“There’s No Constant”: Oxytocin, Cortisol, and Balanced Proportionality in Hormonal Models of Autism

Malcolm, Roslyn

Abstract

Autism is a fluid category with a 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.

Citation

Malcolm, R. (2021). “There’s No Constant”: Oxytocin, Cortisol, and Balanced Proportionality in Hormonal Models of Autism. Medical Anthropology, 40(4), 375-388. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2021.1894558

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Mar 18, 2021
• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Jun 9, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 18, 2022
• Journal: Medical Anthropology
• Print ISSN: 0145-9740
• Electronic ISSN: 1545-5882
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 40
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 375-388
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2021.1894558
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1247200