On the Autistic Spectrum or a Camus Anti-Hero? Rebellion Obtuseness in Psychiatry

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.”
—Albert Camus, L’Etranger (The Stranger)

A pervasive feature of psychiatry ideology is an impoverished perspective, one which pathologizes variations of humanity that fall outside the narrow limits of what it sanctions as “normal.” Most mental health professionals—especially psychiatrists—view their own compliance with the demands of society as evidence of “mental health,” and they view the lack of such compliance by others as “mental illness.”

In contrast to hyper-compliant mental health professionals, there are many artists, philosophers, and psychologically astute people who know that rebellion is not evidence of mental illness but a part of human nature. The novelist and philosopher Albert Camus (1913-1960) in The Rebel (1951), an inquiry into revolt as an essential dimension of human beings, contrasts life-affirming rebellion with totalitarian-resulting revolution. I will return to another Camus classic, The Stranger (1942), to examine the societally unacknowledged rebellion that takes place for many individuals who psychiatry today sadly pathologizes with so-called autistic spectrum disorder.

Human beings not only rebel against in-your-face coercions and injustices, but can also rebel against boredom, ugly environments, inauthentic social conventions, and other aspects of their public and private lives that they find oppressive and alienating. There is much that human beings rebel against, and there are various forms of rebellion, many of which psychiatry pathologizes.

My initial recognition of the obtuseness of mental health professionals—especially psychiatrists—with regard to rebellion came when I was in graduate school for clinical psychology. It was then that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published its 1980 DSM-III, and it included a new product called oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), which has only grown in popularity. Among the symptoms that qualifies kids for ODD are “often argues with adults” and “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests and rules.” The rebellions that qualify these kids for ODD do not even rise to the level of law breaking, as young law breakers are labeled with another mental illness called conduct disorder (CD).

Psychiatry’s ODD proclamation was an incredibly useful “what-the-fuck!” moment for me as it compelled me to think about what other more subtle rebellions psychiatry was also pathologizing.

Next, I considered attention deficit disorder (ADD), the name of which was later changed to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While some young people rebel against the oppression and alienation they experience in their family, the majority of us want to rebel against school. With the exception of psychiatrists and other “neuro-compliants” with a talent for shit eating, most people find it quite reasonable to rebel against school’s demands. Such demands include obedience to authorities who have done nothing to gain respect; attention to boring lectures; passively sitting for long hours in an ugly classroom; daily rude interruptions of one’s early morning sleep so as “not to be late for class”; and compliance with a variety of other overt and covert coercions. Unfortunately, what I discovered in graduate school was that rebelling against school’s demands was also seen as mental illness.

A slew of research by the 1990s made clear this ADD/ADHD phenomenon was a rebellion against an unpleasant environment and not a disease. Studies showed that so-called ADD/ADHD kids are indistinguishable from so-called “normal” kids when they choose the learning activity, when the activity is novel, when they are interested in the activity, when the activity is stimulating, or when they are paid for doing it. Despite this research being reported in a slew of popular books (such as Thomas Armstrong’s 1995 The Myth of the A.D.D. Child), the pathologizing of this attentional rebellion has only increased in the last generation.

By the time DSM-IV was published in 1994, it was clear to me that psychiatry’s entire DSM manual was not an illness manual but a compendium of the various ways humans rebel. This led to my 2001 book Commonsense Rebellion, which argues that rather than mental illness, our emotional and behavioral problems are best seen as natural human reactions to the growth of an increasingly institutionalized society that fosters helplessness rather than empowerment; isolation rather than community; fear rather than trust; manipulative relationships rather than respectful ones; homogeneity and boredom rather than diversity and stimulation; bureaucratic subordination and machine efficiency rather than human dignity and creativity; and authoritarian hierarchies rather than participatory democracy.

Commonsense Rebellion argues that such an institutionalized society results in a loss of autonomy, community and our humanity, which includes the variety of ways of being human and the variety of rebellions against feeling controlled rather than understood. In this context, I discuss not only ODD, CD, and ADHD, but depression, anxiety, so-called schizophrenia and psychoses, and several self-destructive compulsive behaviors involving alcohol, drugs, overeating, and gambling.

On the Autistic Spectrum or a Camus Anti-Hero?

Not included in Commonsense Rebellion is autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as it did not exist when I was writing the book. Autism did exist, but was one of psychiatry’s more obscure mental illnesses that was seldom diagnosed (in my graduate school 1981 textbook A Handbook of Clinical Behavior Therapy, the chapter “A Guideline for Planning Behavior Modification Programs for Autistic Children” stated: “About one child out of every 2500 births is likely to be diagnosed autistic”). And in the late 1990s, when researching and writing Commonsense Rebellion, there was no such thing as autism spectrum disorder, which only became an official disorder in DSM-5 in 2013. However, by 2025, the CDC stated: “About 1 in 31 (3.2%) children aged 8 years has been identified with ASD [autism spectrum disorder].” Anecdotally, school teachers tell me the percentage so labeled is far higher. Note: The now extinct Asperger’s Syndrome, once an official label for milder autism, was included in the 1994 DSM-IV but not in the 2013 DSM-5, as individuals once diagnosed with Asperger’s are now diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder.

It was not, however, the increasing popularization of autism spectrum disorder that motivated me to consider it in the context of rebellion, but rather some serendipity. It began with the release of the latest film version of The Stranger (directed by François Ozon), which spurred me to re-read the short novel, which I had first read more than 40 years ago. In re-reading The Stranger, I couldn’t help thinking that I hope the increasingly psychiatrized world has not trivialized it and missed its point by reducing the protagonist to suffering from autism spectrum disorder. This ugly thought prompted me to Google “The Stranger” and “autism spectrum disorder”; and sure enough, the very first Google search listing was from the journal Psychology Research and Behavior Management, an article titled “Camus’s L’Etranger and the First Description of a Man with Asperger’s Syndrome.” I’ll return to this article, but first, for those who have never read The Stranger, a brief summary of it:

The protagonist, Meursault, a Frenchman living in French-colonized Algeria, does not display conventional emotional responses such as grief, and this alienates him from societal expectations. Through a series of events, Meursault kills an Arab Algerian, and the second part of the novel details Meursault’s trial and his indifference to conventions. Specifically, given the racism against Arabs in French colonial Algeria, if Meursault had behaved in the societally demanded way, he would have either not been convicted of murder or received a light sentence. Ultimately, it is not Meursault’s killing of the Arab man but his unwillingness to conform to societal norms with respect to his emotional reactions that results in Meursault’s death sentence. Camus, in the Preface to the 1955 edition of The Stranger, makes clear his intentions:

“The hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game . . . . some readers have been tempted to look upon him as a piece of social wreckage. A much more accurate idea of the character, or, at least one much closer to the author’s intentions, will emerge if one asks just how Meursault doesn’t play the game. The reply is a simple one; he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what isn’t true. It is also and above all, to say more than is true, and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels. This is what we all do, every day, to simplify life. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately society feels threatened. He is asked, for example, to say that he regrets his crime, in the approved manner. He replies that what he feels is annoyance rather than real regret. And this shade of meaning condemns him.”

While Camus refers here to Meursault as “the hero of my book,” Meursault is today more commonly viewed as an anti-hero, a term which Camus would likely accept. Other famous fictional anti-heroes include Yossarian in Catch-22, Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, and the Underground Man in Notes from the Underground. In literature, the traditional hero is admired by the general population and has high social status or gains it through heroic actions. In contrast, while the anti-hero may be seen as a hero from a particular point of view, from a more conventional perspective, the anti-hero may be seen as pathetic, cowardly, or even a villain. Most importantly, the anti-hero in literature is someone who provokes a critique of societal morality and its norms.

One of the more fun and accessible videos I found as to why Meursault’s refusal to play the social game makes him an anti-hero is “THE STRANGER: Albert Camus’ Warning to the World” on the Temporal Nomad youtube channel. Here’s an excerpt:

“We prefer someone who fakes compassion to someone who admits indifference. We demand emotional performances as proof of humanity. He looked at his own indifference and didn’t try to hide it. Didn’t try to justify it. Didn’t try to transform it into something acceptable. . . . Meursault’s indifference isn’t psychopathic coldness. It’s the natural response of someone living in a world where nothing seems to have true importance.

You learn to manufacture emotions. You learn to smile at the right moment, to cry when expected, to be indignant when necessary. And over time, this manufacturing becomes so automatic that you forget you’re pretending. You forget there’s a difference between truly feeling and demonstrating what’s expected. Until one day, you encounter Meursault, someone who never learned to manufacture, who simply exists with their indifference exposed. . . . We condemn him for admitting what we all feel, but nobody has the courage to say. Because it’s easier to point at Meursault and call him a monster than to look in the mirror and recognize that perhaps we’re all strangers living borrowed lives, inhabiting bodies that function but don’t feel, existing without ever really being present.”

A Psychologically and Philosophically Impoverished Psychiatry

In contrast to the psychological and philosophical value that Camus and many of us see in Meursault, let’s return to the 2018 journal article “Camus’s L’Etranger and the First Description of a Man with Asperger’s Syndrome” in Psychology Research and Behavior Management, and to what I consider not only a psychologically and philosophically obtuse view of Meursault, but also psychiatry’s impoverished view of the increasing number of people being pathologized with autistic spectrum disorder.

The article begins with the following: “The book rests entirely on the thoughts, words and actions of its central character, Meursault, and these were found to show impairment of social relationships, communication and interaction, with other traits diagnostic of the Asperger’s subgroup of the autism spectrum disorder.” The author tells us that Camus based Meursault on a friend who would have been diagnosed with the disorder had it then existed, and that in this light, many of the interpretations and ideas about Meursault must now be reconsidered, as they are a “misreading” of the behavior of a man on the autistic spectrum:

“The outcome of this clinical examination of L’étranger . . . shows . . . a precise account of a person with a neurobehavioral disorder . . . . Meursault’s words, thoughts, actions and behavior all fall into a consistent, repetitive pattern; there is a poverty of social and personal communication, an inability to understand what others are thinking, or to detect nuance and nonverbal signals, an apparent lack of feeling and emotion and an inability to emote; he is withdrawn and uncommunicative, but his silence may be interrupted by a disconcertingly tangential, if logical response; and he can be upset unexpectedly, usually by particular environmental stimuli, and this can result in aggression.”

This journal article offers examples that purport to show Meursault’s autistic emotional unawareness. When Meursault is put in a cell with Arab prisoners who ask him what he has done, he tells them “I had killed an Arab,” which the article interprets as Meursault being emotionally unaware of the inappropriateness and danger of his reply. Another example offered is how “Meursault’s lawyer cannot make him understand that his apparent lack of emotion, even at the death of his mother, would enhance the court’s view of him as a cold-blooded murderer.” This view of Meursault—that he is emotionally unaware—is an impoverished view of not only Meursault but many like him who are today pathologized. A major point of Camus is that Meursault is indifferent as to how other people think about him, not unaware, and he simply refuses to lie about his indifference.

The article then proceeds to deride the idea of using the words and actions of Meursault, someone who should be seen as having a mental disorder, to “philosophically. . . support existentialism, absurdism and ethical systems based on the inexplicability of humanity” because it is “now obvious” that Meursault’s words and behavior are a reflection of his autistic syndrome disorder.

In one last piss on the value of Camus and The Stranger, the article concludes: “Words and actions arising from his Asperger’s mode of thought and state of mind have been inappropriately used to develop and support philosophical ideas such as absurdism and existentialism. L’étranger is not the novel it once seemed, now that we know it was powered by Meursault’s behavioral disorder and can only be understood in this respect.”

Out of the Rabbit Hole and a Return to Reality

After all of my small-screen laptop and large-screen movie theater research, I had a lucky opportunity for face-to-face human contact to get either some validation or invalidation. I had become acquainted with a man in his thirties who had twenty years prior been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and later received an autistic spectrum syndrome diagnosis which, for several years, had qualified him for disability. He had continued to have trouble in job interviews because, after the initial greeting, he did not keep eye contact in the conversation, and he rarely smiled. I was curious as to what his reaction would be to another passage from the “THE STRANGER: Albert Camus’ Warning to the World,” which I read to him:

“Life in society requires that we all be actors. From an early age, we learn that there are correct ways to react to each situation. How to demonstrate joy at parties. How to express sadness at funerals. How to perform love in relationships. How to fake interest in empty conversations. We build an entire repertoire of appropriate gestures, acceptable voice tones, expected facial expressions. And the more skilled we become at this performance, the more we’re recognized as well adjusted . . . . You perform interest in conversations that bore you. You pretend to understand things you don’t understand. You agree with opinions that aren’t yours. And you do all this automatically without questioning because you were trained from a young age to follow the script, not to cause discomfort. When you encounter someone who doesn’t follow social rules, someone who’s excessively honest, someone who doesn’t fake interest when bored, someone who doesn’t perform empathy they don’t feel, what’s your first reaction? You feel discomfort.”

Listening to this, he turned toward me and made the longest eye contact that he had ever made, and he smiled for several seconds. I asked him if this stuff sounded whacko, or if instead did it make him feel understood? He said, “Understood.”

When one turns away from the impoverished ideology of psychiatry and toward psychologically and philosophically enriching authors such as Albert Camus, one does not stop with simplistic answers. If you don’t wish to read The Stranger, I highly recommend director François Ozon’s recent film version of it, which not only incorporates beautiful black-and-white cinematography and great acting but, most importantly, captures the many messages of Camus.

In addition to the questions provoked by this novel already discussed, both Camus and Ozon compel us to also consider whether there can be violence in both lies and truths. There is a violence against oneself in lying to oneself and others about the truth of who one is. But there can also be a violence to others in the practice of brutal honesty. Camus and now Ozon compel us to ask many other existential questions.

If we accept what Camus calls the absurd—that life has essentially no meaning—how can this conclusion result in liberation, freedom, and indeed even happiness? If life has no inherent meaning or purpose, can this liberate us to create our own purpose? If we stop playing social games and stop disconnecting from ourselves, can we only then feel truly alive? Is The Stranger a tragedy about Meursault’s stubborn refusal to pretend that results in a death sentence for him? Or, at a deeper level, is it another type of tragedy, one about everyone else lying to themselves and others, pretending, and betraying themselves, and in effect spending their entire lives being essentially dead?

With regard to psychiatry ideology, organized religions, and even some philosophical abstractions, Camus, in several of his works, questions whether the attempt to systemize a reality that cannot be systemized because of its essential absurdity creates greater violence and harm. When instead of attempting to impose an artificial order on reality, if we simply accept it as absurd and without meaning, Camus asks does this mean we ourselves must be absurd and without meaning? Or can we rebel against that absurdity while at the same time acknowledging it? And if so, what then would that rebellion be?

Camus answers these questions in not only The Stranger and The Rebel but in The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and a body of work for which he received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature. The answers offered by Camus are not simply philosophically interesting but have provided people with an authentic option to suicide, something many of them did not receive from their mental health professionals.