Beyond the Autistic Neurotype: From Difference to Design
Why âNeurotypeâ was Never the Finish Line
When I wrote The Case for the Autistic Neurotype, the goal was simple: move the conversation from disorder to difference. That frame still matters. It helped separate the way we are wired from the way we are treated. But it stopped one step short.
It still spoke the language of deviation. Autistic people are a distinct neurotype â but the baseline we were said to diverge from remained unnamed, invisible and therefore assumed to be "normal" and "the default." That left the hierarchy intact. We changed the label, not the lens.
Every framework that keeps one group unmarked keeps power where it started. âNeurotypeâ softened the medical edges of autism, but it still implied that there is one main neurotype (what autistic people call âneurotypicalâ), and that everyone else branches from it. The words improved; the framework didnât.
Itâs time to move beyond difference and into design.
One Frame for One Species
Autistic and social ways of cognition have long existed as complementary modes of processing â one oriented toward internal pattern coherence, the other toward social coordination. The asymmetry we live with now is cultural, not innate: institutions pathologized the structural style only in recent history, when conformity to social signaling became a civic and economic mandate.
Most people likely express both cognates to varying degrees; what we call âautismâ marks a stable structural bias rather than a categorical split.
What if autism isnât simply a variant of one human mind, but instead represents one of two fundamental ways the human brain organizes and interprets informationâtwo primary neurological cognitions, or cognates, that have coexisted throughout our speciesâ history, each with its own logic, language and mode of understanding? Both built from the same root. Both fully human. Both necessary.
What we currently label as Autism becomes the Structural Cognate, a cognition that organizes the world from the inside out. It builds coherence before connection. It seeks integrity over harmony, pattern over performance. It notices when systems wobble, when words donât align with actions, when logic buckles under convenience. That vigilance is often mislabeled rigidity. It is, in fact, loyalty to coherence.
The Social Cognate (currently the default human neurology, which those of us in the neurodiversity movement call Neurotypical) organizes the world from the outside in. It builds connection before coherence. It reads tone, gesture and context to stay attuned. It can improvise meaning on the fly. Its empathy is atmospheric â it fills the room before it reaches the rulebook.
Both cognitions make civilization possible. One builds the blueprint. The other keeps the lights on.
For decades, psychiatry named only one cognition as default and the other as disorder. The result was predictable: misunderstanding, pathologization and a century of trying to train architects to improvise and dancers to diagram.
What this model explains that the old one couldnât
- The Double Empathy Problem It stops being a mystery. Communication breaks not because one side lacks empathy but because each cognition prioritizes different signals. Structural Cognates send clarity; Social Cognates expect tone. Both misread absence as apathy.
- The Masking Dilemma What clinicians call masking is often cross-cognate translation under duress. Structural Cognates learn to mimic social grammar to stay safe; Social Cognates mimic structure to stay credible. The cost is exhaustion for both.
- The Spectrum Confusion Autism isnât a straight line from mild to severe; itâs a deep axis of cognitive orientation. A personâs support needs depend on context, not position. A structured environment can lower support needs; an ambiguous one raises them. The Cognate frame accounts for that.
- Empathy and logic For Structural Cognates, empathy is logical consistency â protecting others by ensuring truth holds. For Social Cognates, empathy is affective attunement â protecting others by ensuring comfort holds. Both are empathy. Both fail when imposed on the other.
Why language precision matters
Words decide who gets funded, who gets fired and who gets heard. The DSM doesnât just describe minds; it defines reality for insurers, educators and courts. When its grammar assumes one type of mind as default, harm follows automatically.
âNeurodivergentâ softened the blow but left the center unexamined. It still implies divergence from something.
âStructural and Social Cognateâ makes that something visible. It splits neutrality open and forces symmetry back into the equation.
This isnât linguistic decoration. Itâs epistemic repair.
Keeping the supports, changing the frame
Every time a new term appears, someone asks, âBut will this take away services?â No. Support should follow need, not moral framing.
Clinicians can still measure communication differences, sensory profiles and executive-function demands. They just stop calling one of them pathological by default.
Insurance codes can remain; what shifts is the story that surrounds them. A support plan for a Structural Cognate would emphasize clarity, explicit structure and quiet spaces. For a Social Cognate, it might emphasize feedback loops, relational consistency and shared affect regulation. Both are valid. Both are care.
What happens to âneurotypicalâ and âneurodivergentâ?
They stayâfor now. They are the lingua franca that keeps public conversation alive. But like âautistic spectrum,â they describe direction, not design. Theyâre useful in advocacy but insufficient in analysis.
Think of them as the surface map. âCognateâ is the underlying geography.
The ethical core
Every system has beneficiaries. Under the old grammar, those who think socially are fluent by default; those who think structurally must translate every sentence they speak. The reward is invisibility for one group, exhaustion for the other.
Reframing both as cognates redistributes difficulty. It says misunderstanding is shared labor, not individual failure. It asks Social Cognates to learn structure as diligently as Structural Cognates have learned subtext.
Thatâs parity, not reversal.
Anticipating the backlash
This frame will sound threatening to institutions built on diagnosis. Theyâll say itâs imprecise, untestable, philosophical. They said the same about âneurodiversityâ twenty years ago.
Precision can precede measurement. Naming a cognate is the first step toward studying it. Once you describe two interactive logics â one relational, one structural â you can build instruments to measure how they learn, decide and communicate. You can test without dehumanizing.
But resistance isnât just scientific; itâs economic. Entire industries rely on treating one cognate as malfunction. Changing that language threatens revenue streams as much as theories. We should name that plainly.
How this connects back
The Case for the Autistic Neurotype remains the bridge that got us here. It established that autism is not disease. This new frame finishes that sentence: Autism is not deviation. It is one half of human design.
The Autistic Neurotype model separated wiring from worth. The Cognate Model gives both sides a name and demands parity between them.
The first asked for inclusion. The second demands translation.
Practical implications
For clinicians: describe clients by cognitive grammar before you describe impairment. âStructural Cognate with high sensory loadâ communicates more truth than âASD, moderate.â For educators: teach both cognates â explicit logic for Social Cognates, implicit social reading for Structural Cognates. For workplaces: stop grading communication style as professionalism. Measure clarity, not charisma. For researchers: study the interaction between cognates instead of searching for missing empathy.
What this reframing doesnât do
It doesnât erase disability. It names where disability actually lives: in the friction between systems built by one cognate and people shaped by the other. Thatâs not denial of hardship. Itâs locating it accurately.
Where we go from here
The goal isnât to replace the DSM overnight. Itâs to give future writers a vocabulary that doesnât start from damage. To plant language so precise that even institutions that fear it will have to use it.
That begins here, not in a committee room.
Closing
Autism was never a deviation from humanity. It was a pattern within it â a way of seeing that guards coherence in a world addicted to comfort. If Social Cognates are the storytellers, Structural Cognates are the editors. One makes meaning. The other keeps it honest.
We donât need new hierarchies. We need new translation.
The next edition of psychiatry may never use our words, but it will have to face the truth behind them: there are not broken people and normal people. There are only different cognates of the same mind, trying to build a world they can both survive.