Autism Answers Back

When We Start with Autistic Knowing: What Wenn Lawson's Paper Gets Right

AABmonotropism A rare example of research led, framed and held by an autistic mind

The latest paper by Wenn Lawson, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, does something many autism studies still avoid: it begins with autistic knowledge. Not just autistic participation, not just a token co-author in the acknowledgments, but a full-bodied commitment to framing, theory and insight grounded in lived autistic experience.

Titled "Research by autistic researchers: an 'insider’s view' into autism. The autistic way of being", the paper is one of the clearest examples we've seen this year of what it means to center autistic insight. It is authored entirely by an autistic researcher, centers a descriptive theory created and refined by autistic thinkers, and directly challenges the compliance-driven models that have long dominated the field.

And crucially, it doesn't just point at what is broken. It builds.

What This Paper Does

This is a paper about monotropism — a theory for understanding autistic attention that comes directly from autistic people. It describes what many of us live every day: the tendency to focus deeply on just one thing at a time, whether it’s an interest, a sound, a texture or a thought we can’t shake. That intense focus can bring joy and clarity — but it can also make everyday tasks harder. It helps explain why social situations can feel so off-rhythm, why we miss internal cues like hunger or pain, and why some of us struggle to hold onto things — or people — once they're out of sight.

What makes this theory different isn't just the insight it offers. It's who it centers. Instead of filtering autistic behavior through a deficit lens, monotropism starts from the inside: how attention works, how perception feels and how experience flows.

Lawson doesn't write to flatter neurotypical readers. He writes to describe a life many of us recognize. The clarity comes not from simplification, but from resonance.

"Being mono will impact dietary habits, exercise regimes and general self-care," he writes. "When our attention is taken over by a captured interest...we may not notice or be able to name, either inner or outer sensory information."

This is autism described not as broken cognition, but as a particular way of being in the world. Not always easy. But coherent. Understandable. Real.

What It Names

Lawson doesn’t shy away from the harms of other framings. In fact, one of the paper’s strengths is how calmly but clearly it traces the damage done by decades of outsider-only research:

None of these theories originated from autistic people. None of them offered a satisfying account of how autism feels from the inside. And few of them translated into meaningful support. But they all stuck — because they framed autism as a problem to be solved, not a way of being to be understood.

Lawson’s paper pushes back with gentle, precise force. He doesn’t just reject old models. He names why they failed:

"No-one asked or listened to the experience of Autistic people; we had no say in what professionals announced as 'Autism,'" he writes. 

And he names the stakes: "When autism isn’t understood and appropriate accommodations for individuals are not made, then pathology will result."

What It Offers

The real power of this paper isn't just in its critique. It’s in what it builds instead.

Monotropism provides a language for things many of us have long felt but couldn’t quite name:

And perhaps most importantly, it offers a new starting point for support. Instead of asking, How do we make autistic people behave more typically? it asks:

These are not small shifts. They are frame changes — from pathology to pattern, from disorder to difference.

What It Avoids

There is no euphemism here. No flattening of autistic reality into palatable talking points. Lawson writes openly about overload, about the pain of not being understood, about the difficulty of connecting when object permanence falters.

But he does so without importing shame or framing these experiences as failures. There is compassion without pity. Description without diagnosis. And a striking honesty about what it means to live in a world not built for your kind of attention:

"We might not recognise when we need the bathroom or when we are hungry... Being monotropic and only focussed on ‘the now’ can prevent us from appreciating outcomes or from forward thinking," he writes.

This is hard truth. And it also allows many of us readers to breathe a big sigh of relief. Not because it paints autism in a positive light, but because it names it clearly.

When you name it, you can begin to work with it. Not against it.

Why This Matters

Too often, even "inclusive" research uses autistic people as a data set, not as frame-setters. We are cited, not centered. And even when our words appear in footnotes, the framing remains clinical, controlled, deficit-based.

Lawson’s paper does the opposite. It says: Start here. Start with us. Start with how it feels.

That shift changes everything. It allows for a theory that accounts for difference without inventing disorder. It makes room for strategies that support without suppressing. And it tells a story of autism that is both more accurate and more humane.

It also offers a quiet rebuke to a field that still rewards papers about us more than papers by us, and a damning one to those who pathologize us.

Final Thought

If you're a researcher wondering what participatory autism science could become, read this paper. If you're a clinician who has quietly questioned the models you were taught, read this paper. If you're an autistic person who has never seen your experience described without distortion, read this paper.

Because here’s the truth:

Sometimes the most radical thing you can do in autism research is to start by listening.

And then to believe us.