Fergus Murray, Monotropism, And “Bizarre Satisfaction” — THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM
Autistic writer Fergus Murray’s Growing Up With Monotropism and Weird Pride is a crucial part of the brand-new autistic non-fiction anthology Someone Like Me. Murray’s chapter is part technical primer, part auto-ethnography, and wholly moving. Murray takes the concept of monotropism—the autistic tendency to focus intensely that was was initially developed by their mother Dinah Murray—and takes the concept further through reflection on their family history, including Dinah’s life.
Monotropism is explained as a “general theory of mind as a system of interests, competing for our limited attention,” and a monotropic thinking process would be “one in which a relatively small number of interests are aroused at any time, strongly pulling in whatever attention is available.” This theory is resonant with me, as I am a bonafide enjoyer of indulgence in hyperfixation. Non-pathologizing frameworks for Autistic existence are sorely needed, and their absence is often all too harshly felt. Monotropism presents one such alternative to a deficit-based lens for autism.
Fergus Murray builds upon Dinah’s theory via a shared family history that celebrated and encouraged the development of brazen eccentricity, and the understanding that one could be both weird, and proud of being weird, in equal measure. (Like Murray, I also grew up in a heavily Autistic family. Unlike Murray’s, my family was a good deal more normative in its approach to differences in development.) By seeking to embody one’s own differences and weird status fully, one can develop the ability to just be.
Later in their lives, both Dinah and Fergus gained awareness of their Autistic status and what was initially an unconsciously neurodiversity-affirming framework of “Weird Pride” developed into being consciously and explicitly affirming. Fergus credits Dinah’s support for how they were able to grow up with a greater degree of self-acceptance and confidence than many autistics are afforded. I would also certainly credit Fergus here their own novel approach that makes the theory of monotropism a lot more personal.
We Autistics are nothing if not a people prone to monotropisms. Murray makes sure to emphasize monotropic thinking as a neutral and natural variation, meaning that monotropic thinking is neither inherently better or worse than any other modes of being in the world.
Maybe it’s my own monotropisms speaking here, but it seems to me there is a terribly great deal of love involved in memorializing someone’s life work in the way Fergus memorialized Dinah. By continuing to relate to her through her words and memories, keeping her work in circulation, this legacy is kept as a living thing, rather than static and stagnant. I never knew Dinah, but I walked away from this piece feeling a great appreciation for the care and passion she demonstrated towards the autistic community (and was inspired to take a few visits of my own to monotropism.org). For someone who runs as prickly as I do that is no small feat.
Fergus says that “it is a crime that so many autistics don’t get a chance to be a part of that” kind of accepting and supportive community, and I and many many others whole-heartedly agree with this sentiment. For me at least, I feel a form of collective grieving for the many members of our community who have slipped through the cracks, and will continue to slip through those cracks in a never-ending cascade of systemic failures.
Fergus challenges us to believe that from this grief we can produce a form of loving-kindness, self-assured enough to broaden relational possibilities for future generations of autistic people. To see if we are able to produce answers by defining ourselves in our own words. Maybe you don’t. Maybe we can’t. But this struggle to produce answers inevitably produces something in us. Maybe we can all just be a little weirder and relentless in our desire to authentically connect with each other. And maybe just that is enough to find our own meaning.
The new autistic non-fiction anthology Someone Like Me is generating considerable interest
