Article ID: CBB923307084

‘The Line Between Intervention and Abuse’ – Autism and Applied Behaviour Analysis (2017)

unapi

Patrick Kirkham (Author)


History of the Human Sciences
Volume: 30
Issue: 2
Pages: 107-126
Publication date: 2017
Language: English


This article outlines the emergence of ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) in the mid-20th century, and the current popularity of ABA in the anglophone world. I draw on the work of earlier historians to highlight the role of Ole Ivar Lovaas, the most influential practitioner of ABA. I argue that reception of his initial work was mainly positive, despite concerns regarding its efficacy and use of physical aversives. Lovaas’ work, however, was only cautiously accepted by medical practitioners until he published results in 1987. Many accepted the results as validation of Lovaas’ research, though both his methods and broader understanding of autism had shifted considerably since his early work in the 1960s. The article analyses the controversies surrounding ABA since the early 1990s, considering in particular criticisms made by autistic people in the ‘neurodiversity movement’. As with earlier critics, some condemn the use of painful aversives, exemplified in the campaign against the use of shock therapy at the Judge Rotenberg Center. Unlike earlier, non-autistic critics, however, many in this movement reject the ideological goals of ABA, considering autism a harmless neurological difference rather than a pathology. They argue that eliminating benign autistic behaviour through ABA is impermissible, owing to the individual psychological harm and the wider societal impact. Finally, I compare the claims made by the neurodiversity movement with those made by similar 20th- and 21st-century social movements.

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Authors & Contributors
Dwyer, Ellen
Evan, Bonnie
Graf, Rüdiger
Gross, Daniel M.
Henckes, Nicolas
Huertas, Rafael
Journals
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Gesnerus
History of Psychiatry
History of the Human Sciences
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
Journal of Medical Biography
Publishers
University of Chicago Press
Beacon Press
Brandeis University Press
Duke University Press
Johns Hopkins University Press
Los Libros de la Catarata
Concepts
Psychiatry
Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment
Autism
Mental disorders and diseases
Disabilities; disability; accessibility
Medical abuse
People
Park, Clara Claiborne
Pratt, Joseph Hersey
Simons, Jeanne
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
20th century, early
Places
Great Britain
United States
Paris (France)
Iran
Maryland (U.S.)
Chicago (Illinois, U.S.)
Institutions
National Institute of Health (U.S.)
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