Autopsy of a Violent Diagnosis · 2005-10-01 19:30

The following is the introduction to a lengthy article available in its entirety in HTML format (70K), or as a .pdf file (158K)

Increased popular awareness of traits encompassed by the diagnostic criteria for Asperger Syndrome has enabled many people with heretofore unrecognized differences from the neurological norm to gain a vocabulary with which to communicate their experiences, a better sense of their personal characteristics and needs, greater understanding of difficulties they’ve experienced in their lives, and information enabling them to mitigate those difficulties and thereby improve their quality of life.

Unfortunately, this increased awareness also has disadvantages. Notable among them has been the tendency of popular writers to assume that a fleeting acquaintance with diagnostic criteria qualifies them to make authoritative generalizations about and judgments against all individuals on the autistic spectrum. One example of this phenomenon is the article Nutty Professors, published in the September 16 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Its author, Mikita Brottman, is a humanities instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and an unlicensed therapist in private practice.

Nutty Professors is a facile, tendentious work of self-aggrandizement, projection and “othering” ─ that is, the reinforcement of social hierarchy by means of the devaluation of individuals who do not fall within social norms. The article constitutes an act of symbolic violence against the subjects of its author’s disdain and against all disabled individuals. It opens with a chaotic pastiche of imagery drawn from film, television, literature, and history, followed by a superficial, inaccurate description of Asperger Syndrome. The author retroactively “diagnoses” two disliked former colleagues, then baldly announces her inclination to discriminate against academic job applicants based on her speculations about their possible disability status. As I read the article, I shivered to think that my family members on the autistic spectrum, who have considerable potential to excel in academia, might encounter the kinds of harsh judgments and inflexibility on the part of potential employers and colleagues that are so abundantly displayed by Mikita Brottman.

After reading Nutty Professors, I sent the following letter to the editor of the Chronicle:

I am mother to two adolescents, one with a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome. Mikita Brottman’s armchair diagnoses of her despised former colleagues, and her arrogant, judgmental, condescending, poorly informed speculations, are tasteless and bigoted. Her reference to AS as a “character disorder” in itself clearly demonstrates that her education on the subject is limited to stereotypes and words on paper.

Citizens with autism and Asperger Syndrome are not works of fiction, cartoon characters, or figments of the imagination, they are real human beings. Many live a lifetime on the receiving end of the kind of intolerance so abundantly demonstrated by Ms. Brottman. It is alarming that the Chronicle of Higher Education would choose to broadcast such an ill-considered hemorrhage of viciousness against individuals with developmental disabilities. Would you publish such prejudicial slurs against members of any other class of humanity?

In my subsequent communications with Dr. Kathy Smith, Director of the Learning Resource Center at MICA and the staff member responsible for the school’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, I expressed my hope that Ms. Brottman might be called to account for her words; that both she and The Chronicle would issue a retraction and an apology; that MICA’s President would make an official statement disavowing this faculty member’s conclusions about individuals on the autistic spectrum; and that MICA’s administration would also openly reaffirm its commitment to non-discrimination against and active support of individuals with disabilities, whether they are faculty, administrative employees, students, or members of the community.

Alas, this was not to be. In both her professional role and her personal status as mother to a son with Asperger Syndrome, Dr. Smith shares my outrage about the article. However, her superiors responded to her concerns and to the concerns of numerous letter-writers with the reflexive, short-sighted invocation of “academic freedom.”

What follows is an in-depth examination of Nutty Professors, in which I elucidate the concealed meanings of Brottman’s disparaging analysis of cognitively and culturally distinctive citizens, and of her former colleagues, each of whom she concludes is “one of them.” I analyze the author’s use of emotionally charged, biased language to describe both autistic citizens and individuals with whom she has come into conflict; unveil her unarticulated assumptions and her pretext of superiority, which she asserts by highlighting the perceived inferiority of others; and reveal the extent to which the article constitutes a declaration of intent to engage in illegal, disability-based discrimination in hiring decisions by a staff member of the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Autopsy of a Violent Diagnosis (HTML, 70K)
Autopsy of a Violent Diagnosis (.pdf, 158K)

See Alyric, Peddling Prejudice, the comments on Autism Diva’s blog entry of the same name, and Lisa Cohen, Diagnosis By Proxy and Other Logical Fallacies for more commentary on this article.

Comments


  1. Mikita Brottman has published a similar article in the L.A. Times, see http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/ la-oe-brottman30sep30,0,6351595.story? coll=la-news-comment-opinions — Michelle Dawson    2005-10-01 20:04    #

  2. Thanks for pointing this out, I hadn’t seen it. I can’t help but wonder whether she submitted this rehash of the article to the LA Times before receiving any responses to the Chronicle version, or after.

    Here’s the link again, in clickable format:
    The Really Nutty Professors — Kathleen Seidel    2005-10-01 20:20    #

  3. I’m guessing after, since she deleted the part about how she would vote not to hire a person who appears to have asperger’s. Only discrimination is illegal. As they used to say when I was a kid, they can’t legislate people’s feelings. Oh, Mikita, where’s the love? — Anne    2005-10-01 20:57    #

  4. I wonder if anyone has thought about the idea of contacting Brottman’s regulatory or organising body… don’t psychotherapists have organisations to which they belong, and whose codes of conduct they should adhere to?

    Seems to me she’s broken that code. — David Andrews BA-status, PgCertSpEd    2005-10-01 22:15    #

  5. Just seen a page outlining Brottman’s details. She is a psychoanalytically-oriented therapist; she says “I am drawn to and compelled by the difficulties of living a human life, in a human body”, but it also seems that she is then drawn to and compelled by some inner need to disparage and and make downward social comparisons against those experiencing these “difficulties of human life”. Hardly a behavioural trend that would – to my mind (as a psychologist) – give me any confidence in her, were I to be experiencing distress over anything.

    She says that she believes that “the role of analysis is to help us to understand the essential problems of a condition we all share: the condition of being human”; but I am not sure, having read her article a few times. Maybe her real belief is that analysis enables her to assume an expert role on basically any issue about which she may or may not have any expertise (and Asperger syndrome is, as far as can be ascertained, in the second of these camps), make pronouncements of a particularly pernicious nature, and effectively alienate and outgroup an entire set of people.

    All based upon a couple of people who may or may not have pissed her off in earlier posts.

    I am going to assume, for the sake of example now, that ALL Jungian and Existential psychotherapists are like this woman in their intentions against those who would match the criteria for the Asperger diagnosis. My warning (unless I hear differently, from other psychoanalysts wishing to distance themselves from Brottman’s comments) is this: best not to trust a psychoanalytically-inclined psychotherapist… you might well unwittingly invoke some sort of counter-transference issues in them that they have failed to deal with in their own personal analyses.

    I am not joking. — David Andrews    2005-10-01 22:29    #

  6. David, thanks for your comments. I totally share your suspicions about Brottman’s self-serving motivations. Also, like you, I would not be inclined to think that a traditional psychoanalytic approach to therapy would do most folks on the spectrum much good. However, I don’t share your assumption about the intentions of Jungian and existentially-oriented therapists as a group. I trust that most practitioners of psychoanalysis are, in large measure, altruistically motivated; and I would hope that most would recognize the limits of their competence. In saying this, I don’t mean to deny that people on the spectrum have long served as theory-fodder by high-minded, misguided, poorly-informed professionals in many different fields; that’s a miserable truth that you know as well as anyone. Ethical counselors have reason to be concerned about the activities of those who represent themselves as “psychoanalystsâ€? and “therapists,â€? but who are clearly in the business for their own self-aggrandizement. It makes the whole profession look bad. I wish that some of them would take the initiative to write letters to the editor of the Chronicle and the LA Times to refute the reprehensible, bigoted positions promoted in these articles. — Kathleen Seidel    2005-10-02 05:50    #

  7. Great article Kathleen. Agree with David of Finland – we need to make high level, thoughtful, penetrating and rather forceful representation to the regulatory bodies, both academic and psychotherapeutic.

    Also El Presidente of the Maryland Institute is wrong – academic freedom is not carte blanche to commit egregious academic errors, which in Brottman’s case are glaringly obvious.

    Because of that, I’m sure that there must be an academic body to whom we can appeal – since El Presisdente has fallen down on the job – I don’t know what it’s called, but they are also the only ones who can censure the Chronicle as well as Brottman – particularly if as can be easily pointed out – their reputation for academic credibility is being compromised.

    Isn’t there a body called the Association of University Professors or something like that? It’s one thing to have the LA times print your article – and another to have your prose expertly examined and declared wanting by the ‘ones with clout’. — Alyric    2005-10-03 18:24    #

  8. The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article on “professors with a mild form of autism must decide whether to reveal their diagnosisâ€? in the process of applying for a job. Can´t read the full article because I have no subscription, but maybe someone here does? http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i08/08a01001.htm — Tunnelblick    2005-10-11 05:16    #

  9. My letter about MB was recently printed in the CHE; from discussions with the editor it became clear that the journal received many, many letters of protest. I noticed that the link in the sidebar to the article in the online edition quickly vanished shortly after the article was published. If you wish to have some effect on her, you might try contacting The College Art Association: (http://www.collegeart.org/) They might well find this to be an issue of concern. It is interesting that she apparently can legally practice in Maryland without a license—is that really so? As for MICA’s apparent refusal to take this situation seriously, they may well have their own way of handling this. This is a school that does not award tenure to anyone. Who knows what might happen, quietly, a few months or more down the road. — A. DeAngelis    2005-10-20 16:21    #