Time for society to embrace divergence as well as diversity

Neurodiversity as a benefit to society is a relatively new concept, just as the contribution of any diversity is relatively new. Picture: iStock

It’s been eight years since Clare man William Burton’s The Meeting on the Turret Stairs was voted Ireland’s favourite painting. Hanging in the National Gallery, it shows a medieval woman allowing a knight in chainmail to embrace her — or at least give one of her arms a committed snog. 

Just why people like Sharon Corr get so hooked on this watercolour mystifies me. The centuries-old Danish ballad on which the painting is based has the father of the girl in the blue dress — Hellellil — enraged by the very idea of his daughter falling for a young soldier and ordering his six sons to kill the soldier, named Hildebrand. A lack of buy-in from Hildebrand leaves the six brothers of his beloved good and dead, which doesn’t augur well for the romantic couple.

As the proud owner of a set of turret steps — a spiral staircase taking a climber from the ground floor of a Martello Tower to the roof — I’ve always wanted to get the HSA onto the two lovers in the painting, because a spiral staircase is, frankly, unsafe for anything other than careful ascent or descent. In non-pandemic times, I took people on tours of the tower, and so I’ve witnessed just how challenging a spiral can be. One man’s handsome-but-thick massive retriever bounded up the stairs with wild enthusiasm, only to mutiny in the face of the return journey, so his owner had to hoist him onto his shoulders — seven stone of trembling dog — and carry him back down. Another man, a former rugby player about six foot six and maybe 21 stone, froze halfway up and had to be brought down backwards, praying quietly all the while.

So when one young woman with a spiralling mass of curls who was part of a family group visiting last year during Heritage Week first looked at the spiral and then made the journey on hands and knees, it seemed dashing, if a little offbeat. I guessed at dyspraxia, but neither the visitor nor the family felt the need to discuss it, in her case because she was too busy asking clever offbeat questions about the books lining the tower walls. A week after her visit, she sent me an unexpected gift: a copy of a new translation of Ibsen’s A Dolls House which brought me right back to my teenage abomination of the central character’s patronising, controlling, and creepy husband. Not many millennials send gifts like that.

The giver’s name was Cathy Brennan, a DCU student. She is also the founder of that university’s Neurodivergent Society. Which is new and provides a focus for students who are, well, neurodivergent.

“Adam Harris and Cat Hughes had both tried before me to found an Autism Society and later a Neurodivergent Society,” the founder says.

“It became clear that it would have to be a student to found it. And I thought: ‘If not me, then who? If not now, then when?’"

The rhetorical questions put paid to the initial hesitations about starting the society. In their place came the realisation that understanding the advantages and disadvantages of having a brain that works differently was a prerequisite for the job. Her mother knew by the time Cathy was four that she was clever in a way that was not routine. Listening to Cathy talk about her childhood and study habits makes it clear that while a diagnosis of autism, dyscalculia, or dyspraxia has disadvantages, notably the tendency to be stereotyped by others, it can also save an awful lot of time and grinding effort on the part of neurodivergent children and their parents.

Looking back, Cathy unemotionally acknowledges that no child should spend as much time sitting doing homework as she did, and that what she calls her “obsessive” approach to gaining and retaining control of her schoolwork may not have been healthy. Over time, encounters with others with parallel experiences widened her understanding. In that context, DCU seems to have proven seriously serendipitous.

“The DCU wider community is on a journey towards becoming the archetype of university that's accessible for people with across the board of disabilities," she says. "Universal design initiatives are wonderful, but often overlook hidden disabilities. This is natural, because it's easier to find solutions to problems that are very apparent. Since 2016 DCU had been making strides to become the world's first autism-friendly university. A lot of time and resources go towards earning this accreditation.” 

The work being done by the Neurodiveregent Society in DCU, where the founder chairperson is studying biomedical engineering, amplifies what she believes is a positive trend across all of Irish society.

“I'm very optimistic, and also quite young, so I don't have first-hand experiences of this," she says. "But from talking to older neurodivergent adults, in particular one of my lecturers, I realise that Ireland has come a long way."There's still a long way to go, but the gap between where we are and where we need to be to embrace the lives, talents, and needs of all our citizens is closing. 

"I think now is a great time of change, and I want to be a force for fostering the best in each individual.” 

The society is the first of its kind in Europe. At this point, too, it is modest, with 56 members out of a 17,000-strong student body, not counting those who may join in the upcoming semester. Modest in numbers it may be, but when it comes to ambition and engagement, it is anything but. “We have very high engagement, far above average,” says Cathy.

What they are setting out to do is provide a community where all students are accepted, supported, and encouraged to grow and develop, pushing neurodiversity as a benefit to society — all while helping staff and students in DCU get a handle on what it’s like to be a neurodivergent third-level student. They’ve produced booklets for students interested in learning about neurodivergence and are in the process of creating an anthology of work by DCU’s neurodivergent students in association with the charity Fighting Words. In addition, members have appeared on RTÉ TV’s The Big Idea. 

Neurodiversity as a benefit to society is a relatively new concept, just as the contribution of any diversity is relatively new. Anything that marked someone as outside the norm started by being suspect. The establishment is a slow learner. It took the Vietnam War and the return of grievously maimed troops from that war to move America and the world from concepts like compassion and tolerance to equality. In the process, everybody gained. The dipped corners of pathways that allow a parent to navigate a baby buggy effectively can be traced back to the changes demanded by newly disabled people, as do a rake of design factors that architects and others now regard as a given. 

We have gained from divergence. Now maybe it’s time to start asking questions about how we can gain from neurodivergence.