Lived Experience & Expert Knowledge
This blog post is based on thoughts I initially teased out for a talk (titled “ Double Vision – My experience of autism from both personal & professional perspectives ”) which I gave at the AUsome Training 2020 Conference ( https://ausometraining.com/product/ausome-conference-2020/ ). A common controversy in the area of autism (and of neurodiversity & disability in general) focuses on the relative importance/validity of “lived experience” versus “expert knowledge”. The experiences of actual autistic people were largely ignored by most psychiatrists, psychologists and researchers until the internet provided an accessible platform for their voices to be heard, so the history of the “ownership” of the autism narrative by professional experts is not reassuring. And even in recent years many of us (including myself) have had experiences that give us good reason to mistrust professional experts. On the other hand, as well as being autistic myself, I’m also reasonably expert in