‘When the powerfulness isn’t so helpful’: Callum’s relationship with autism

Abstract

Diagnoses of autism continue to be a focus of educational psychologists’ work. Discourses surrounding autism can, unfortunately, present limited views and ways of working with these young people when individual assessment and reliance on checklists is organised so deviance from ‘normality’ can be identified. This often impacts on the complexities of disclosure for the young people themselves and the relationships they have with the professionals that should support them.There is a wealth of autobiographical accounts from individuals who have been given a diagnosis of autism. A narrative approach, which views young people as the experts on their lives and the collaborators in our future understanding of their relationship with problems, is one way of privileging ‘insider-knowledges’ and guiding professionals towards constructing a different understanding of autism.This paper documents a piece of educational psychology casework that explores one young person’s relationship with autism from a social constructionist perspective. The paper considers the implications of viewing such ‘problems’ within a structuralist versus post-structuralist framework. In challenging global truths and the ‘medical model’ of autism, it provides an example of how a young person’s preferred identity can be constructed through a narrative framework. The paper concludes by considering alternative ways for professionals to practice in which there is a move away from limitations and impairments towards reconstructing views about problems and understanding individual experience.