Private equity firms have acquired more than 500 autism therapy centers across the U.S. over the past decade, with nearly 80% of those acquisitions occurring over a four-year span, according to a new study from researchers at the Brown University Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research.
My theory to that is that people in the imperial core face a set of contradictions that autistic people on average cant solve and break down due to it. it is the overt cruelty vs the relative comfort which is ultimately bought with blood. The suicide rate is skyrocketing in the imperialist states, legal and illegal drug use is skyrocketing as imo self medication kicks in to not break down individually.
To this, after 25 years of self-studying psychology on and off, I would theorize that it shows the contradiction that autistic people often cant function in this environment and go the self stigmatizing and agonizing route of getting tons of diagnoses to somehow get taken off some of the burden which otherwise might lead to suicide.
To this I want to offer a different perspective. The differences between autistic people are also clear in bourgois society but they are much more nuanced in a marxist perspective. Being gifted (as in having a special talent for e.g. spatial thinking, word association, memory, etc.) is real. People have different capabilities and denying such is ableist and reactionary imo. The difference imo is that bourgois society and psychology uses a binary approach which labels people as gifted or non gitfted, making them two “classes” which makes sense in an oppression perspective but of course it also makes sense in a socialist environment to test and build certain talents. This means, as with AI, being gifted or having certain talents is material reality and letting go of the dogmatism of denying that and not further trying to pull people back in their unique talents imo is the way to go.
Again, I think this would loudly scream for a marxist work on it so that we can have a stronger foundation and can set some things as given and throw out others without having to discuss them over and over. :)
Can personally relate.
Oh i do think being gifted is real, and I can see how it can be reactionary to flatten the exceptional skills talents and thinking one may have. I was definitely referring to the gifted to burnout paradox, of typing and classifying people to be exploited, and then discarding them.
One thing i feel may be helpful to say is that from my experience, autistic people will mask to pass in these conditions and often that means over self reliance, saying yes to everything, overworking, willingly being maipulated and coerced, and so on. So disabilities become disabilities in this case when the energy stress and strain to maintain that mask eventually fails. This whole process can have dramatic effects, including diminishing and reduction of gifted skills and talents. With the conditioning western societies impress upon autistic people, the idea of binary giftedness can very well manipulate gifted peoples into diminishing these traits.
Fully agree. I think it is important, same as the recent discussion about cutlure, that we band together to work out these things and create actual scientific socialist perspectives on this instead of letting the reactionary west dictate the discussion. o7