CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 7Mental Health and PsychiatryDisability Rights and RepresentationAutism Spectrum Disorder Research

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 50 of the 50 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Neurodiversity, Autism, and Psychiatric Disability: The Harmful Dysfunction Perspective

Wakefield, Jerome C., Wasserman, David, Conrad, Jordan A.·2020·The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability
DOI 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190622879.013.29
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Neurodiversity advocates apply the same kind of critiques to psychiatric conditions such as autism that disability theory has long applied to somatic conditions. Yet these critiques have received little attention from philosophy of psychiatry. Although the arguments of neurodiversity advocates often are undeveloped, they raise critical issues about psychiatric diagnosis and classification. This chapter uses Jerome Wakefield’s “harmful dysfunction analysis” of the concept of mental disorder to reconstruct and evaluate neurodiversity arguments that autism is a normal variation, not a mental disorder. We argue that because of the heterogeneity of “autism,” these arguments are more plausible for some subgroups than others. We find support for a moderate neurodiversity position that objects to psychiatric overreach without denying the reality of some forms of autistic disorder.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190622879.013.29

Cites

50 of 50 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 50 references

Research works printed but not linked: 29

  1. Anton, Audrey L. 2013. “The Virtue of Sociopaths: How to Appreciate the Neurodiversity of Sociopathy Without Becoming a Victim.” In Ethics and Neurodiversity, edited by C. D. Herrera and Alexandra Perry, 111–130. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  2. 2007, A Mind Apart: Travels in a Neurodiverse World
  3. 1998, Asperger’s Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals
  4. 1995, Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind
  5. 2018, Is It Time to Give Up on a Single Diagnostic Label for Autism?, Scientific American
  6. 1998, Neurodiversity., The Atlantic
  7. 2016, Autism Isn’t Just a Medical Diagnosis—It’s a Political Identity., The Establishment
  8. 2016, Clinical Practice & Epidemiology in Mental Health
  9. 2019, Open Office., The New York Times Magazine
  10. Defining Mental Disorder: Jerome Wakefield and His Critics
  11. 1989, Autism: Explaining the Enigma
  12. 1994, Autism: Beyond ‘Theory of Mind’., Cognition
  13. 2014, Alien Landscapes?: Interpreting Disordered Minds
  14. 2006, Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with Autism
  15. 2017, Reviewing Resistances to Reconceptualising Disability., Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
  16. 2018, Autistic Man Who Went Overboard on Carnival Cruise Was Traveling with Special Needs Group., CNN
  17. 2014, On the Misapplication of the BAPQ in a Study of Autism., Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
  18. 2014, Asperger’s Disorder on Life Support., Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorder
  19. 1971, A Theory of Justice
  20. Exclusive: First Autistic Presidential Appointee Speaks Out., Wired
  21. 1993, Don’t Mourn for Us., Autonomy: The Critical Journal for Interdisciplinary Autism Studies
  22. Singer, Jim. 1999. “Why Can’t You Be Normal for Once in Your Life? From a ‘Problem with No Name’ to the Emergence of a New Category of Difference.” In M. Corker and S. French (Eds.), Disability Discourse, 59–67. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
  23. 2001, The Einstein Syndrome
  24. 1975, Nosology and the Official Psychiatric Nomenclature., Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry
  25. 2013, Autism as Culture., The Disability Studies Reader
  26. 2007, What Makes a Mental Disorder Mental?, Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology
  27. Wakefield, Jerome C., and Michael B. First. 2003. “Clarifying the Distinction Between Disorder and Nondisorder: Confronting the Overdiagnosis (“False Positives”) Problem in DSM-V.” In Advancing DSM: Dilemmas in Psychiatric Diagnosis, edited by Katherine A. Phillips and Michael B. First, 23–56. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
  28. 2002, Exposure Anxiety—The Invisible Cage: An Exploration of Self-Protection Responses in the Autism Spectrum
  29. 1997, The Autistic Spectrum., Lancet

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Wakefield, J. C., Wasserman, D., & Conrad, J. A.
Affiliations
  • New York University (US)
  • National Institutes of Health (US)
  • KU Leuven (BE)
ORCID
Venue
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Published
2020-02-05
Pages
500-521
DOI
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190622879.013.29
OpenAlex
W3004554160
Cited by
6
References
50
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2021: 2
FWCI
5.01
Type
book chapter
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Oxford University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Mental Health and Psychiatry
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Disability Rights and Representation
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
Keywords
neurodiversity, autism spectrum disorder, psychiatric disability, philosophy of psychiatry, harmful dysfunction, mental illness, psychiatric diagnosis, psychiatric classification, disability theory, normal variation

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review