![]() There has been much debate about whether the DSM-5 characterisation of ASD represented progress (Lai, Lombardo, Chakrabarti, & Baron-Cohen, 2013), but this editorial focuses on the question of whether autism is properly characterised as a disorder and whether the neurodiversity framework should be embraced. Recall how homosexuality was classified as a disorder in DSM-I and DSM-II, until civil rights protests succeeded in having it declassified from DSM-III in 1980, on the grounds that it is just a natural example of the diversity of sexual orientations that exist in any population. It is unlikely that DSM really ‘carves nature at its joints’, as Plato recommended our best classificatory and explanatory theories should, if we can keep adding or subtracting diagnostic categories each time a new edition of DSM is published. Since DSM-1 in 1952, when there were 106 disorders listed, there has been a steady increase, and when DSM-5 was published in 2013, the number had reached 300. ![]() ![]() Autism is not alone in DSM-5 in being called a disorder. ![]() Autism is now 73 years old and our clinical and scientific understanding of it remains largely disorder-focused, reflected in the name of the diagnostic category in DSM-5: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ![]()
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