Why I’m not a neuro-affirmative professional.
Why I’m not a neuro-affirmative professional.
I’m often told I’m neuro-affirmative and it has never quite sat right with me. So this weekend I have done a deep dive into neuro-affirmative assessment and therapy. I’ve read all the books which Amazon could provide when I searched for ‘neuro-affirmative’ and ‘psychology’ and now I can say for sure, I’m not a neuro-affirmative psychologist.
That doesn’t mean that I think that children should be called disordered, or that we should be pathologising difference. That doesn’t mean that I think we should be punitive or that I’m changing anything in my approach. I champion every child, exactly as they are. I think we need to change the environment so that children can thrive, and stop trying to shove square pegs into round holes.
But what neuro-affirmative means, according to what I’ve read, is more than that. Yes, one part of it is being strengths-based and positive about young people, and that’s essential. But the other part of being neuro-affirmative seems to be accepting a brain-based determinism about children which it totally at odds with my approach as a psychologist and the evidence base. Neuro-affirmative psychologists see a child’s diagnosis as a sign that their type of brain (or neurotype) has been identified and that they have, effectively, a different type of biology. They say things like
‘Being Autistic runs through our neurology in the same way that words or streaks of colour run through sticks of sweet seaside rock…any effort to pull the writing out of the rock is not going to end well for anyone concerned’. (Kavanagh et al, 2025).
This isn’t true. There is no ‘autistic neurology’. There are just people’s brains, and lots of them working differently to others. A diagnosis of autism just says ‘this person is behaving in this way right now’. It does not identify a neurotype. Brains don’t divide up into diagnostic categories.
Why does that matter? Because when people (and particularly children) hear that their brain type has been identified, they think that this means that they can’t change. They think that when things are hard, it will be this way for ever. And it’s not true.
Brain scans cannot identify who has a diagnosis of autism (or ADHD, or any other psychiatric diagnosis). Brains are only one part of who we are, and they don’t determine our lives. People are so much more than their brains. We have minds, and bodies, and we exist in a social context. They have a history of good and bad experiences. All of these things are important when thinking about why a child is behaving in the way that they do. Reducing it to ‘neurology’ is determinism.
When we reduce people down to their brains, we lose something very important. Our ability to ask questions and to be curious disappears. We just say ‘it’s how your brain works’ and we stop thinking.
In fact, we lose our minds, in the enthusiasm for everything to be about our brains.
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