiatarise autistic children’s resistance, which, in so doing, restricts their agency. First, it will draw on the arguments put forward by some autistic scholars who have claimed that pathological demand avoidance is better understood as rational demand avoidance – an understandable and rational response to the circumstances that one finds oneself in. Second, it will consider the intersection between autism and childhood. When one of the defining characteristics of pathological demand avoidance is an inability to recognise and, presumably, respect social hierarchy, children’s competencies as social actors and active meaning makers of their world can easily become pathologised as defiance. Finally, the article will address the intersections of autism, childhood and gender. Girls are much less likely to be diagnosed as having an autism spectrum condition than boys are, with a ratio traditionally estimated at approximately 1:4. However, pathological demand avoidance diagnoses are fairly evenly spread between boys and girls. It will be argued that it is girls’ resistance to the ordinary and everyday demands of her as a girl and her subsequent rejection or transgression of those expectations that is being pathologised.

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“…My analysis here, however, focuses on the shared history of dehumanizing therapies that have dogged both groups for decades-conversion therapy for queer and trans children and ABA for autistic children. Elsewhere, disability studies scholars have noted the co-development of these therapies by the same clinicians, 4 in the same UCLA psychology department at the same time (Dawson 2004;Gibson and Douglas 2018;McGuire 2016;Silberman 2015;Yergeau 2018). I build on this work by analyzing how efforts to depathologize first gay and then trans identity have relied on explicit ableism in some moments, and in other moments on the building of a type of personhood denied to autistic communities.…”

Section: Thinking Autism and Transgender Togethermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bruno Bettelheim, also accused of poor treatment toward autistic children, had a "whites-only" policy at his school in Chicago (Epstein 2014). Gibson and Douglas (2018) point to autism as having emerged as a distinct diagnosis in order to spare white middle-class parents the horror of a "feeble-minded" diagnosis, tainted by race and class associations.…”

Section: The Human In Applied Behaviour Analysis (Aba)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Building a Person”: Legal and Clinical Personhood for Autistic and Trans Children in Ontario

Pyne

2020

Can. j. law soc.

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In the 1960s and 1970s, psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, operated two behaviour modification programs: one aiming to eliminate “feminine” behaviours in male-bodied children (“conversion therapy”), and one targeting autistic children’s so-called problem behaviours (applied behavioural analysis or ABA). The head of the autism program referred to his work as “building a person.” Decades later in Ontario, a radically incommensurate legal context sees conversion therapy banned while ABA receives millions of funding dollars. Drawing on legislation, case law, media, and clinical literature, I argue that the process of trans communities wresting themselves out from under conversion therapy involved discursively shifting from having a condition to being human—a process of “building a person”—still incomplete for autistic communities. While legal reforms protect some trans youth from harmful therapies, this does not extend to autistic trans youth, leading us to question at whose expense a rights-bearing trans person was built.

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Disturbing Behaviours: Ole Ivar Lovaas and the Queer History of Autism Science

Cited by 38 publications

References 31 publications

Ethical Concerns with Applied Behavior Analysis for Autism Spectrum “Disorder”

Ethical Concerns with Applied Behavior Analysis for Autism Spectrum “Disorder”

Pathological demand avoidance: What and who are being pathologised and in whose interests?

“Building a Person”: Legal and Clinical Personhood for Autistic and Trans Children in Ontario

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