Asking the question ‘what is autism’ is like simultaneously asking an evolutionary biologist, a painter and a greengrocer, “what is an apple?” 

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The most important thing we could do is ask individuals themselves. And when we do, some interesting social and philosophical questions arise. One autistic individual turns it around to say: 

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“Let alone autism, your neurotypical syndrome is a disorder characterised by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority and obsession with conformity.” 

– Muskie, Founder of The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical, a parody organisation set up to highlight the linear, dichotomous and boring ways of non-autistic thinking. 

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As psychologists we are trained to diagnose autism through the direct observation of social, communication and repetitive behaviours. But repetitive behaviours can be anything from hand flapping to humming to an obsessive interest in organic chemistry. All repetitive behaviour is self soothing behaviour, and we all do them – we’ll binge watch a Netflix series without sleeping, we’ll tap our pens, we’ll listen to the same song on repeat. Traditionally, autistic social behaviours were thought to be withdrawn behaviours (the word autism comes from ‘autos’ in Greek, meaning ‘self’). But that’s not entirely true either. There are extroverts and highly social autistic people, not to mention the increase in diagnosis in girls, who have learnt to ‘mask’ what society says is ‘odd’ behaviour. 

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Whilst there have been numerous definitions of autism in the past century, ranging from the socially withdrawn Schizophrenic described by Bleuler (1912), to Autistic Psychopathy, and Asperger’s Syndrome described by Hans Asperger in 1938, or Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact described by Kanner in 1943, our understanding of the neurobiological, behavioural and cognitive aspects of this condition is constantly changing. 

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In real life, this means that autistic individuals are ‘othered’ within services, within the workplace, or within institutionalised settings such as schools. It takes a great effort from the non-autistic community to accept individual differences, and also come to realise autistic people can have superior cognitive abilities, as well as deep grievances, sources of anxiety and frustration with a world that appears to be harsh and non-understanding. 

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Perhaps we ought to start asking “what is an apple” to apples themselves. 

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