The broader autism phenotype: expanding the clinical gestalt of autism and broadening DSM V criteria of autism spectrum disorder
The broader autism phenotype: expanding the clinical gestalt of autism and broadening DSM V criteria of autism spectrum disorder

Summary/Abstract: The clinical gestalts of autism are very broad and much more heterogeneous than professionals realise. The diagnostic and statistical manual of the American Psychiatric Association DSM V,1 gives a more narrow and condensed description of what autism is in the twentieth century. DSM1 focuses on problems with socioemotional reciprocity, non-verbal communication and difficult interpersonal relationships, restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, early onset and functional impairment. First, it’s necessary to flesh out the autism spectrum disorder gestalts as it presents to experienced clinical practitioners. It is the opposite of the, “tick box”, approach to diagnosis, so common today. It focuses on the phenomena, the clinical gestalt as they would have been focused on in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, an approach that has faded into the background in the late twentieth and early twenty first century.2 It is critical at this point of the twenty first century that we re-engage with phenomenology and with the clinical gestalt of psychiatric conditions neurodevelopment disorders, which show a great deal of overlap with much mixed phenomenology.

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