This is a casual piece about my views on behaviourism in general, and my own lived-experience of accumulated trauma and vulnerability as a consequence. It is not an academic article, so I have not provided citations, though the reader can easily find supporting evidence using Google to do a search where interested.

My strong objection to programmes like ABA and all those behaviour-focused interventions that try to rigorously train Autistic people into mimicking acceptable normative behaviour, and unquestioning compliance to normative societal systems, is not only because they are generally hideously abusive and de-humanising, but more crucially devastating in practice, in my opinion and lived-experience, is the longterm, far-reaching harm that these programmes do to the organic, intrinsic functionality of the Autistic human at the very core. The Autistic person is violently cut away from their natural, unique instincts, and forced to adopt superficial behaviours that do not support the Autistic in any deeper meaningful way, leaving them incapacitated, quietly languishing, silently roaring, weeping in despair and grappling with hapless rage, captive subaltern inside the nauseating swirl of normative Neurocolonialism. It is therefore not surprising to find that the majority of Autistic persons who have grown up receiving ABA now report symptoms of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.