Enabling and disabling emotional diversity: Negotiating autism spectrum disorder in therapeutic encounters

Abstract

AbstractAutistic youth are often understood as emotionally suspect in schools, workplaces and households, and autistic behaviour is strongly regulated. In contrast, neurodiversity advocates suggest that all sociality exists on a spectrum, and that autistic people represent the diversity of that spectrum. Situated within this debate, this paper examines the narratives of specialists who navigate pedagogies of emotional suspicion in their work with autistic youth. I draw on interviews with autism professionals in Massachusetts, USA to elucidate how they negotiate the tensions between regulating emotional behaviour and recognising emotional diversity as they mediate the construction of autistic youth as emotional suspects.