I did something I did not expect to do this week. I confirmed, for the first time on this blog or anywhere else, that I think I have both autism and ADHD.
I suspect that this surprised very few regular readers of this blog. I have been expressing my concern about the treatment of these conditions for some time. That has not just been for myself; it has also been for others I know who have these diagnoses, and for friends who are involved in the teaching of special educational needs, many, but not all of which, are related to autism and ADHD.
I have also been very aware of the link between these issues and the so-called problem of the NEETs, meaning those who are “not in employment, education or training”, but who should actually be called the SSEETs, meaning “seeking suitable employment, education or training”. I do, then, see this as both a micro and macroeconomic issue, as well as one concerning personal capacity and the ability to thrive, which are issues intimately involved with economic achievement. This is an issue which does, then, fall into the realm of those this blog is concerned about, and which should be at the epicentre of a politics of care.
That said, my motivation for my revelation was the treatment afforded to Chris Packham by The Times newspaper. I should have anticipated some of the responses. Many did not appear here, but there was a range of hostile ones, most of which were, to be polite, incredibly small-minded.
The range of reactions, inclduing an invitation to debate this issue and its connections, if any, to neoliberalism, has, however, given me much to think about, and I need this weekend to pause and reflect.
One reflection will be on whether to seek a diagnosis. I suspect I will: this issue matters too much to me to leave the question of whether I have these conditions open to question. Saying that, I have to accept that this is not a straightforward or emotionally easy process.
A second reflection will be on the links, if any, between autism, ADHD, neurodiversity, neurocomplexity, and neoliberalism. I have already done a lot of reading on that issue, but suspect there is more to do.
And third, there is an emotional element to process. Let me use a metaphor to explain that. Autistic people, contrary to popular perception, can be good with metaphors.
Over the last two years, I have lost two stone in weight. I have had to rethink who I am. I am no longer an extra-large fit. I now need medium-sized clothing. And that has other implications. I no longer worry about my appearance when a camera appears. I do not need to pose at the right angle. My perception of myself has changed, but saying I am autistic and have ADHD requires about 1,000 times more reframing than that, and just saying so publicly demands that I appreciate that this is the case. And if I am going to be involved in discussion on this issue, I have a lot of "priors" to work out.
This is definitely a day for a long walk with binoculars in hand, with coffee stops on the way.
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Buy me a coffee!
On the walk and over coffee, quietly celebrate the gifts that neurodiversity has bestowed on you.
I will.
There are some v strange and unpleasant people around who say that we need to understand each other less, and condemn each other more. I confess, I don’t understand them.
The person I definitely need to understand more, is me. Retirement has precipitated a steep learning curve in that area, as it removes the imposed identities of a “role” and allows discovery of, and reflection on, “who I really am”. Bereavement has a similar impact for similar, but more painful reasons – the loss of a defining relationship rather than a job role.
I wish you well on this journey. Others won’t, but that’s their problem. Maybe they lack the courage to look in the mirror.
Thank you
I’m sure you’ve mentioned you thought you were autistic before? I’ve no recollection of you mentioning ADHD though. I stumbled upon diagnosis whilst trying to get help for unrelated conditions and have been extremely frustrated by everything now being seen as autism when it isn’t. However, in the research I’ve done I’ve learnt a lot and the public and sadly the medical profession seems autism often very negatively and diagnose it largely on distress symptoms not on the positives. The media inn the last year has been largely negative with a perception that a diagnosis gives you automatic benefits and exemption from the need to work. Technically we can ask for reasonable adjustments and I am fortunate to have a boss who sees the positives and is very accommodating to enable me to function better. However I don’t see that generally and modern open plan offices and hot desking are hell for most autistic people.
I wonder if I would have the level of focus and attention to detail if I weren’t autistic,or the love of learning and research? I’m told Cambridge is 25% neurodiverse and that’s probably an underestimate. Without neurodiverse people we wouldn’t have many of the inventions that we rely upon.
In terms of a formal diagnosis, I guess my question would be why? Many friends who are probably neurodiverse but are happily married and retired see no reason to pursue it. It was kind of forced upon me, and I’ve yet to be glad about it. I hate labels and being put on a box. People misunderstand autism and with the current attacks I’m not sure when that will improve. It should be something we can be proud of.
Thanks, Hazel.
You ask:
“In terms of a formal diagnosis, I guess my question would be, why? Many friends who are probably neurodiverse but are happily married and retired see no reason to pursue it.”
The answer is simple. I want to write about this. I am far from retired. The diagnosis would have value in terms of both learning and experience, and in dismissing some naysayers. But most it might be because it will confirm a common outlook in our marriage.
That makes sense. Although there are some brilliant autistic researchers/academics out there such as Damian Milton,they are little known outside of the autistic community and are getting far less airtime than Uta Frith. Neurodiversity is talked about a lot, but the level of understanding is incredibly poor. It is diagnosed on external behaviour, but it is what is happening internally that is more important. We certainly need more advocates that can communicate to decision makers etc.
I am still processing and trying to understand my diagnosis and work out who the real me is. I knew very little about autism until late last year when it was suggested I might be autistic. And I had no idea about sensory differences,which is probably the most misunderstood part of autism. I get the impression you already have a lot of knowledge and understanding.
I’ll watch with interest how you combine neurodiversity with social justice etc.
Thanks
You said “ I’ll watch with interest how you combine neurodiversity with social justice etc.”
I think I already have been, but I do think there is much more to say.
You are the same unique person whatever the labels. It’s been my own practice to avoid self-definition, to say “this is me” and not be labelled. Except that I am, statistically, abnormal, even a freak. So? So I’d say “keep on being yourself. It’s the whole person we all admire. This won’t change whatever your tests say.”
I agree, The label would any shut up the naysayers. And there are many.
Your prodigious output on here may be a product of your neurodiversity – or simply your amazing capacity for creative thinking and work ethic<p>
You do have an unusual tendency to share personal information . I think I may have the obverse – procrastination – I can finish stuff but only if I am forced to by some kind of deadline.<p>
And yet , and yet. psychogeography – a long walk through a landscape – rural, agricultural, marshland, mountain, or urban does tend to bring things back into perspective.
Thank you
Remember a diagnosis might describe some aspect of you but it DOES NOT define you. Sadly, many people like to use such “labels” in this way. As a person with a visual impairment I know this all too well.
I wish you all the best on this journey.
I entirely agree with that.
Your sharing with us of you considering that you have ADHD did not alter anything I think about your work. Over the years I have seen you master your frustration with the world by using that energy to help you dig deeper and enunciate what you have seen more clearly to the world. Your ability to debate with orthodox thinkers has also improved, become more measured and controlled. You have become more and more effective. The fact that too much of the world does not pay heed is not a failure on your part given how much is being said about the same and many other issues by other outlets.
In training about harassment and discrimination we are told to not make assumptions and to ask questions. But I find these days people wish to deliver verdicts – not answers. They want certainty because they are either over worked or too lazy. This is what a ‘closed mind’ mindset does (thank you Mike Parr for introducing me to Kolesnikov!). It reduces people to easy-to-manage units of production and consumption. Russia does it now – Hitler did it to Germany in the 30’s and 40’s and Thatcher’s Britain also in its own surreptitious and gradual way (the only way it is actually different to Putin, Stalin BTW) is doing it right now, here.
Black v. White only these days it seems – no grey scale. As a photographer, I can tell you that the grey scale IS BEAUTIFUL! Come on in, and bathe in it!
What about ADHD and me? Do I wish to know myself that much? That is an ongoing internal discussion.
Thanks, PSR. Appreciated, and if you think you might have ADHD, it is at least worth learning about.
A friend of mine, his son is a daydreamer, a deep thinker. Artisic. He did awful in his exams – he didnt make the grade (whatever the made up grade maybe) His parents were devastated that he didnt make the cut – what is wrong with this child, they said – he has had all the benefits of a good education, we havent failer him… he mustnt be right.
Months of medical consultations followed with the eventual outcome of being diagnosed of ADHD. And regular use of medication.
I note there is a documentary on channel 4 this coming week that could potentially by a hit job on those with ADHD.
ADHD does not by any means always require medication and many who try it do not like the effects
But, it helps some.
That documentary is intended to offend, and it will. Max Pemberton is a very long way from an unbiased enquirer.
Hi Richard
You are who you always were, a diagnosis doesn’t change that.
However, it does allow you to reflect on past experiences, an perhaps come to a different understanding of the (your) past. To elaborate; I discovered I was dyslectic (what a horrible word for that condition) and dyscalculic (same as dyslectic but for numbers) when I was working in a special school, late in my career for just such children. I took the the tests when I came to realise I had the same symptoms. It allowed me to understand why I was excellent at Mathematics but poor at Arithmetic, and couldn’t write down phone numbers correctly. Number come out of my pen in a different order that they leave my brain. Carry on the good work.
Thanks. Appreciated. You have clearly learned to cope, but my growing awareness also helps me, as I am sure it did you.
I don’t know what it is to have ADHD or autism. Much of my personality traits and experiences are explained by the Miles Briggs personality matrix. I am a enfp, sometimes infp. The i and e can switch depending on my social environment just as Karl Jung explained. My experience of my self is not something related to autism and adhd, which are life long conditions. I hope this is of help to those who have their own doubts about neuro diversity.
When I did Myers-Briggs in around 2000, it was revelatory.
I am INTJ.
I realised why my job had been so hard.
I realised why I was so unlike most accountants.
I realised I needed to think for a living.
I finally understood why I needed space and found some forms of socialising so hard.
The idea that I was an introvert was shocking – but so obviously true when I thought about it.
And INTJs are systems thinkers – I found what I was in that sense, and threw myself at it.
The neurodiversity agenda has advanced that understanding for me.
Snap!
The result of the same test showed me to be in that INTJ group . I was a mature student in a class of about 35 international and also post-grad aged people . To conclude the session the teacher asked us to sit with others who had the same outcome and share thoughts. You might guess there was no one else with the same category! That made sense to me. So often feeling misunderstood, although also at best an original thinker.
Snap….
There are about 2% at most INTJs, the same as the probable number of autistic people. I am not suggesting they are all the same.
I thought Myers-Briggs had been largely discredited?
If it helps, it’s helpful. It did for me for a while. Who says it is discredited, then?
You certainly look a lot better than you do in older photos
Having seen a photo of myself recently at a model railway exhibition I think I should follow your example
Thank you
And I can’t comment!
Reflecting on your new look etc., isn’t about time you updated your picture on this blog?
When you have the time of course.
Task 1,332 🙂
You have been a successful academic. That will have required a degree of obsessiveness well outside what is considered “normal”. And research creativity often involves having a different mental approach to difficult problems from the “normal”. There may have been other “abnormal” qualities that allowed you to succeed as an accountant and company director at earlier point in your career – and indeed as a public-facing commentator now.
What I find odd is the way such qualities are medicalised (or pseudo-medicalised?) as neurodivergent just because they differ from the average. We don’t give medical labels to men with heights of 5ft4in or 6ft5in even though those are 2 standard deviations different from the average, which is probably roughly where your thinking style lies if we had a tape measure to quantify it.
True extremes are different. There is benefit in medically labelling extremes of height where there may be underlying disorders that need monitoring. And Asperger’s is a disabling condition needing appropriate support.
The neurodiversity issue is not one of abnormality, at least not always at level 1. It is one about experience.
I think it was James Baldwin who said, before autism was discussed as it is now, that a white man and a black man can walk down 5th Avenue and have very different experiences. The world might not see that. The white man might think there is no issue. The black man will, because he has been told he should experience the world as the white man does, but cannot. This is not a perfect analogy, but the autism issue is that it is experiencing the world differently without the rest of the world being willing to or wanting to understand.
In case you are not aware, nakedcapitalism reposted your blog post covering this issue on August 13th. There was a large number of comments, and at the time of reading, very few negative.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/08/why-have-we-constructed-a-society-so-prejudiced-against-the-autistic.html
I had seen. In typical neurodiverse style, I spotted the negatives first…
Sorry to engage again – all so damned interesting – it’s as you also often say, about CHOICES.
One of the must unappealing idioms one gets exposed to is the ‘glass half full/glass full’ one.
So, you get a glass and fill it half full and put it on the table. And both those propositions are TRUE (well, to me!). Yet one proposition is seen as more positive than the other and the other denoting a negative/miserable attitude to things and giving people the right to be judgmental and exclusionary based on that.
What is so hard in life today about dealing with the reality of that glass on the table, and considering both as valid? Why has there to be a choice between one of the other? Why have we lost the art of making opposites work together and achieving some sort of balance and choose one over the other and effectively consciously ignore a co-existing truth?
This is what gets me about much of life to be honest.
That is such an autistic comment PSR.
You are being literal when the neurotypical speaker is seeking to use context dependence to imply value when, as you say, both statements can obviously be true and there are obviously better questions to ask like whose glass is it, how big is it, and is what is in it useful? Autism imagines another world is possible.
As for the glass on the table with 50% of its maximum contents being half-full or half-empty, I, as an engineer, have always said that the answer is simply that the glass is the wrong size for its purpose.
Paul
I like it.
As I have said before we are all different in many ways. Ad absurdum, if we were all exactly the same imagine only ever meeting yourself! How boring!!
I do hope that if your feeling is confirmed, that those who want to diminish and negate your valuable work educating people about the reality of the economy, don’t use it against you as they have tried with Chris Packham.
I know you have far too much integrity not to go ahead, but I shall be very angry if it is used against you and this invaluable cause.
You can be assured I would fight back.