There's No Constant

Oxytocin, Cortisol, and Balanced Proportionality in Hormonal Models of Autism

Bibliographic Data

ID4564366
AuthorsRoslyn Malcolm (0000-0003-3217-4278, Durham University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume40
Issue4
Pages375-388
Publication date2021-05-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0145-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-5882
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01459740.2021.1894558
PMID36018784
OpenAlexW3137871164
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited40

Autism is a fluid category with sensory difference recently emerging as a key aspect of the lived experience of the condition. In concert with the "fight or flight response", sensory sensitivities are used to articulate chronic stress caused by "sensory overload" from living in sensorially "toxic" environments. Based on long-term participant observation in the UK and USA with practitioners and participants of an autism-specific horse therapy method I offer an ethnographic window onto this ecological model of autism that entangles material flows, embodiments, and environments. I detail a novel hormonal understanding of autism, in which oxytocin and cortisol act as material-semiotic messengers of sociality. I ask what is at stake and show how notions of hormonal "balance" and proportionality provide a means of comprehending simultaneities of behavioral, diagnostic, and material fixity and flow in autism

Autism · Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Epistemology · Hormone · Oxytocin · Perception · Proportionality (law · Semiotics · Sensory system · Autism Spectrum Disorder Research · Endocrinology · Human-Animal Interaction Studies · Medicine · Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior · Neuroscience · Philosophy · Psychology

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