We’re back! And this time, we’re turning our attention to another ambiguous concept that has long shaped public (mis)understandings of autism: empathy.

As always, you can find a (not Substack-generated) transcript of the episode, as well as a music-free remix, here.

“I choose to live life deliberately”

Maybe you’ve heard the claim that autistic people “lack empathy.”

Or maybe you’ve heard the opposite: that, in fact, autistic people are hyper-empathetic.

Maybe you’ve even heard that autistic people are so hyper-empathetic that they have paranormal telepathic abilities. Yikes!

But what if, instead of making sweeping generalizations, we learned about the nuances of one person’s experiences with empathy?

When Joanna and I first started working on NeuroDiving, we did what any super-serious podcasters would do: we made a website. Not even a week after it went live, I received a friendly email from a minister in Santa Cruz, CA named Ryan Althaus. Diagnosed with autism as an adult, Ryan was eager to dive into the philosophical dimensions of his diagnosis. I Googled him, and in that Googling, I found a sermon in which he mentioned scoring a “0” on an empathy test while still in seminary. I had to know more.

Turns out, Ryan had a whole host of insights into the nature of empathy. In our conversation with Ryan—NeuroDiving’s first-ever interview!—he talked us through his experiences taking psychometric tests, reflected on how empathy shows up in his own life, and offered thoughtful critiques of over-reliance on empathy.

So, in this episode, meet Ryan. I doubt you’ll think about empathy in quite the same way again.

Topics Discussed

* Meet Ryan! (00:20)

* Surprisingly, a psych test labeled Ryan as having “no empathy” (01:48).

* Ryan’s background (05:21).

* How Ryan was diagnosed with autism after experience eating disorder relapse (06:07).

* Ryan’s autism diagnosis helped make sense of those earlier psych test results (the ones claiming he had “no empathy”). We explore the psych tests used in seminaries. (09:30).

* Those psych tests also said that Ryan “likes to break rules for fun” (11:53).

* The church polity exam illustrates Ryan’s relationship with rules (12:56).

* Autistic people tend to get low scores on tests that claim to measure empathy—but those tests have limitations (15:23).

* How Ryan experiences cognitive empathy (AKA theory of mind) (20:58).

* Ryan’s experiences with emotional contagion (22:08).

* Ryan’s experience with “abstract empathy” (23:45).

* Connection to alexithymia (24:34).

* Ryan’s experiments in living—how Ryan has worked to understand other people’s experiences and emotions (25:46).

* Ryan’s three critiques of empathy (28:06).

Sources Mentioned

* Ryan Althaus, From Emaciated to Emancipated: The Story of a Skinny Mango (2023).

* Even more books by Ryan!

* Ryan’s radio show.

* Floyd and Gupta, “Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory,” StatPearls (2023).

* The “unofficial” list of questions used to place people on the psychopathic deviate scale.

* Some examples of the “standard view” on autism and empathy:

* Langwerden, et al., “An Exploratory Study of MMPI-2-RF Personality and Psychopathology Profiles of Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder without Intellectual Disability,” Clinical Neuropsychiatry, Vol. 19 Issue 5 (2022).

* Shah, et al., “Trait Autism is a Better Predictor of Empathy than Alexithymia,” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (2019).

* Sindermann, et al., “Empathy, Autistic Tendencies, and Systematizing Tendencies: Relationships Between Standard Self-Report Measures,” Frontiers in Psychiatry (2019).

* An autistic researcher’s take on autism and empathy:

* Silvertant, “Autistics have lower empathy?” (2021).

Credits

Hosting, Research, Fact-Checking, Script-Editing: Amelia Hicks and Joanna Lawson

Guest: Ryan Althaus

Music and Audio Production: Amelia Hicks

Thank-Yous

Thank you to Ryan for sharing his experiences and insights with us! Be sure to check out Ryan’s writing (listed above). And if you’re in Santa Cruz, you can join him on a sailing adventure!

And thanks to the Marc Sanders Foundation and the Templeton Foundation for their support of the show.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit neurodiving.substack.com

Episode 6: "I choose to live life deliberately"