The AutSide Podcast

Today’s episode introduces a transformative framework for understanding neurodivergent cognition, specifically reframing gestalt processing as a form of whole-memory wisdom. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, challenges traditional medicalised narratives that categorise autistic individuals through a lens of social deficit or developmental delay. By rejecting eugenic-based standards, Dr. Hoerricks asserts that these unique patterns of thinking and connecting are coherent and valuable rather than disordered. She emphasises the importance of narrative sovereignty, arguing that the community must reclaim the power to define their own experiences from institutions that have historically sought to contain them. Ultimately, her writing serves as a call for cognitive freedom and a recognition of the relational ecology that exists between those who perceive the world in patterns.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/legacy-we-are-here-because-autistics
Let me know what you think.
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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode explores the scientific validation of Gestalt processing, challenging the traditional belief that language is understood only in a linear, fragmented manner. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, highlights a significant shift from defending holistic meaning-making to showcasing recent psycholinguistic research that confirms these theories. By examining three distinct studies from around the world, she illustrates how mainstream cognitive science is beginning to acknowledge that humans process information as unified wholes. These findings provide a crucial counterpoint to dominant academic myths by bridging the gap between sensory neuroscience and structural linguistics. Ultimately, her article serves to affirm that non-linear cognition is a legitimate and scientifically supported method of understanding the world.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/gestalt-affirmed-psycholinguistic
Let me know what you think.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode explores the historical shift in psycholinguistics away from gestalt processing toward rigid, analytic models of the human mind. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that this transition was not accidental but rather a political choice designed to favor institutional control and measurable metrics over intuitive understanding. Using personal experience, Dr. Hoerricks describes pattern recognition as a primary way of knowing where conclusions arrive as a complete whole rather than a series of logical steps. This holistic perspective is portrayed as an ancient cognitive style that often feels incompatible with modern, fragmented expectations of proper reasoning. Ultimately, she suggests that the current focus on behavioral management suppresses a deeper, more natural way of perceiving the world through felt coherence.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/the-day-psycholinguistics-let-gestalt
Let me know what you think.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

In this week’s episode, Cathy and I talk about what education becomes when it is organised around coherence rather than control. I speak from inside my experience as an autistic gestalt processor and as a teacher who refuses to begin with scores, compliance, or behaviour charts.
In this week’s episode, Cathy and I talk about what education becomes when it is organised around coherence rather than control. I speak from inside my experience as an autistic gestalt processor and as a teacher who refuses to begin with scores, compliance, or behaviour charts. For me, learning does not emerge from fragmentation. It emerges from relationship—from building a relational field where a student feels safe enough to organise themselves, take risks, and grow.
We spend time unpacking how gestalt processing—especially in language and literacy—is consistently misunderstood by schooling systems that privilege analytic, linear models. I reflect on students who read beautifully yet are labelled deficient because they do not break language into approved units, and on hyperlexic learners whose coherence is mistaken for performance rather than meaning. When systems insist on disassembly at all costs, they punish wholeness and call it intervention.
Attunement is the thread that keeps returning. Whether I’m working with very young children or teenagers, the principle is the same: see the person as a whole. When environments adapt to the child—sensory needs, rhythm, motivation, relational safety—distress falls away and learning accelerates. I share concrete classroom examples where small, relationally grounded shifts led to dramatic changes, not because they were clever, but because they were human.
We also speak plainly about systems. I name the limits of special education structures that valorise data whilst dismissing lived autistic knowledge, especially when that knowledge is not yet sanctioned by dominant research paradigms. I talk about why much of my work has lived on Substack—how recursive writing, meaning-time, and kairos allow me to think truthfully, without flattening myself to fit linear expectations. The conversation closes with a quiet insistence: gestalt processing is not a deviation. It is a coherent, ancient way minds organise meaning—and education will only begin to work when it stops trying to extinguish that fact.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode explores gestalt processing as an ancestral form of human intelligence that prioritises holistic patterns over fragmented data. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, describes a cognitive experience where conclusions arrive fully formed, forcing a retrospective translation into the incremental logic demanded by modern society. This “older way of knowing” stands in stark contrast to contemporary metrics and rigid analytical rules that value numbered steps over intuitive coherence. By framing this mindset as a predigital legacy rather than a cognitive flaw, she challenges the dominance of algorithmic reasoning. Ultimately, she suggests that valuing the entirety of a situation is a vital human capability that predates the historical obsession with record-keeping.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/the-last-mind-before-the-ledger
Let me know what you think.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe