Chapter 4: Autism and the ‘Double Empathy Problem’ IN Conversations on Empathy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Empathy, Imagination and Othering
Damian Milton, Krysia Waldock, Nathan Keates (2023)
This chapter argues that the framing of Autism and empathy is deeply problematic. Drawing on both personal experience of being Autistic and as a parent to an Autistic child as well as theory and interdisciplinary research. Definitions of empathy relate to a breadth of cognitive and subjective states. In contrast to psychopathy and narcissism, which are often characterised as resulting from deficits in affective empathy. Autism has been linked to a deficit in cognitive empathy. Milton, Waldock and Keates suggest that the power relationships that can form between Autistic people and psych-professionals who may see their ‘patients’ as lacking in socialisation, empathy, moral competency, and even full humanity can produce forms of psycho-emotional disablement, constraining not only what people can do but also what they can be and become.
