Season two, episode five is here: Exposing Violence in ABA: An Interview With Ciara Harte.

Ciara Harte is a neurodivergent counsellor based in Victoria, British Columbia. In this episode, Kristen and Ciara chat about Ciara’s critical discourse analysis of ABA. Ciara has firsthand experience working with applied behaviour analysis principles and practices, and was heavily involved in ABA for a few years. 

Topics discussed also include:

• A brief history of ABA
• The interactional and discursive view of violence and resistance + response-based practice
• The problem of informed consent and ABA
• The ways autistic children enact resistance during applied behaviour analysis

If you’d like to know more about this topic, check out:

“Reframing compliance: Exposing violence within applied behaviour analysis” by Ciara Harte

Ciara Harte Counselling website

“Autistic experiences of applied behaviour analysis” by Laura Anderson

“Quiet hands” by Julia Bascom

Handbook of applied behavior analysis: History, philosophy, principles, and basic methods by Wayne W. Fisher et al.

“The line between intervention and abuse: Autism and applied behaviour analysis” by Patrick Kirkham

“Evidence of increased PTSD symptoms in autistics exposed to applied behavior analysis” by Henny Kupferstein

“Invisible abuse: ABA and the things only autistic people can see” by C. L. Lynch

“I am a disillusioned BCBA: Autistics are right about ABA” by Jo Ram

“Publication bias in studies of an applied behavior-analytic intervention: An initial analysis” by Elyssa Sham and Tristram Smith