The mask of autism: Social camouflaging and impression management as coping/normalization from the perspectives of autistic adults

We present views on the difference between camouflaging and impression management; impression management as a social asset; the ambivalence of camouflaging; the limits of impression management; and autistic forms of social communication that provide an alternative to impression management and camouflaging. These perspectives are discussed as leading from prioritizing social integration to prioritizing autistic empowerment. We further explore how the stigma of autism is turned, through camouflaging, into the mask of autism, offering to deconstruct the neurotypical premises of academically-approved concepts of socialization and impression management. Emancipatory participative research thus provides a unique opportunity not only to sociologically explore the deeper contours of “social disability” but also the “disabilities of sociology”, offering directions for the neuro-diversification of sociology, in parallel with the recent thrust of building a “sociology of autism".
Source: Social Science and Medicine - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research