Jon got in touch after the response to our episode with Uta Frith because he is particularly interested in the online dynamics around autism and neurodiversity. Jon is the host of Christianity on The Spectrum, a long form podcast where he talks to people about the intersection of Christianity and autism, and many other things besides.

In our discussion, Jon reflects on his own relationship with autism, his experiences as part of the autistic self-advocacy community, and what he has learnt from years of ethnographic research into what autistic people say online.

Jon has a real clarity of thought and depth of experience. We cover a wide range of topics, including the double empathy problem, the heightened sense of social justice often associated with autism, masking, and the concept of the autism spectrum itself.

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Do let us know what Jon’s interview brings up for you, and any reflections you would like to share with other listeners. We think this one could be a great conversation starter.

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Dan got in touch with us because he was concerned about the lack of balance he saw in conversations about neurodiversity. He felt that lived experience expertise was being presented in some cases as if it applied to everyone and thought that this had the potential to do harm.

In this frank conversation, Dan explained why he thinks that lived experience expertise isn’t treated in the same way as academic or clinical expertise, and how this can lead to ideas not being adequately tested or challenged.

He says there’s a difference between being an autistic expert, and an expert in autism, and that it’s crucial that we make that distinction.

Enjoy the show.

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If you haven’t done so already, do check out the first episode of Season 2 with Educational Psychologist Chris Bagley, talking about the challenges with our education system in meeting the needs of our most marginalised young people, and our two ‘interviews with the hosts’, where you get to hear both mine and Naomi’s stories about how we became interested in this topic.

Chris' episode

Hear about Dani's journey here

Hear about Naomi's journey here

And do send in any questions you would like us to address, and ideas for future guests you would be interested to hear from.

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Dr Chris Bagley is a psychologist, teacher, writer and musician with an interest in the evolution of ideas, educational transformation and systems change. He is Director of Research at social enterprise, States of Mind, Co-Director at Square Peg CIC and a Tutor at The Institute of Education, University College London.

I (Naomi) first met Chris several years ago, as we were both critiquing the education system and trying to imagine ways that education could be different. I was immediately struck by how clearly Chris sees the problems in the school system and how it (doesn’t) work for the most marginalised young people. He is always thinking about the effect of education on the children who are labelled the failures - who could also be seen as those whom school has failed.

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In this in-depth and wide-ranging interview, Chris tells us about being a psychologist in the school system, and how he feels that it pathologises the young people who don’t fit its requirements. He explains how the medical model and our model of education interact to protect each other. Children’s distress about school is labelled and treated as a medical problem, meaning that we don’t ask important questions about whether our education system is really fit for purpose.

His first book, States of Mind, written with Bea Herbert, was recently published and is available from all good booksellers.

In this interview-with-the-hosts episode, Dani talks about her path into clinical psychology and why she wanted to work with children. She explains her clinical experience working as a neurodevelopmental diagnostician, and explains why she found herself increasingly uncomfortable with her part in the diagnostic process. She asked questions, but found it hard to get answers she was happy with.

This is an unusually honest insight into the mind of a diagnosing clinician. We hope that you enjoy it.

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We’ve released ten episodes of Let’s Talk Neurosense. We’ve interviewed ten different people, all with quite different perspectives on neurodiversity. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, and we’ve learnt a lot along the way.

Now we’d really like to know if you have questions you’d like us to answer - or people you’d like us to talk to in upcoming seasons. Please let us know in the comments. And please tell other people about us if you’ve enjoyed listening to season 1.

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Naomi's Website

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In Portsmouth, they decided to do something about this. Their Neurodiversity Team provides services and support for 0-19 year olds across the city, without requiring a diagnosis. In consultation with local families, they created a Neurodiversity Profiling tool which aims to identify a young person’s needs so that support can be offered quickly. The whole city was reorganised along needs-led lines - a diagnosis is not used to limit access to education or health services. This exists alongside the diagnostic pathway which some families still go down.

Claire Mason is the Neurodiversity Service Lead in Portsmouth, and in this interview she told us all about how it works. She explained how the profiling tool works, what it means in practice and the feedback they’ve had, both negative and positive. If you want to know more about the Portsmouth needs-led approach, click here.

Neurodiversity Team Portsmouth

But Fabian is sceptical about some of the ways that autism is being portrayed and discussed online. While he thinks that people should be able to self-identify, he recognises that lived experience is a complicated thing and there are multiple incentives at place. When people post reels of themselves having meltdowns on social media, for example, what is that about? Should we value lived experience over research - and what happens when they point us in different directions? This was an unusually open conversation and we hope you enjoy it.

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On Let’s Talk Neurosense we try to platform a wide range of perspectives. The conversation around neurodiversity, autism and ADHD is full of contradictions. So what happens when ideas clash, particularly those that draw on principles of empiricism and objectivity, and those that reflect lived experience perspectives?

Here’s a snapshot of our forthcoming episode where Naomi and I sit down with Fabian Hoff to grapple with this question, and more.

New episodes are released every Wednesday.

But is it too good to be true? This is a hotly debated area, with some claiming it can be abusive, while others say it’s the key to unlocking a person’s inner life.

Amy Lutz is someone for whom this has personal resonance. She has an adult son, Jonah, who she describes as profoundly autistic. Her concerns about how he and people like him are being spoken over led her to do a PhD which became her book ‘Chasing the Intact Mind- How The Severely Autistic and Intellectually Disabled Were Excluded from the Debates That Affect Them Most’.

In our discussion, Amy talks about her experience as a parent, her concerns about the potential harms of facilitated communication, and the contradictions of the neurodiversity movement. She also discusses the limitations of the social model of disability when applied to those with severe cognitive disabilities.

Amy sheds light on a fascinating and highly contested area of autism from both a personal and academic perspective. This is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

In this episode, we talked to Jonathan Green. He’s a child psychiatrist and conducts research into children’s social development at the University of Manchester. His research centres around early intervention for autistic children - but he doesn’t work directly with the children. The intervention is with parents, to help them to understand and interact with their autistic children better. They aim to improve the social environment of the child, to better scaffold their development.

Jonathan tells us the details of how these interventions work, what their research findings are and why he is so passionate about bringing evidence-based early intervention to as many families as possible. We also discuss some of the controversies around the idea of early intervention.

Anna's YouTube channel

In this conversation with Naomi, Anna explains how she spent her childhood being described as ‘an enigma’. She tells us about her diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome at the age of twenty-one, and what that meant to her. She also speaks about masking, the need for subgroups in the autism spectrum and why she thinks we need to keep using the word ‘disorder’.

Anna has a unique perspective on autism and a fascinating story to tell. We hope you enjoy it.

In this conversation, she tells us how working with children has changed over her nineteen years of clinical experience, and how, as a society, we seem to have moved towards a more diagnostic framing of children’s differences and difficulties. She talks about how the question of autism or ADHD is now frequently part of her work, when previously it would not have been. We talk about how children’s behaviour and distress can always be viewed through different lenses, depending on the perspective of the adults around them.

We discuss the way that professionals try to help, and how a diagnosis can be essential for children and families in accessing support. We talk about the many different roles that a diagnosis plays, and the dilemmas that this creates for professionals and families. This is an honest conversation about the real-life tensions of clinical practice with distressed children and their families.

We hope you enjoy it.

Katy’s work focuses on autism, empathy and social justice, all from an autistic perspective. In this episode, Katy explained why she thinks autism is a social justice issue and why we need to become more aware of where the power lies. It’s a great conversation which touches on many important issues.

Katy created a reference list for this episode which can be found on the link below.

Reference list here

We hope you enjoy it.

You’d guess she must have said something really awful. Perhaps something deeply offensive about autistic people which reveals her lack of compassion and understanding. Even then, it’s hard to know how an interview with a retired academic would have the power to make others commit suicide and to turn back progress to the extent that is predicted.

So what did she actually say?

What she said was that she thinks the autism spectrum has expanded too far and that it isn’t helping anyone. Not those who originally received autism diagnoses, and not those who are now getting diagnoses who previously would not have done. She said that she thinks scientific progress is being held back because ‘autism’ now means something so heterogenous that we can’t identify anything that all autistic people share. Nothing biological or neurological, nothing cognitive, nothing behavioural. In her words, there are no markers.

The autism spectrum is, in fact, the widest spectrum imaginable. It includes some of the most disabled people in our society and some of the highest achievers. And there’s no evidence that they have anything in common except their diagnosis.

Saying this sort of thing gets you into a lot of trouble online. There are accepted narratives that we are all expected to comply with, and one is the idea that the giant autism spectrum is protective, that it helps people to be included under one diagnosis. Any language which helps people differentiate is banned. Which is odd, because we don’t think that in any other area of medicine. No one says (for example), that we shouldn’t differentiate between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes because it’s protective not to acknowledge the differences. It’s obvious that differentiating in research and in clinical practice will lead to better understanding and more effective interventions.

If you don’t comply with these narratives about autism – as Uta Frith hasn’t – then you will be publicly shamed and discredited. Your expertise will be dismissed, even if you have 60 years of experience. You’ll be told that you are harming people and that you are ignorant. Personal slurs are likely to be used against you.

And it’s all about social control. Shame is about social control. It’s about creating things that can be said, and things that can’t be said. Others see the shaming and keep quiet.

It’s about controlling the narrative so that real discussions can’t be had. We’ve talked to so many clinicians who raise concerns and who then say that they’d never speak up, for fear of cancellation and even losing their job. There are important things that are not being talked about, for fear of the repercussions. It’s paralysing the conversation.

To a psychologist, the interesting question is really why. Whether or not we agree with Uta Frith, the reactions should give us pause. Why is it treated like blasphemy to say that the vast autism spectrum may no longer be fit for purpose? Why are we not allowed to discuss the reality of clinical practice and how little an autism diagnosis tells us? Why is disagreement always framed as harm?

Why are personal attacks common when scientists disrupt the prevailing narrative? And why are we all so compliant, censoring ourselves to avoid the discomfort of shame?

Listen to our podcast with Uta Frith, it adds nuance and context to her interview with the TES.

Listen here

TES Interview with Uta Frith

If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to our Substack to hear about future episodes.

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We’ll be looking at the changes of the last fifteen years and trying to make sense of how we got here. We’ll be asking the questions that many psychologists tells us they are afraid to pose, and shining a light into dark corners. Come and join us if you’re interested.