Tag Archives: autism heterogeneity

We Still Don’t Understand Neurodivergent Minds Even Beyond the Question of Usefulness

Part 5 of a seven-part series exploring how neurodivergent minds are understood through the lens of usefulness. This article brings together the perspectives developed across the series to examine how that framing persists beneath more positive language in modern thinking, and argues that moving beyond it requires changing the environments we build rather than continuing to sort, adapt, or reshape different kinds of minds.

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The Spectrum Problem after The Question of Usefulness

Part 4 of a seven-part series asking whether the modern autism spectrum accurately describes the diversity of neurodivergent cognition. Has diagnostic simplification obscured meaningful neurological differences? Autism is now defined as a single spectrum in modern psychiatric manuals, replacing earlier distinctions such as Asperger’s syndrome. While this simplified diagnosis, it also collapsed multiple neurological profiles into one category. This article examines whether the spectrum model accurately reflects autistic diversity or obscures meaningful differences in cognition, support needs, and lived experience.

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