Why the ‘extreme male brain’ theory of autism has been disowned
In an academic world where scholars regret seeing their cherished theories vanish into the knacker’s yard, Sir Simon Baron-Cohen is unusual in wishing people would retire one of his best-known coinages.
Baron-Cohen, one of Britain’s best-known autism experts, says he now regrets the language of his ‘extreme male brain’ theory of autism. He now thinks it may have caused as much bother as good in influencing how people talk about the condition.
This is not because of the underlying science, but because the specific words themselves have proved ‘open to misunderstanding’. The phrase he came up with is now ‘too broad to be useful’, he tells The Spectator.
The soft-spoken clinical psychologist’s change of heart arrives just as the research centre he founded in 1997 is being handed a record-setting new dollop of money.
Cambridge University this week announced a £26 million gift from a US philanthropist to establish the K. Lisa Yang Centre for Autism Research, along with a dedicated autism hub at a children’s hospital in Cambridge. Baron-Cohen will help oversee both ventures. Much of the new money is earmarked for looking at why autistic people have generally poorer health and shorter lives.
Baron-Cohen first set out his famous theory in his 2003 book, The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain, drawing largely on journal work he had published the previous year. In it, he postulated that the capacity for empathy is the critical dividing line between men and women, and between those who are autistic and those who are not.
