Editorial: Diversity and the everyday – a widening view

Sheridan Linnell

This may offer inspiration to those who wonder how the emergent scholarship of the creative arts therapies represented by JoCAT can ever have sufficient influence: the term ‘neurodiversity’ was invented by Australian sociologist Judy Singer in her undergraduate honours thesis, published by the University of Technology (UTS) Sydney in 1998.[1]

In the latest issue of our journal, Freya Pinney takes up the challenge of the ‘double empathy problem’ and other oppressive, ableist paradigms that dominate the landscape of psychological and psychotherapeutic practice with neurodiverse people. Pinney shows us that her so-called bias as a neurodiverse creative arts therapist is precisely what allows her to so sensitively companion arts therapy participants living with autism.

Damian Milton offers a relevant definition,

The ‘double empathy problem’: A disjuncture in reciprocity between two differently disposed social actors which becomes more marked the wider the disjuncture in dispositional perceptions of the lifeworld – perceived as a breach in the ‘natural attitude’ of what constitutes ‘social reality’ for ‘neuro-typical’ people and yet an everyday and often traumatic experience for ‘autistic people’ (Author’s concept and definition). (Milton, 2012, p.884)

Milton’s point is that neurotypical people and theories frequently label neurodiverse people, especially those living with autism, as lacking empathy and a theory of mind, when in fact it is these neurotypical people and ableist theories that lack empathy and understanding for the life experiences and world views of neurodiverse people (Milton, 2012). Empathy is not only a ‘two-way street’ – for neurotypical folk, some streets where neurodiverse people live are not even on the normative map. Like Milton, Pinney challenges the view that people living with autism lack the capacity to empathise with others. Instead, it is that neurotypical folk mostly lack the imagination and humility to appreciate that what they see, experience and practice as ‘empathy’ might be experienced by neurodiverse people as dissonant and invasive.

Cut on the bias and swirling with creativity, Pinney’s article invites readers to witness something magical, something overwhelming and something energetic (Pinney, 2022 [2]) – diffracting the creative arts therapies into a wider spectrum of possibilities.

Sometimes our lives invite an insider/outsider relationship to experiences that disrupt the normative order and open our minds and other senses to marginalisation and difference. As an experienced educator, therapist and researcher who is also the parent of a child with dysgraphia (a term encompassing severe and persistent writing difficulties), Elvira Kalenjuk calls her son her greatest teacher.

Making art for the autoethnographic prelude to her PhD thesis reminds Kalenjuk how writing – a site of anguish for those living with dysgraphia including her son – is nevertheless central to her own sense of self:

My stained fingertips have left fingerprint markings on the parchment and these inky blotches have seeped into the pages underneath. The stained ink presents as a metaphor for my love of writing, seeded in early childhood and growing deeper into my late adult years. My unique fingerprint markings remind me that writing itself is part of my identity.

Through a bricolage of emergent and reflexive writing and making, Kalenjuk raises key ethical dilemmas for able-bodied creative arts therapists who are committed to practising and researching with communities of differently-abled people in ways that amplify their voices rather than speaking ‘for’ them. This act of writing an autoethnography in the first person with co-authors reminds us that every ‘I’ is a complex intersection of cultures, places, institutions, identities, and relationships.

Perhaps it is apt to punctuate the editorial at this point with an image from Heather Easton’s podcast interview with Chris Smith – an artwork that may serve as a CAT’s Own Guide to the shared reading of complex texts, including the current issue of JoCAT: