Valeria Bizzari On Phenomenology and Autism

image taken from the cortica website

To fruitfully open the space for the encounter between the philosophical field of phenomenology and the neurodivergent condition of autism, I asked Valeria Bizzari for an interview on phenomenology’s perspective upon autism and neurodiversity. She is currently a philosophy postdoctorate researcher at KU Leuven University specialized in phenomenological psychopathology, philosophy of emotions, and limit phenomenology. Further information on her academic background is in her Curriculum Vitae. She has been my master thesis supervisor in 2022. I am grateful for her gentle guidance received while writing my thesis on how does an autistic person perceive the other’s nonverbal language. For details on Valeria Bizzari’s work on autism watch the Philosophy Gets Personal podcast. I am very happy that the following interview took place.

First Question: How does phenomenology describe and explore the autistic subject? The notion the autistic subject is restrictive; yet I used it as a conventional label to facilitate communication. The topic of the subject also opens up this question: What are the limits of classifying and describing subjects?

Valeria Bizzari: Phenomenology can be very helpful in the exploration of the autistic world, so to speak. I do not use the word exploration by chance: I think that we are all different, unique, subjectivities, and it is our aim as philosophers, as scientists, and as persons, to explore the otherness in all its different shapes. Phenomenology has the advantage of having specific tools that are completely different, methodologically speaking, from the ones that pertain to the classic psychiatric methodology, or, in any case, to the scientific methodology. While, on the one hand, we have the attempt made by science to categorize the different kinds of subjectivities, on the other hand, phenomenology tries to break this attempt, to disentangle our different ways of being-in-the-world and genuinely understand ‘what does it mean to be a person with specific features?’. The main difference between psychology and phenomenology is the following: while psychology tries to answer the question 'What is autism?', for instance, phenomenology tries to answer the question 'What does it mean to live as a person with autism?'.

As you said, we need to be really aware of the language we use, especially nowadays, because there is the debate about the first-person use of the word 'autism', 'autistic subject', or 'person with autism', and so on and so forth. My main worry and emphasis is to give importance to the fact that we are all unique individuals, and that is why the exploration of subjectivity by phenomenology is so important. Before finding the right words, we need to find the ways to understand the other. Phenomenology is important in this task because its main aim is to find and explore the main structures of consciousness which are: time, space, body, relationality, and so on and so forth. To figure out how we all experience the world through these categories, these structures, is important to also understand that we all embed these structures in different ways. This is why phenomenology is, in my view, central if you want to talk about the, so to speak, autistic subject.

Of course, one tool is the phenomenological interview. The phenomenological interview is focused on finding first-person reports and to give voice to the person, to the subject herself. The main methodological problem of focusing on subjectivities in this way is that there can be a gap between the experiential self and the narrative self. If you perform a phenomenological interview you need, in general, to rely on what the interviewee is telling you. It is always possible this mismatch between the core ego, i.e., the experiential self, and what the subject is telling you, i.e., the narrative self. This is why you need to rely on non-verbal language and to tune in with the interviewee. Phenomenology is able to perform this task but is important to keep in mind that this mismatch is always possible. The main limitation of phenomenology is this difference between the experiential self and the narrative self.

Radu Nedescu: Regarding the difference between the experience itself and one’s description of that experience, I would like to briefly mention the following distinctions: there can be a mismatch between the experience itself and a) how one remembers that experience or b) how one narrates about that experience. Regarding tuning in with the interviewee by observing the interviewee’s body language, I would like to mention that it is not guaranteed that the interviewee's body language provides the interviewer with the adequate impressions regarding the interviewee’s experiential self. This can happen due to several reasons but the ones coming to mind are: a) the interviewee’s body-language is not sufficiently expressive or, b) the interviewer is not perceptive enough towards the differences in the body-language type used by different kinds of subjectivity.

Valeria: Here we can link our discussion to the double empathy problem developed by Damian Milton. This is a very important notion and very consistent with the phenomenological approach because, according to phenomenology, intersubjectivity is a dynamic exchange between two subjectivities. Let's think about the notion intercorporeality introduced by Merleau-Ponty. In intercorporeality there is this chiasmatic attunement, i.e., this intertwinement between two subjects that resonate with one another. It is important to take into account the autistic person's communication style which is different from the so-called "neurotypical" communication style.

When we speak about sociality and communication in autism, we need to overcome the idea that this difficulty is a problem only for the autistic subjectivity. By this I mean that the both the autistic and the neurotypicals have each their own communication style, and, thus, the neurotypical has difficulties with grasping the autistic manner of socializing just as the autistic has difficulties with grasping the neurotypical manner of socializing.

So, we need a reciprocal adjustment, so to speak, and we need to understand, according to George Frankle's distinction between talking and communicating, that no matter if an autistic person can or cannot talk, any autistic person will always communicate. This is so since each person, each kind of subjectivity, develops her own way of communicating. It is very important from the part of the caregiver, from George Frankle’s view, to understand this communication style and to adapt to it. George Frankle is a not-so-famous psychiatrist who observed many autistic children and, in a manuscript, he articulates this distinction between talking and communicating. So, phenomenology with this very open and reciprocal way of conceiving sociality can be very important in reshaping the idea of sociality and communication that we have in our contemporary society. We need to understand and explore the different kinds of communication and to adapt to each other for being able to live in this we space; phenomenologically speaking.

Second Question: How does phenomenology as a method empower the autistic subject to perform the dialogue between different communication styles? Also, what part does the double empathy problem play in constituting such a dialogue?

Valeria Bizzari: Phenomenology can be the theoretical ground for a kind revolution. To be honest, I think that except from the phenomenological interview we do not have other specific and concrete tools to empower intersubjectivity and the understanding of the autistic subject. However, phenomenology can lead to a real epistemological revolution in understanding and enhancing the way an autistic person lives in our society. Firstly, through the vocabulary, understanding subjectivity as a living body and intersubjectivity in terms of reciprocal intercorporeality is already revolutionary if we think of the common debate, of the common manner of understanding subjectivity and neurodivergence, So, through phenomenology, I think we can have a paradigmatic shift from neurodivergence intended as a condition of the brain to neurodivergence and subjectivity understood as something having to do with the body, with the living body. The living body is, by definition, embedded in a specific context and opened to the world and the other.

Through this theoretical ground we can reshape the intervention and the way we include people with a diagnosis in schools. For instance, let's think of the special educational need paradigm which is very helpful but, on the one hand, it is also quite tricky since it focuses on the individual and it is very dependent upon the diagnosis. It is dependent on the diagnosis since the diagnostic functional sheet enables one to enter school. That there are special programs for children with a diagnosis is good of course, but if we look at the issue from the eyes of phenomenology and the double empathy problem we should, regarding education, shift the focus from the individual with special educational needs to the classroom because we are all embedded and embodied in an open environment. So, phenomenology can be helpful in reshaping these trajectories through emphasizing the importance of activities such as musical activities. Such activities can be done very easily both by the neurotypical and the neurotypical students. Through these activities, we can elicit the interaction between different corporealities. In conclusion, I think that phenomenology can be helpful in reshaping the understanding and in nuancing the communication realm.

Radu Nedescu: In conclusion, the phenomenological framework gives space to a new way of conceiving how inclusion should be implemented. In my view, phenomenology also facilitates social interaction by providing a) the tools for attuning, grasping, relating, and responding to the other's verbal and non-verbal language and by providing b) sufficiently precise and flexible categories enabling one to better describe one’s lived-experience of interacting with others.

Third Question: What is your take on the neurodiversity movement and on the interaction between the autistic, the neurotypical, and the psychologist? To what degree should the autistic subject adapt to the neurotypical world and to what degree should the autistic person be kept as she already is?

Valeria Bizzari: Of course, I do not agree with the classical tendency, which has now been luckily and mostly overcome, according to which the autistic person should reduce herself to the neurotypical environment. I think this is completely wrong, not only from an ethical perspective, but also from a philosophical, scientific, and epistemological perspective. As a phenomenologist, we should all value the uniqueness of every subjectivity. The statistical fact that there are more neurotypicals than neuroatypicals does not mean that the neurotypical manner of communication is the right one. Secondly, if we talk about emotions and intersubjectivity, it is very difficult to find a normative way to deal with emotions. So, I am very happy that, in the last few years, there has been this empowerment movement concerning autism and neurodivergence. On the other hand, I am not very optimistic, I think that we still have to fight for real, genuine, inclusion, and I also say it as a woman. This is a problem not only concerning neurodivergent persons.

I think that we are really far away from a really inclusive society, but we are all here, I hope, as philosophers and as scientists, to support each other as different and unique subjectivities. So, I believe that finally phenomenology, philosophy, psychology, and psychiatry have really started to work together and to have a broader and comprehensive account of neurodivergence. I think that only by including different disciples and different ways of understanding we can really perform a revolutionary epistemological paradigm. Secondly, I think that philosophy is necessary in this revolution because phenomenology, in particular, has specific tools and a specific way of conceiving subjectivity that enables us to value each kind of subjectivity. I am very critical towards the tendency of stigmatizing divergent people; we are all divergent basically.

Radu Nedescu: Could you, just for the sake of clarity, provide an example of such stigmatization, of such an attempt to make the autistic subject behave like a neurotypical?

Valeria Bizzari: If we think about neurodivergence in general, the main example is the pharmacological one. If we think about ADHD, in the USA it is treated from a very young age with Ritalin. From my point of view, this is very dangerous because we cannot think that a pill can solve a personality issue, firstly, and, in any case, it is very stigmatizing, since this just aims at stopping some anomalous behaviour without attempting to understand what lies behind it. Concerning autism, more specifically, I think that Damian Milton pointed out a very crucial aspect of the bias entailed in the autistic debate. This bias is the prejudice according to which the autistic way of living intersubjectively is wrong.

Radu Nedescu: Indeed, these are cogent examples. In the pharmaceutical case, it is obviously that one reduces the subject’s psychological first-person experiences to a neurological and behavioural succession of events without taking into sufficient account the dimension of one’s lived experience. As for the example concerning autism specifically, it is inadequate to deem a mere difference as an abnormality. An abnormality is deemed, unlike a mere difference, as something that must be modified or eliminated. Since this was the last question, the interview is complete. Thank you very much for this enriching conversion, Valeria Bizzari.

V: You are welcome, Radu. It was my pleasure.