Looking for a doctoral program focused on ASD in adults

Post Reply New Topic

I read the first couple of Demoninator’s replies, but skimmed once you guys started arguing. His first reply was spot on.

I was in a doctoral program doing autism research in adults before my health and being a mom took over my time and abilities.

In order to study and do work in autism, you have to do your degrees under psychology or something related. The reason for that is because autism is classified as a psychological disorder. Let me tell you why.

Can we SEE autism in psychical structures? Maybe the brains are “wired different”, but do we know if that occurs in all autistics? Could it be the result of autistic behaviors? As in, you see things a certain way for so long and it forms neural pathways that go X instead of Y. Would a person trained to act autistic have the same physical brain structures as a true autist? We just don’t know.

So the only way we know if people are autistic or not is through their outward behaviors and self proclaimed inner states. That is psychology. Psychology is an offshoot of philosophy. I would say it’s philosophy masquerading as medicine.

I was studying autism under sociology, and like Denom said, it was almost entirely self driven. I hope Kansas is more autism progressive than my state, Virginia. I really had to scratch around to find support systems to study autistics as a social class as opposed to a diagnostic group. You have to fight to stay positive in autism research. Lots of people who study autism (even if they are autistic themselves) are seeking to eradicate autism. The NTs often see themselves as above autistics, and the autistic academics sometimes are so scarred by their environments and experiences that they are also negative about autism.

Good luck! It can be done and needs to be done more often!

Hi. I'm sorry this is so late. There are probably no official doctoral programs that do what you want, but there are individual professors (who can serve as your graduate advisor) who can do this. So what you need to do is look for publications in professional journals that talk about what you are interested in, and then find out where the authors are located. For example, my husband works in the psychology department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. One of his colleagues, Amy Cohen, studies the diagnosis and treatment of adult women on the spectrum. I'm not sure whether she is taking on more graduate students, but if you emailed her, she might be able to give you some specific people to look for. Good luck. This is an important field and too few people are working in it.