ADHD: the end of the problem as we know it?

Abstract

This paper explores the historical shapings that have led to a modelling of ‘executive functions’ as a way of knowing the subject of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It argues that historical changes in figuring the problem of ADHD can be accounted for in terms of a process of continuous translation between neurological and cognitive scientific knowledge and contingent administrative concerns to do with knowing and managing a population. It concludes that a contemporary neuroscientific refiguring of ADHD in terms of executive functions emerges alongside a more general reconfiguration of the time and space of education, a reconfiguration in which neither ‘attention’ nor ‘hyperactivity’ might be quite the problems they once were.

Acknowledgements

This paper emerged from a collaboration with Associate Professor David McCallum, at Victoria University, on a genealogy of childhood conduct disorder. The author is most grateful to David for his support and encouragement, but must, of course, take sole responsibility for the direction this particular paper has taken. Thanks, too, to the author’s colleague Deborah Tyler for her comments on a draft of this paper.