Adaptation as Reciprocal Dynamic

Abstract

My interest in human adaptation follows from my efforts to understand neurodiversity. This topic has occupied my attention informally for nearly 30 years and has become, within the last decade, a focus of inquiry for me across a series of autobiographical, theoretical, and empirical papers. I was forced to take on this topic during the youth of my daughter, who began exhibiting unusual behaviors early in life, ultimately being diagnosed with a number of what are known as mental illnesses and neurodivergent conditions: Asperger's syndrome, Tourette's syndrome, severe chronic anxiety, depression, oppositional defiance disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, as they are known in the diagnostic community. This chapter serves as my effort to consider adaptation as a social, rather than solely an individual problem. I first review Darwin's evolutionary theory and the role of adaptation for species, social groups, and individuals, all of which influenced Vygotsky's (1931) attention to the problem of adaptation for people of difference. Not surprisingly, Vygotsky viewed this issue as a social problem not confined to the individual of difference but shared by those in the environment of development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)