Simon Roy Hughes 🍄<p>I read the attached article for a bit – at least until things began to fall apart. </p><p>"some researchers argue that [H. C. Andersen] used his storytelling to describe his autistic experience […]."</p><p>I accept the proposition; some people have wondered if Andersen might have been autistic. OK.</p><p>"No wonder I've been drawn to Andersen's tales long before realizing, as an adult, my own autistic characteristics."</p><p>Again, I accept the premise; the author is one of these people who have wondered if Andersen might have been autistic, so for the rest of the article, he is autistic. Again, OK. Andersen may certainly be read as such.</p><p>The evidence of Andersen's autism the author presents is a link to a 20-page article published by the College English Association (i.e. not a psychiatry, psychology, or even a pedagogical publication), which begins in a rather sophomoric manner:</p><p>"Everyone knows the story of how "The Ugly Duckling" was different, and therefore mistreated by the other little ducks"</p><p>The presentation of bullying thus takes the bullies' perspective: "You're different and deserved to be picked on as a consequence." The reason anyone is bullied has nothing to do with that person, however, but with a deficiency of the bully: people are bullied, not because they are different, but because there are bullies in the world. (This distinction is important for the mental well-being of the victim.)</p><p>But leaving that aside, let's return to the psychology article.</p><p>I continued to read the author's valid interpretations of Andersen's fairy tales, until I reached her conclusion on "The Emperor's New Clothes." </p><p>"The dysfunction Andersen depicted in "The Emperor's New Clothes" [the child speaking up, drawing attention to the emperor's nakedness] mirrors what happens in groups without honest neurodivergent perspectives."</p><p>And that's when I stopped reading, for in this one sentence, the author has implied a number of things:</p><p>1. The child in the story is neuro-divergent or at least represents neuro-divergence<br>2. Neuro-nondivergent people are apparently incapable of direct honesty<br>3. Neuro-divergent people are honest.</p><p>I meet a lot of different people in my line of work – some with diagnoses, some without. Some of these people are nearly always honest, but most are less so. Neuro-divergence has little–to–nothing to do with the level of honesty. All the circles in an illustrative Venn diagram would intersect, but none wholly.</p><p>So let me counter the conclusion of the bit of the article I read: neuro-divergence is not a moral issue, and attempting to make it such would be dishonest.</p><p><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/positively-different/202503/autistic-creativity-its-so-much-more-than-fairy-tales" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/po</span><span class="invisible">sitively-different/202503/autistic-creativity-its-so-much-more-than-fairy-tales</span></a></p><p> (The remainer of the article breaks off at an incongruous angle.)</p><p><a href="https://beige.party/tags/Fairytales" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Fairytales</span></a> <a href="https://beige.party/tags/HansChristianAndersen" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HansChristianAndersen</span></a> <a href="https://beige.party/tags/Autism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Autism</span></a> <a href="https://beige.party/tags/Psychology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Psychology</span></a> <a href="https://beige.party/tags/Folklore" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Folklore</span></a></p>