"To be able to focus on one thing by making everything one, is that not the dream?"

a sneak peek at my next video, on an ADHD theory of ADHD

More than one viewer commented on my intro to critical ADHD studies that they’d like a deeper dive into the theory of univocity, which comes from social science researcher Andrew Ivan Brown’s 2023 dissertation, The Univocity of Attention: ADHD and the Case for a Renewed Self-Advocacy.

So, I reached out to Andrew and asked if he would be down to explain his work a bit for the class, and we had a really interesting chat last week.

I’m working on putting together a video about it now, but in the mean time, paid subscribers can scroll to the end for a short preview of our conversation. I would love to hear what ya’ll think about the theory as I work on this script!

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The Univocity of Attention is an attempt to explain what ADHD is, outside of the pathology paradigm, but in a way that also counters the critique that ADHD is just an overmedicalization of ‘normal human behaviors’.

Andrew argues that because ADHD behaviors are so similar to ‘the general state of humanity’ under capitalism, it’s vulnerable to skepticism and dismissal, as in: Everybody has a hard time concentrating now, because of those damn phones!

ADHDers tend to respond to these kinds of critiques by doubling down on biology and talking about genes and brain scans, but there are a couple problems with this:

1. reliable biomarkers for ADHD have yet to be found, which is an easy win for the skeptics’ argument¹

2. it circles right back around to relying on psychiatry’s definition of ADHD, which is one of negation: ADHD is not normal function, it’s dysfunction, disinhibition, disorder. This leaves non-ADHD professionals in charge of defining ADHD, rather than ADHDers themselves.

So, is there a way to explain ADHD in the affirmative, not as a negation of ‘normal’ functioning, but as a way of functioning in its own right? That’s the problem Andrew tackles in his dissertation.

To start, he identifies misrecognition as ‘the predominant form of ADHD harm.’ He writes:

“ADHD individuals—as is the case for any disability—must create new norms for themselves to adapt to their environment.. When these new norms are not recognized by others, ADHD behaviours are inevitably misinterpreted or misread..”

This is different from stigma, which is more about the label itself causing scorn; misrecognition is like misreading the neurodivergent room.²

The neurodiversity movement has actually lessened the stigma of labels quite a bit, he argues, but it hasn’t done much to solve the problem of ADHD norms being misrecognized as character flaws.

Take, for example, the ADHD struggle with linear time. Neurotypicals tend to read my lateness as bad character, but my ADHD friends understand that time is a bit squishy. We all know that “come over for dinner at 6” means the chicken isn’t going in the oven until 7, and we just factor that into our plans.

Interpersonally, misrecognition might just mean losing friends who deeply value punctuality, but professionally, it can have worse consequences:

“In a study of career outcomes of ADHD individuals with a post-secondary degree, it was found that they are still at least twice as likely to be laid off (33% to 13%), 1.5 times as likely to be fired (61% to 43%), and earn $8,900-$15,400 (USD) less per annum than their non-ADHD counterparts of equal educational background.. They are also four times less likely to hold a “professional job” than those without ADHD who hold a similar degree..”³

Misrecognition is another problem The Univocity of Attention sets out to address by outlining an ‘ADHD logic’ that could help self-advocates more clearly explain what ADHD is and why a behavior relates to it, instead of just attributing it to Russell Barkley’s theory of executive dysfunction.

Actually, Andrew takes a bit of inspiration from Barkley’s theory, at least in its structure:

“Barkley begins with one basic deficit, and shows how it unfolds into another deficit; in turn, this second deficit unfolds back into the first deficit. Its end is also its beginning. The logic of ADHD, for Barkley, is this specific immanency, this specific giving-rise-to-itselfness.”

It’s kind of like a big ADHD ourobouros?

Barkley starts with disinhibition, which he says leads to working memory deficits, since a kid who doesn’t stop and think before acting is a kid who’s also not practicing their memory skills. This reinforces the disinhibition, which leads to problems with planning and goal-directed behaviors.⁴

This theory has been so successful in public discourse, Andrew argues, not because it’s actually ever been scientifically validated, but because it logically separates ADHD from ‘normal human behaviors’:

“Barkley’s theory shows, against the skeptics, how garden-variety distraction that every human experiences is not ADHD because it does not unfold from this specific, immanent process.”

Andrew’s theory attempts to do something similar, but by starting with attentional difference rather than dysfunction. ADHDers are being misread because we’re viewed through a neurotypical lens that understands attention as something that ‘must be stratified and prioritized’, but that might just not be how we attend.

Below, we talk about equivocity vs univocity of attention, and how the latter could offer an alternative explanation for commonly-discussed ADHD traits like high creativity and emotional dysregulation: