NYT "Autism" Comment Accepted
On the Record - Response to NYT Autism Column of 09/22/2025
Hi Subscribers and All Others Who Land Here:
I have been here on Substack since February 25, 2025. My first post here related to my paradigm-changing 2013 book "Adult ADD Factbook - Updated June 2013."
It is available for you to download as a free, fully-searchable pdf. I established a section here for posting questions, answers and discussions of the 2013 Book content.
Update Note (09/27/2025): For those of you who have read part or all of My 2013 Book, thank you! However, it appears the book did not inspire questions or discussions. I find that more than a little interesting, since one of the hypotheses in My 2013 Book is “The Western Hemisphere average brainset characterization is what we currently call ADHD.” People create culture. Guess what? Western Hemisphere cultural styles, values, and behaviors fit the criteria for what we currently call ADHD.
More than half of the book is devoted to citing and discussing another paradigm-changing conclusion discussed and highly supported by published research literature (PRL): That the ADHD brainset, as it relates to dopamine functions such as threat responsiveness and working memory is clearly not a disorder by any definition.
If you have had a chance to discover those and other discussions in My 2013 Book, and did not find them to be “fringe,” I would be surprised. And, thus, I am surprised at how no commentary or questions at all have shown up under my “2013 Book Discussion.”
I have been patiently waiting for readers to comment, question, or discuss the 2013 Book (8 months). I was holding off on posting much of anything. I did respond to a number of posts by other writers, in an attempt to get into the conversation and create a habit of writing for this Substack. I have been more inspired than ever due to the quality and depth of Substack writers.
However, I really cannot wait much longer to communicate what I have learned from my 15 years of clinical psychiatry practice specializing, progressively, to a practice limited entirely to understanding and assisting my clients with their desires to “figure it out” about their challenges. From 2006 to 2021, I reengineered my practice to 3-4 hour evaluation appointments which required a third-party to be present during the client’s evaluation appointment. That third party might be any person who the client felt knew them well enough to share evaluation data. Sometimes, that third party was the whole family.
Among other things, questionnaires, testing, and educational materials, were fine-tuned to better measure what I found out needed to be measured. Thus, when I write or speak about what we currently call ADHD/ASD, I describe myself as being “embedded” in that lived experience as much as any “neurotypical” can be.
After retiring in 2021, I did further reading to fact check and update my 2013 Book. I am in the midst of that process which includes not only data from my updated review of the literature, but also my conclusions from my work with over 400 clients. I assisted many more than 400 but I have lost some of my materials. I have so much to share that I cannot justify waiting much longer to drop further posts here.
Thus, here we go.
This short comment posted here today is a copy of my comment to an article in the NYTimes by Roy Grinker, a cultural anthropologist and the author of “Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism.”
Dr. Grinker’s Sept. 24, 2025, column, “Autism Has Always Existed. We Haven’t Always Called It Autism” is responding to the “widely viewed” news conference on Monday (09/22/2025), in which President Trump declared that there was “nothing more important” in his presidency than reducing the prevalence of autism. I don’t want to quote extensively from Dr. Grinker’s piece. I highly recommend it.
Dear Dr. Grinker and NYT:
“Well-informed and spot-on piece, as far as it goes, which, in my opinion, is not far enough.
Autism is a horrible word and should be retired, period. It carries the huge baggage of its history as a “characteristic of schizophrenia.” It is not a disease by any stretch of logic. It is a type.
It is well-known that around 90% of ASDers are challenged with sensory overload that they cannot control by just turning down the volume knob. It is automatic due to how they process sensory signals. Other than working memory differences, sensory amplification is the major, influential ASD common denominator. Excellent at noticing “discrepancies” (data conflict monitoring), and sensory overload from visual, to touch to smell to sound. All amplified.
Not because they want it amplified. It is a baseline given. Another evolutionary mismatch? Most likely.
What would the tribe have done back in the less densely populated days? They would have noticed and been thankful for the individuals in the tribe that made for the best scouts, water and food testers, guards (sounds, movement detection). Also, able to continue having sensitivity (radar) while “sleeping.” Fragmented sleep in ASDers is iconic. Someone who is still monitoring the environment even while “asleep?” Awesome! Not built for today’s or the last century of sensory overload.
Building humans who had the best radar took thousands of years of fine tuned evolutionary work. Now? We punish, instead of understand.”
* (NYT limits comments to 1,500 total characters and spaces.)
When migrating, our ancestors appreciated the group member who would have been content to walk a bit away from the group, listening for rushing water, or who could stand by an open cave and use scent to estimate whether a predator had recently slept inside.
But I don't agree that sensory abilities were the primary driver of the autistic phenotype. What is the source of the claim: "90% of ASDers are challenged with sensory overload..." If it is 90%,then some of those sensory sensitivities are mild and overlap with the distribution found in allistic populations. The other main driver of the autistic phenotype was achieving high analytic intelligence while minimizing the excesses of hyper-sociality. It was fitness-enhancing to devote brain power to systemizing the natural world, thus facilitating inventions in weapons, large-scale navigation, and the domestication of animals.