In this episode of The Autistic Culture Podcast, hosts Dr. Angela Kingdon and Matt Lowry, LPP reframe Hans Christian Andersen—not as the “awkward, difficult” writer he’s often portrayed to be, but as a figure whose life and work reflect Autistic culture.

🎧 What You’ll Learn:

• How Andersen’s special interests, social struggles, and speech differences align with Autistic traits.
• Why stories like The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid, and The Princess and the Pea resonate so strongly with Autistic experiences of difference, masking, and sensory sensitivity.
• How sensory seeking and avoiding show up in both Andersen’s life and his fairytales.
• Why direct communication, existential loneliness, and intense friendships (like his troubled bond with Charles Dickens) are part of the Autistic lens.
• Matt’s critique of exposure therapy and why Autistics don’t “habituate” the way allistics do—making sensitivity a trait, not a flaw.
• Angela’s personal reflection on The Princess and the Pea as a story that validated her own sensitivity and reframed it as special.
• How Andersen’s work, viewed through Autistic culture, provides representation, validation, and connection across generations.

Resources:

• Complete Works of Hans Christian Andersen
• Hans Christian Andersen Centre
• A Weird visit to Dickens House: Charles Dickens really, really hated his fanboy Hans Christian Andersen.
• BLEAK HOUSE GUEST (movie)
• Dickens Mistress Nelly:
• Charles Dickens AWESOME Wife Catherine
• The Genesis of Artistic Creativity: Asperger's Syndrome and the Arts
• Writers on the Spectrum

Related Episodes:

Beauty and the Beast is Autistic

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