“Officially Described as Mysterious”: New Directions in Demystifying Autism

Thomas’ thesis explores the seminal research papers relating to autism across multiple disciplines in the past 100 years, focusing on ‘communication’. He adopts principles from the integrationist approach to foreground and challenge ingrained notions of communication ‘deficits’ within the autistic population and examines how misconceptions around what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘normal’ communication have been central to both stigmatising the community and approaches to ‘treatment’. The thesis highlights as a central theme that whilst definitions of autism have consistently focussed on perceived differences or deficits in communication style, there is a stark absence of consideration of what actually constitutes communication.