In her book ‘We are all neurodiverse’ the autistic commentator Sonny Jane Wise argues for more careful use of the terms neurodiverse and neurodivergent. Wise points out that we are all neurodiverse — everyone’s brain works differently — but not everyone is neurodivergent — a label primarily associated with autism and ADHD that applies to people with other conditions as well. But the term neurodiversity remains useful as a way of talking about the varied distribution of neurodivergence across the whole population.
I’m on the record as not-loving the prefix neuro. I would prefer a term that emphasises in a positive sense what’s unique about people with neurodivergent conditions, rather than something that focuses on supposed causes. The ‘brains wired differently’ explanation for conditions like autism tends to suggest these conditions are immutable (hard-wired).
In fact, behaviours like autistic meltdown which were once thought to be an essential element of autism actually turn out to be contingent. Many of the diagnostic criteria actually reflect the behaviour of autistic people under conditions of intense stress and distress. When we remove stressors and reduce distress, autistic experience looks completely different. So I prefer to use a term like ‘cognitive and social difference’ (CSD) that doesn’t imply that neurodivergent traits and behaviours are hard-wired from birth.
What’s the problem?
Let’s come to the term neurotypical. I have two problems with it: the neuro and the typical.
First, as I’ve just argued, some of the big differences in CSD are contingent on the situations in which we live our everyday lives. Social interaction can be a source of stress or support, depending on the people we are interacting with. Stress can be manageable or toxic depending on fluctuations in our daily ration of spoons and our coping skills. These are elements of neurodivergent experience that are variable and the ‘hard-wired’ connotations of neuro- discourse doesn’t help us grasp and understand that situational contingency. If you think your symptoms are hard-wired you might not look for changes in your environment that can make your experience better and more bearable.
Second, the idea that non-CSD folks are typical strongly underestimates the neurodiversity that exists even within the general population. Typical refers to traits and attributes pertaining to a type and there’s no singular non-CSD type out there. People without CSD have endless variations in their brain, mind and personality, and approach cognition and sociality in endlessly different ways. Also, there’s something reductive and sneering about calling people ‘typical’.
(Sidebar: I have quite a bit of time for neuroqueer perspectives where there is a much more careful critique of the discourse of ‘normality,’ and I often use the cheeky term ‘normies’ to refer to people committed to this discourse.)
What’s the solution?
Just as I’ve proposed the term CSD, I want to propose a couple of alternatives to the term neurotypical. The first is neuroconvergent. This is just the opposite of neurodivergent, but all word use is at least partly metaphorical, and this term carries a couple of apt connotations.
The first connotation concerns the way non-CSD folks find it comparatively easy to attune to each other — to match each other’s mood and emotions and to mutually identify which social script (Laumann & Gagnon) applies to guide the type of social interaction they are having.
The second connotation refers to a statistical norm of attitudes or behaviours and the desire many people have to ‘converge upon’ the norm in their own lives. From this concept we get the idea of normality.
The idea of norms gives rise to an alternative proposal for a term to describe people who are non-CSD. To say something is normative is to say it has been promoted as a norm that people can and should converge upon. Normativity involves shouldness.
So we could talk about people being ‘cognitively and socially normative’ (CSN). It doesn’t imply they are actually typical or normal — people who are strongly committed to ‘being normal’ are often profoundly strange! — but it refers to their belief that normality exists and it should be aspired-to.
Conclusion
It’s a social change truism that ‘language use causes real harm.’ I don’t see use of the terms I criticise here as social violence, which is the claim that often grounds demands to adopt new terminology. You can use the original terms without fear I’m going to call you out! But I think they limit the possibilities we can perceive in our world for our lives to be different and better.
Bio
I’m a health promotion practitioner and researcher. I live with an ‘alphabet of acronyms’ (AuDHD, bipolar 2, CPTSD, etc). I write about mental health and neurodiversity on my blog Boundary Objects. If you’d like to follow my writing please subscribe to my e-newsletter (top right)!