Let’s talk about ABA, also referred to by autistic people as Autism Conversion Therapy.
What is ABA?
ABA or Applied Behavioral Analysis is a "therapy" for autistic folx. It's based on a system of punishments and rewards that intends to "erradicate" autistic behaviors that are considered "wrong" or "bad" by neurotypicals.
ABA was created by Ole Ivaar Lovas who, on an interview said the following about autistic children;
"You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person on the physical sense - they have hair, a nose and a mouth - but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person."
Right off the bat we can tell that ABA is extremely dehumanizing. Before we continue it would be good to explain what exactly is autism?
Autism, like dyslexia, and ADHD is a neurotype. Which means it's your brain structure; quite literally, the way your brain is wired.
Autism is not better than or worst than anything, it just is. It’s like being left handed, it affects your life significantly because everything is built for people who are right handed, but it doesn’t make you worst or better. This isnt to say that autism wouldn’t be disabling if the accomodations needs were met, we dont stop being disabled once we have the correct mobility aid, and proper means of transportation. The point being made here is that while it is extremely difficult to navigate this world while on the spectrum, being autistic doesnt make you a worse or better human being than anyone else.
Now, if you're on the disability online spheres you have probably seen somebody say the sentence; "we don't want a cure to autism" and you probably wonder what does it mean. As stated, autism is a neurotype, autism is not a condition nor a syndrome, autism is a brain structure. To "cure" autism you would have to restructure an autistic person's brain which would result in their death. This is eugenics.
Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to "improve" the genetic quality of a human population. The man who coined this term in 1883 described his research as wanting to improve the "racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally".
Trying to find a "cure" for autism fits the paragraph above.
ABA was at its roots that; an attempt at curing autism, at fixing autistic children.
ABA emphasizes normalization instead of acceptance. This being one of the reasons why its so dehumanizing, it treats autistic children as less than normal, less than Neuro Typical children, purely because of the fact that we are different.
ABA also has an extensive history of using electric shocks as the "punishment" part of this punishment/reward system. Yet another reason why it's dehumanizing, we're fucking people not animals, yet ABA pretends to train us to be "normal", by punishing and rewarding us as if we were dogs.
In 1965 Lovaas published a series of articles in some of which he describes how to use an electric shock intervention to reduce aggression and life threatening self injury. Some years later, Lovaas published a study. The experimental group in this study received an average of 40 hours/week in a 1:1 teaching setting. Some of the things that were heavily emphasized on this "treatment" was teaching eye contact and gross motor imitation. Lovaas' intentions were for autistic children to behave allistic, this "treatment" was just teaching kids to mask and using electroshocks to punish them to "reduce non desired behaviors"
But, oh wait, I bet you didn't think it could get worst? Well it does.
George Reeker, the inventor of what we know now as conversion therapy, was a student of Lovaas, he pioneered the Feminine Boy Project as part of his doctoral work. And Lovaas was very involved in this. He supervised, helped fund, acquired grants, and assisted in cataloging interventions and acquiring participants for this project, which's goal was to cure homosexuality through a plethora of disturbing methods, that I will not be discussing today as to keep this article as friendly as possible for people with mental health issues.
The Feminine Boy Project performed "interventions" on young children that presented "deviant behavior". Sound familiar? It should, especially since ABA and conversion therapy not only share roots and their tired "curing" and "fixing" rethoric, but they also share many of their practices. Even the "goals" of these were the same; to make children who were different "normal" via harmful and disgusting "techniques".
Children who experience ABA have a higher rate of being PTSD and CPTSD (a couple other neurotypes developed by severe trauma or injury) same as people who experience conversion therapy.
And now a fun fact; many autistics have taken to calling ABA, autism conversion therapy, and for good reason it seems after all we have mentioned here.
"But ABA is not used like that still!" autism speaks literally partners with an organization that uses fucking electroshock therapy, how about you keep quiet Karen?
Can ABA ever be good? No, it can't. ABA it's at its roots a harmful, dehumanizing practice and to make it "good" you would have to throw everything out the window, including its concept, it's goal, everything about it, and start from scratch, now intending something entirely different, and honestly at that point? Might as well change the fucking name.
Some food for thought;
Conversion therapy has been banned in many places for being considered torture.
