Je suis à l'Est!

4 ideas

1. Misdiagnosed youth to philosophy doctorate

   Josef Schovanec, born in 1981 to parents of Central European origin and raised in France, was bullied at school and went through years of psychiatric misreading and heavy medication before being diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome only as a young adult. Despite this, he graduated from Sciences Po, earned a doctorate in philosophy at EHESS and learned many languages, yet he still struggled to find ordinary employment. His case shows that the same person can be treated as psychiatrically unmanageable and also be academically exceptional, depending on which institution is looking.

2. Psychiatry's autism model inflicted avoidable harm

   The French psychiatric tradition, dominated by psychoanalysis, treated autism as a psychological disorder rooted in family dynamics, often blaming mothers. This framing led to institutionalization, sedating medication and 'care' that aimed to contain rather than educate. The wrong theory of the condition therefore produced damage beyond what the condition itself caused, and the cost fell on autistic people who were denied schooling, skills and autonomy.

3. Social codes learned as foreign language

   For an autistic person, the implicit rules of social life such as small talk, eye contact, humor and politeness rituals are not intuitive. They must be learned explicitly, the way one studies grammar and vocabulary in a foreign language. Seen from this outsider position, many 'natural' norms turn out to be arbitrary conventions, which makes the autistic observer a kind of ethnographer of ordinary society.

4. Autism is a difference that environments disable

   Autism is a different way of being rather than an illness to cure, and much of the handicap comes from environments built around neurotypical expectations. Job interviews, noisy workplaces and unwritten social tests filter people by social performance rather than competence, excluding capable autistic people. Adapting these gatekeeping settings is more effective than trying to normalize the person.

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