The AutSide Podcast

Episode 433: Ableism, Complexity, and the Failure of Linear Care


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Today’s episode explores the tension between linear, simplified thinking prevalent in human services and the inherent multicausality and complexity of life, particularly for autistic and divergent individuals. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, uses a sociology assignment as a framework, contrasting a human services textbook that treats complexity as an inconvenience with a 2025 research article by Da Silva, Abramov, and Quintanilha that frames ableism as a recursive, systemic structure rather than a personal failing. The core argument is that institutions often insist on monocausality to avoid systemic responsibility, thereby pathologising complex realities like gestalt language processing and reinforcing ableist norms. Dr. Hoerricks advocates for shifting professional practice from an analytic focus on individual deficits to an ecological understanding of forces acting upon a person, asserting that complexity is the fundamental truth of human life and key to liberation.

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/a-world-too-simple-for-the-truth

Let me know what you think.

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The AutSide PodcastBy Jaime Hoerricks, PhD