ABA: The Neuro-Normative Conversion Therapy
El Dewar examines the shared historical origins of ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis) and Gay Conversion Therapy in order to compare inhumane practices that function as tools of repression and oppression for Neurodivergent and Queer people.
In the 1960s and 70s at the University of California, Los Angeles there were two behavioural programmes being conducted. One was called the Autism Project, focusing on normalising young Autistic children. The other was called the Feminine Boy Project, focusing on un-queering little boys at risk of becoming homosexuals and transgender women in adulthood. These studies lead to children as young as 4 years old being beaten into normalised behaviour (see, Rekers & Lovaas, 1974). The main academic, O. Ivar Lovaas, routinely and regularly wrote about how Autistic children are not human and are without any humanity, meaning that they do not need humane treatment (Lovaas, 1993; Chance, 1974).
The so-called therapies that were developed from these inhuman projects still widely exist today. The first is a well-regarded, highly sought after, routine therapy for Autistic people, called Applied Behavioural Analysis. The other? Gay Conversion Therapy.
The latter faces mounting legal fights to ban it, whilst the former benefits from legal fights to permit wider and better funded access to it.
As a Queer Trans Autistic person, I have studied the history of ABA and Conversion Therapy. I cheer on the recent motion in the House of Lords to ban not only Gay Conversion Therapy but Gender Conversion Therapy. I stand shoulder to shoulder with my fellow Queers. I will loudly proclaim that gender and sexuality are a spectrum that is an inherent part of a person and should not be forcibly changed. Gay Conversion Therapy should be illegal, and sexuality and gender should not be policed for a perceived construct of normality.
The Autistic side of me, however, is broken. Day after day after day I have studied the works of Lovaas from the 1960s to his death. I have dived headlong into the language and practices of ABA and its offshoot behavioural therapies. Day after day I have read how I am “wrong”, a stereotypy, a “problem for society” and “without humanity”. It can begin to get a guy down, to read how they should not (and arguably, do not) really exist.
My queerness is inherent, my neurodivergence is inherent, my Autism is inherent. I am Autistic and Neurodivergent and Queer: this makes up who I am. The very principles of ABA would aim to hide these parts of me. It is worth noting that ABA does not help to support a person to cope better in a neurotypical world, only to mask their divergence. To shy away from those aspects that make them who they are. Let us not forget the ABA cry of “QUIET HANDS!” and Julia Bascom’s (2012) heartbreaking blog that discusses the trauma of those words.
If then, ABA aims to smother the divergence, to repress and mask it in the depths of a person so that on the outside their external appearance is that of the neuro-majority, is there any other term for ABA and its related therapies than Neuro-normative Conversion Therapy?
The work of Conversion Therapy is to take a person and repress their essence: don’t be Queer, don’t be Autistic, be perceived as normal, regardless of inner turmoil. Within ABA, Autistic children are taught to repress their physical movements; stimming is a stereotypy that is a pathological disadvantage for the child.
Stimming is how we regulate our bodies and minds. Stimming is how we engage with the world around us. Stimming is critical to Autistic and other neurodivergent wellbeing. And yet, it isn’t “Normal”.
However, the executive stress toys for businessmen in suits in offices; the ubiquitous Newton’s cradles clicking away across the globe. Those are “Normal”…
So my flapping hands (which I’ve written about before) are a danger to society? Like my Trans-ness destroying the gender norms so haphazardly enforced. My neurotype must be repressed and I must wear pink dresses for the cult of normativity.
I am queer and I know Gay Conversion Therapy to be an abusive tool of repression and oppression that destroys the lives of people like me.
I am Autistic and I know ABA is a Neuro-normative Conversion Therapy that is widely used with people like me. Neuro-normative Conversion Therapy is an abusive tool of repression and oppression that destroys the lives of people like me.
I am an Autistic Queer, and my message is clear: End Gay Conversion Therapy and Neuro-Normative Conversion Therapy. Now, and forever.
References
Bascom, J. (2012). Quiet hands. Loud hands: Autistic people, speaking, 177-182.
Chance, P. (1974). After you hit a child, you can't just get up and leave him; you are hooked to that kid. O. Ivar Lovaas Interview. Psychology Today, 7(8), 76-84.
Lovaas, O. I. (1993). The development of a treatment‐research project for developmentally disabled and autistic children. Journal of applied behavior analysis, 26(4), 617-630.
Rekers, G. A., & Lovaas, O. I. (1974). Behavioral treatment of deviant sex-role behaviors in a male child. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 7(2), 173.
