> Autism is a disorder, diagnosed in DSM V. […] Unless those cross a pathological threshold, it's not autism.
There is a natural category in the world that shares many members with those-who-meet-diagnostic-criteria-for-"autism", completely unrelated to any "pathological threshold". It absolutely makes sense to describe people as "autistic" whose lives are not suffering.
Beyond that, you really shouldn't be treating the DSM as some kind of authority: that's like treating a particularly unreliable dictionary written by a non-native speaker as an authority on a different language. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_DSM for more information.
The idea that the APA's claims are any kind of authoritative is quite insulting. They're systematically wrong, in quite horrible ways, and probably always will be. The DSM-V is a tool for coordination among (American) practitioners, and should not be considered anything more than that: it certainly shouldn't be consulted or quoted by the laity, who do not know the caveats.
Fairly solid take. And you haven't even mentioned the reproduction crisis and similar issues in the general field. That doesn't make the accumulation of knowledge in clinical psychology any easier either.
There is a natural category in the world that shares many members with those-who-meet-diagnostic-criteria-for-"autism", completely unrelated to any "pathological threshold". It absolutely makes sense to describe people as "autistic" whose lives are not suffering.
Beyond that, you really shouldn't be treating the DSM as some kind of authority: that's like treating a particularly unreliable dictionary written by a non-native speaker as an authority on a different language. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_DSM for more information.
The idea that the APA's claims are any kind of authoritative is quite insulting. They're systematically wrong, in quite horrible ways, and probably always will be. The DSM-V is a tool for coordination among (American) practitioners, and should not be considered anything more than that: it certainly shouldn't be consulted or quoted by the laity, who do not know the caveats.