Communication, Agency, and the Relational Self in ASD and the Letters of Paul

Abstract

The experience and reflections of people on the autism spectrum act as a “context of discovery” about human communication and agency, in conversation with a robust theological account drawn from Paul’s depiction of personhood in relationship to sin and salvation. I claim that autism is not an exception to understanding the self as a self-in-relation; it is a unique and therefore illuminating instantiation of self-in-relation. The testimonies of autistic people render visible two key aspects of human personhood that are shared by both so-called “neurotypical” and “non-neurotypical” people: the priority of embodied interpersonal connection for the development of human communication and agency, and the risk and vulnerability of such connection.

Keywords:

• allied agency
• body
• body of Christ
• body of sin
• communication
• inclusion
• motor apraxia
• participation
• sensory-motor perspective

Notes

1 From Romkema (2002, p. 31).

2 Leo Kanner (1943) first coined the term “autistic” to describe a set of symptoms that he named “inborn autistic disturbances of affective contact.” The notion of a spectrum of traits under the label autism dates to Hans Asberger, who wrote, “The autist is only himself and is not an active member of a greater organism which he is influenced by and which he influences constantly” (1944, p. 38).

3 See, e.g. Becker et al., 2004, pp. 471–475.

4 Douglas Biklen (2005, p. 46) distinguishes between the “field of autism,” by which he means “professional experts, researchers, parents, teachers, and others who contribute to an autism literature,” and a stance that seeks “to identify individual subjective understandings or assumptions by eliciting perspectives of people classified as autistic, and to interpret multiple meanings of autism with an eye to placing the perspectives of labeled people in the foreground.”

5 An early example of such characterizations of autistic persons comes from Asberger, who wrote, “Autistic children are egocentric in the extreme. They follow only their own wishes, interests and spontaneous impulses, without considering restrictions or prescriptions imposed from outside” (1944, p. 81). One may note the assumption that the actions of persons with autism are volitional and intentionally anti-social. For a helpful overview of the literature around ASD, including recent work on sensorimotor issues, see Macaskill (2017).

6 See, for example, the important research on the use of deep pressure in children with autism, by Bestbier and Williams (2017). They found that stimulating skin pressure sensory systems was beneficial to the majority of young people in the study, but also that such therapeutic treatment needs to be carefully calibrated to the different needs of each person.

7 These divisions include different views on the language used to designate persons on the autism spectrum; I have used a variety of terms in order to honor the divergence of opinion and practices.

8 See, for example, the moving column by Howe (2014). For a fair representation of different points of view, see Solomon (2012, pp. 275–290).

9 For a nuanced and compassionate account of the issues involved, see Solomon (2012, pp. 221–294) and Dietz (2014).

10 For an example of such arguments see Stump (2012) and Hobson (2004). Both Stump and Hobson operate with a second-person perspective, which takes the relational constitution of the person as a given, yet both treat autism as an exception to this given. Notably, Stump (2012) repeatedly states that in describing second-person experiences she is speaking only about “fully functioning human beings” (e.g., p. 67). This caveat is in accord with her criteria for a genuinely second-personal encounter between people: Each person must be aware of the other as a person; their interaction must be direct and immediate, and each person must be conscious (2012, pp. 74–75). Hobson states that persons develop as selves-in-relationship through connection between parent and child; when such connection is lacking, autism results. (Cradle, p. 183).

11 For description of facilitated communication and discussion of the controversies around this methodology, see Peña (2019, pp. 5–25).

12 The dedication of the book throws down a challenge to the reader: “To you who think my words matter.”

13 Hobson suggests “the disquieting possibility that perhaps abnormality betrays a feature of normality writ large” (2004, p. 8).

14 See, e.g., “The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield,” regarding a former philosophy professor convicted of sexually assaulting a young man she was treating with facilitated communication (Engber, 2015).

15 For a review of scientific studies supporting facilitated communication, see in particular Cardinal and Falvey (2014).

16 For discussion of this phenomenon, see Swinton (2012). See also his discussion of presumed mindblindness in autistic people, and the “double mindblindness” in which “so-called neurotypical people also cannot see the minds and feelings of people with autism” (2012, pp. 271–273). Ralph Savarese remarks on the presence of empathy in accounts by autistic self-advocates, coupled with difficulties in finding words and physically expressing the emotion. See Savarese (2013, p. 1). Macaskill notes the importance of understanding empathy as an “emergent phenomenon” that may take many forms (2017, p. 6).

17 The plight of Romanian orphans denied human contact and left alone in their cribs is a prime example. For a study of social and cognitive deficits lasting into adulthood, see Adopted Romanian orphans ‘still suffering in adulthood’ (2017).

18 For exposition of this notion in terms of Romans 7, in conversation with the second-person perspective in philosophy, see Eastman (2013).

19 This view is well-represented by Rudolf Bultmann’s depiction of “our self-understanding as modern persons”: “We ascribe to ourselves an inner unity of states and actions” (1984, pp. 5–7). In the words of Timothy Chappell (2013), this is the presumption that individuality precedes relationality, in contrast with the view that relationality precedes and grounds individuality.

20 My translation.

21 The identity of the “I” in Romans 7 has been debated endlessly. For the interpretation of the speaker as representing all humanity, see Eastman (2013).

22 For exegetical defense of this reading of Rom 6–8, see Eastman (2021).

23 See Eastman (2017, pp. 126–175).

24 For an explication of his body as “disabled” in this first century context, see Martin Albl (2007).

25 Jennifer Glancy (2004) argues persuasively that scars on a man’s back were considered shameful in a Greco-Roman context, because they indicated either flight in battle, or subjection to flogging. As Glancy notes, “The legibility of an individual body is contingent on social bodies, particularly on the socially inscribed body that is the object of the gaze and the socialized eyes of the one who gazes” (2004, p. 99). Glancy is commenting on the social interpretation of Paul’s scarred body; her observation is apt for rethinking the socialized interpretation of non-normative bodily actions by persons on the autism spectrum.

26 John Swinton notes that this shifting of the margins is precisely what Jesus did, by spending time with socially marginalized people. See Swinton (2014).

27 See Nicholas Lash (1986).

28 For a phenomenological account of joint agency, see Elizabeth Pacherie (2011).