The History of Neurodivergent Identity Oppression: Part 1

This is the first of a multi-part installment addressing the history of how Neurodivergent people have been oppressed in Western culture, and how that has affected the development of healthy identities, self-esteem and belonging for Neurodivergent people.

Genocide Against the Neurodivergent

Beginning in the United States, genocide and oppression against Neurodivergent people blossomed into a worldwide phenomenon. Before the concept of Neurodiversity - or even Autism - existed, American policymakers promoted the idea that genetics, mental health, and crime were a cause-and-effect chain. In other words, they claimed that “bad” genetics led to insanity, which resulted in crime and other antisocial behaviours. 

In the early 1900s, America’s champion for eugenics was Harry Laughlin, who believed in a one-world government ruled by a genetically superior race. Laughlin founded the US Eugenics Record Office in 1910 and is known to have inspired Hitler to engage in the eradication of millions deemed undesirable by the Nazis (Laughlin, 1936). In the US, Laughlin promoted racial hygiene to reduce crime by removing the genes thought responsible for creating crime. Of the mental conditions, Laughlin identified the following in his categories: “feeble-minded,” “moronic,” “microcephalic,” “epileptic,” “idiotic,” “cretinic,” “mongolic,” “traumatic,” “neurotic,” and “idiot savant” (Laughlin, 1922, p. 5). These categories and others were used not only to demean but also to target the Neurodivergent with brutal prison house castrations and sterilization through exposure to lethal doses of radiation (Gosney & Popenoe, 1929). Barring a gross disingenuity, it is clear that being Neurodivergent in the early 1900s was frequently a death sentence.

We can only guess how many Neurodivergent people were affected by eugenics. As is the case with many atrocities, records may have been destroyed. However, in the 1950s, the influential book, Sterilization in North Carolina: a Sociological and Psychological Study, was given consideration in the “Eugenics Review,” a publication dedicated to the promotion of Eugenics in the US. According to the review of this book, by 1949, “the number of sterilizing operations officially reported as having been carried out in the whole of the U.S.A. … was 49,207”(Blacker, 1951, p. 109). Some publications put the total number of people sterilized under such programs, up to 1963, at 64,000 (Evans, n.d.). By 1974, ABC News pegged the number of sterilizations at 65,000 (Garvin, 2005). It was an all-out pogrom on the Neurodivergent.

We can derive from Laughlin’s labels the kinds of identities available to Neurodivergent people in the early 1900s. If you were Neurodivergent, you were a “moron” or “idiot” and likely also a criminal. These were self-esteem-defeating labels and harsh consequences for the Neurodivergent that could only have led to feelings of isolation, shame and fear. Nevertheless, I cannot think of a more crushing way to impugn someone’s identity than to subject a whole class of people to genocide.

A range of studies implicates the importance of self-esteem to the construction of Neurodivergent identities. In the 1980s, researchers Dominic Abrams and Michael Hogg, for example, found that people are motivated to discriminate against people outside of their group as a way of building collective self-esteem and social identity (Abrams & Hogg, 1988). By the 1990s, researchers were finding that marginalized groups with mainstream acceptance experienced measurable levels of self-esteem, while ones that did not enjoy mainstream acceptance experienced low self-esteem (Phinney, 1995).

In the 2000s, researchers began to make connections between self-esteem and the way that identities are constructed.  For example, one group of researchers found that “[p]articipants were happiest about those identity elements that best satisfied motives for self-esteem and efficacy”(Vignoles et al., 2006, p. 1). And, if self-esteem and happiness with identity were connected, it was only a matter of time until the inverse was also proven true. Sure enough, in 2016, researchers found that when people did not feel achieved in their sexual identity, they experienced lower self-esteem (Shepler & Perrone-McGovern, 2016). In other words, people who weren’t completely living their sexual identity felt badly about themselves.

To summarize, social acceptance and self-acceptance are connected. An essential human motivator - self-esteem - is directly associated with social acceptance and a sense of contentedness, or happiness, with one’s identity. Identity and self-esteem are connected because, when humans feel self-esteem, they experience a sense of belonging.

A Period of Oppression

Given the precise connections between self-esteem and identity, it is beyond the shadow of a doubt that Neurodivergent people in the early to mid-1900s did not experience environments conducive to the healthy construction of identities.  I draw out some themes about this era in the table below, which I have titled “The Period of Criminalization and Genocide”.

Discussion

It is important for Neurodivergent people to know this history. As neurodivergence runs in families, the genocide against the grandparents (and their siblings) of Neurodivergent people creates a backdrop that explains much that flies under the radar of conventional studies. Neurodivergent people were not only oppressed, they were shamed to believe that they should be oppressed, that there was something wrong with them. They did not have a culture that supported them with positive identities, but were surrounded by fearful situations, governments and communities that wanted to sterilize, jail and perhaps even murder them. Their only recourse was to hide, mask and hope to go unnoticed.

It is hard to fully grasp what this means from the personal perspective of being Neurodivergent. Internalized shame, self-loathing, denial and secrecy are protective measures when you - as a person - are not acceptable to society, when you are subject to extermination. Even if your family was not caught up in the fear and stigmatization society promoted, even if they loved you, they would want you to veil yourself, even if only to protect you.

Multigenerational trauma happens when maladaptive coping mechanisms, like identity shaming, becomes so ingrained that it continues even when it is no longer functional. Although it serves no purpose other than continued human suffering, Neurodivergent people are today still greatly affected by a legacy of fear and shame. This is something that we all need to work together to change.

Neurodiversity Aware Therapy recognizes that understanding the history of abuse and oppression is an important part of the healing process for Neurodivergent people everywhere.