What I said last time:

Calling all Autistic comrades!

And calling all neurodivergent comrades!

We will be going through Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman. You can purchase the book through this hyperlink here or here or even here (but preferably through the first two links as I want to support the publisher).

The first two chapters are:

Chapter 1. Rise of the machines

and

Chapter 2. The invention of normality

There’s also the Preface and Introduction.

Every week, we’ll go through two chapters, at least, every week, but if you want, we can go through it bi-weekly (as in, every two weeks, to be precise). I don’t think it deserves to be monthly as it’s a rather short book. It’s about 165 pages of actual text and the rest of the book is supplementary pages, such as References and Works Cited. Otherwise, give your general thoughts down below.

My thoughts:

I’m near the end of the book. I like that Robert Chapman takes issue with Judy Singer and some of her comments later on. But also, regarding the first two chapters, I felt that they were really compelling and helped set up the general interest in the matter at hand. I felt that it does well in terms of getting the reader to understand why normativity is a negative feature of capitalism, even if it may have been preferable to the pseudo-science of the feudal era. The feudal era’s views on mind and body are interesting, though, and more in line with reality, where there is no obsession with a “normative slate” (my words) and instead, everyone is literally different, more or less, from each other. Not sure how to explain it in my own words, but I think as children, we all kinda thought this before we had concepts of what was “right and normal” and what was “wrong and harmful.” The relation to Das Kapital and Marx in the second chapter are also pretty interesting as well.

What I say this time:

The next two chapters are:

Chapter 3. Galton’s paradigm

and

Chapter 4. The eugenics movement

The info about Francis Galton was interesting and it’s no surprise that he helped found psychiatry, looking back on it all. Emil Kraepelin (a name that I didn’t exactly recognize) was also fond of Francis Galton and probably carried the eugenicist approach with him. In sum, Kraepelin wanted to “winnow” people out so they wouldn’t “mix” with the other races and wanted to expand on Galton’s “scientific” study of intelligence and encompass every aspect of the human mind in his research. Also, the leading power of psychiatry was Germany which, well, certainly became more important later. And according to the first page of chapter 4, Winston Churchill was a big proponent of eugenicist psychiatry. The word normalcy also started to appear with Warren G. Harding’s Presidential run in 1920.

My overall thoughts are that this book excels in bringing people up to speed on the history of psychology, psychiatry, and neurodiversity and capitalism from a Marxist point-of-view. Definitely well-worth the read. I highly recommend it.

Here are some questions to help guide you when giving your thoughts down below:

What, and how much, did you learn from the last two chapters?

and

What did you find most interesting from them and what would you like to be elaborated on more?

So same questions as last time, but they work here, in this case.

Join me in this book club that I’ve set up and I’ll tag you all as needed.

Anywho, fire away!

(Make sure to invite others!)