Wow! eBook
The Double Empathy Reader: Exploring Theory, Neurodivergent Lived Experience and Implications for Practice
Author(s): Damian Milton (Author)
- Publisher: Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd
- Publication Date: August 18, 2025
- Language: English
- Print length: 520 pages
- ISBN-10: 1803882956
- ISBN-13: 9781803882956
Book Description
The Double Empathy Reader brings together a substantial collection of work from leading researchers, theorists and practitioners, with first-hand accounts of neurodivergent people, to explore this growing area of study within the neurodiversity movement. This comprehensive handbook explores Damian Milton’ s ‘ double empathy problem’ : the breakdown in mutual understanding that can happen between any two people yet is more likely to occur when people of differing dispositions attempt to interact. It challenges the traditional view that in exchanges between autistic and non-autistic people, this breakdown was simply the result of autistic people being inherently deficient in empathy. Thirteen years after the theory was first published, The Double Empathy Reader brings together an important volume of work to explore the research that has developed in that time as well as the many gaps in our understanding that still exist, with the aim to understand the potential of this theory to aid a reframing of autism itself and the radical change this could bring when considering best practice models for supporting autistic people in different settings.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Damian Milton is a sociologist and social psychologist who specialises in autism research and is an autism rights advocate. Damian works part-time for the Tizard Centre, University of Kent as a Senior Lecturer in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Damian has also been a consultant for the Transform Autism Education (TAE) project and numerous projects for the Autism Education Trust (AET). Damian was diagnosed with Asperger’ s in 2009 at the age of 36. Damian chairs the Participatory Autism Research Collective (PARC).
