barkley

@autistics I've just started reading Russell #Barkley's "Taking Charge of Adult ADHD" (2nd edition, 2022). Since my #AuDHD self-diagnosis in late 2024, the autism part of the diagnosis has been so rivetingly fascinating that I've been neglecting the #ADHD aspect; I find I actually have to force myself to focus on #ADHD. The reason for focusing on it is that unlike autism, which is more a difference requiring accommodation than a disorder requiring treatment, #ADHD does appear to be a genuine pathology — something that impairs me, that I'd like to have treated, and for which treatment is available. So it's important to understand it, if only in order to seek treatment. But I'm experiencing more than a little culture shock in going from autism literature (C.L. Lynch, Wenn Lawson, Fergus Murray, Morton Ann Gernsbacher) to #Barkley on #ADHD.

Writers on autism understand quite clearly that impairment is a deviation, not from any statistical norm, but from an individual's potential, which may require an accommodating environment to be brought to realization. #Barkley, by contrast, insists on characterizing the impairment that is a defining characteristic of #ADHD strictly as a deviation from a statistical norm, and responds with intensely withering ridicule to any suggestion that it should be made relative to individual potential:

"Impairment is defined relative to the average person in the population, known as the NORM—it is where most "normal", or typical, people are found to be performing in any domain of life. It does not mean how you are functioning compared to incredibly bright or highly educated people even if you are one. To be impaired, you must be functioning significantly below the norm or the average (typical) person. Why? Because the term DISORDER means just that—you are not functioning typically." (p. 30)

In case that wasn't clear (or insulting) enough, he adds:

"To adopt a standard for defining the term IMPAIRMENT other than comparison with the true norm is like something out of Alice in Wonderland, where nothing is as it seems, and words can have whatever meaning one wishes to give them. Saying that a person functioning as well as or even better than the average or typical population can still be considered impaired makes a mockery of the term DISORDER and does a disservice to those struggling with really not being able to function as well as the norm." (p. 39)

Imagine how this diatribe would sound in the context of physical medicine — sports medicine, say. Suppose a powerlifter who can usually deadlift a 600-pound barbell finds one day that they can only manage 300 pounds, brings this issue to a sports physician with a complaint of impairment — and gets #Barkley's diatribe as a response, with the conclusion that the powerlifter can't be impaired because they can still deadlift far more than most people.

#Barkley should have turned his ridicule on himself.

I'm not sure how much of a practical obstacle this issue will be. Judging by my responses to #ADHD questionnaires — including those in this book — I would probably count as impaired even by their "statistical norm" standards. But if this kind of thinking is the best #ADHD professionals have to offer, interacting with them is likely to require some serious tongue-biting on my part.

@autistics I'm still reading Russell ⁨#Barkley⁩'s "Taking Charge of Adult ADHD" (2nd ed., 2022) — or rather, trying to. It's getting difficult for me to handle more than a page or two at a time. The problem isn't boredom (my #kaleidotropy makes me essentially immune to that) nor complexity of the material (Barkley is quite a good expositor). It's exasperation and outright anger, to the point of having fantasies of throwing the book across the room. The combination of arrogant, condescending neuronormativity with conspicuously sloppy conceptual reasoning makes this book more infuriating than ANYTHING I've yet read about autism, from ANY perspective. That includes Simon Baron-Cohen, and even one paper I read by a group of #ABA torture therapy apologists. I hope this book is not typical of #ADHD literature in general. If it is, studying ADHD is going to be a hell of a chore.

@autistics Since the end of the last off week of my 7-on-7-off work schedule, I've been reflecting on the responses to my theory that the essence of autism lies in the ABSENCE or INACTIVATION of the #EnvironmentalYoke, a hypothesized complex neurological structure that neurotypicals use to engage with the physical and social environment. I think there may have been some misunderstanding of what I meant.

Now that I'm off again, I've continued with reading Russell #Barkley's "Taking Charge of Adult ADHD" (2nd ed., 2022). I'm currently in Chapter 9, "Executive Functions". His relentless neuronormativity continues to grate on my sensibilities — and his application of it to the concept of #ExecutiveFunctions leads me to suspect that theorizing about #ADHD, as well as autism, could benefit from introduction of the concept of the environmental yoke. Essentially, it seems to me that Barkley is conflating the very general, domain-independent concept of executive functions with the very specific perceptual and attentional biases built into the environmental yoke — and is compounding his error by assuming that those specific biases must necessarily render neurotypical executive function and engagement with the environment superior to their non-neurotypical counterparts.

https://zeroes.ca/@dedicto/115457107590672323

@autistics I'm continuing to read Russell ⁨⁨#Barkley⁩⁩'s "Taking Charge of Adult ADHD" (2nd ed., 2022). His analysis continues to be marred by persistent failure to make two crucial distinctions:

(1) Between the effect of true deficits in #ExecutiveFunctions (impulsiveness, deficient short-term memory, etc.) vs. the effect of neurodivergent attentional focus that prevents certain topics from even entering consciousness with enough salience to engage executive functions in the first place;

(2) Between truly autonomous self-control that realizes the person's inner values vs. spurious self-control that amounts to internalized social coercion along the lines of the Freudian superego or Marxian false consciousness.

Given Barkley's prominence in the field of #ADHD research, I'm starting to suspect that these aren't just problems with his thinking in particular, but with the accepted theoretical framework throughout the field as a whole.