Introduction: The Autism Matrix.
Why focus on therapies?
Between mental illness and mental retardation.
Chapter 1: The Puzzle of US States and International Variation in Autism Rates.
Diagnostic substitution.
Supply-side and demand-side explanations for diagnostic substitution.
Deinstitutionalization as key to explaining diagnostic substitution.
Deinstitutionalization and the variation in autism rates.
Chapter 2: The Feebleminded.
Chapter 3: The Surveillance of Childhood.
The unification of mental deficiency and mental hygiene under child psychiatry.
The role of the middle class family.
The institutionalization of children as part of a comprehensive surveillance system.
Chapter 4: Deinstitutionalization.
A new look at the deinstitutionalization of the retarded.
The middle class family and the "valorization of retarded existence".
Chapter 5: "An existence as close to the normal as possible": Normalization.
Normalization as therapeutic practice.
Behavior modification and normalization.
Chapter 6: Childhood Schizophrenia.
Chapter 7: The Rise of the Therapies.
Autism therapies in the 1950s and 1960s.
Working on the child's brain.
Inculcating habits and building skills.
Fuzzifying the boundary between expert and layman.
The space between fields.
Chapter 8: Rimland and the Formation of NSAC.
The problem of credibility.
Schopler and the new economy of blame and worth.
The implications of behavioral therapy.
Conclusion.
Chapter 9: The Atypical Children.
The struggle over inclusion in the developmental disabilities act: Autism as analogous with mental retardation.
"Items of autistic behavior": Autism as concurrent with mental retardation.
Looping and the transformation of autism.
Chapter 10: Asperger and Neurodiversity.
The riddle of simultaneous discovery dissolved.
"Personality trait" vs. "psychotic process".
Twins reunited.
Loops of self-advocacy.
Chapter11: The space of autism therapies and the making and remaking of the Spectrum.
The Return of Rimland.
The agonistic network.
Fuzzifying the boundary between medicine and alternative medicine.
The space of autism therapies.
Conclusion.
Gil Eyal is Professor of Sociology at Columbia University Brendan Hart is Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Sociomedical sciences at Columbia University Emine Oncular is Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University Neta Oren is Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University Natasha Rossi is Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University
" The Autism Matrix fills in crucial gaps, and will greatlyimprove how the context of diagnosis and treatment isunderstood...The original research represented here is wide-rangingand invaluable" Times Higher Education "Gil Eyal and colleagues, five sociologists from ColumbiaUniversity, have brought a fresh perspective from a differentdiscipline to try to explain autism's expansion in prevalence andpopularity...Overall I found much to admire in this detailedstudy." British Medical Journal "This is a very useful book for those interested in autism andthe role of parent movements and activists, and more generally inthe social factors affecting changes in the classification ofdiseases." Sociology of Health and Illness "The development of the autistic spectrum is laid bare as acultural construct still in evolutionary process, and theelucidation of this morphing phenomenon is the crowning achievementof this book." TheKelvingrove Review "Autism, rare and little publicized twenty years ago, is nowconstantly in the news and is absorbing ever larger sums of publicfunding and concern. It has changed school classrooms and perhapsthe very nature of childhood. This book is the best availablesociological analysis of how this happened, linking recent eventsto those early in the twentieth century. It tells of the formidablelabour of autism activists, their dreams and schisms, withgenerosity and insight. Institutions, the ideals of the family andits management, and child minding, all play their role. This is areflective analysis of a pervasive event of our times, replacingcliches by new ideas." Ian Hacking, College de France "The Autism Matrix is an exemplary exercise in historicallyinformed medical anthropology and sociology. This richly argued,engaging, and well-researched book begins with the basic questionof why autism diagnoses have increased in recent years and thenoffers a wealth of cascading implications. The authors succeed inshowing that the simplistic question of 'epidemic or not?' isunproductive in comparison to the more intellectually fruitfulquestion of how institutional matrices identify, name, count, andtreat neuropsychiatric difference." Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D. Professor of Anthropology, The GeorgeWashington University,and author of Unstrange Minds: Remappingthe World of Autism
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