Neurodivergence and the Geometry of Masking: A Three-Dimensional Field Model of Incommensurability, Morphogenetic Pressure, and Compatibility Work
Year: 2026
Type: book
Abstract: Masking is predominantly described in current autism and neurodivergence research as a psychological and behavioural phenomenon: as a conscious or unconscious adaptation to social expectations, the intensity of which is often captured through camouflaging, subjective effort, exhaustion, identity conflicts, or burnout. This perspective has made important experiences of neurodivergent people visible, but largely leaves open which structural conditions generate masking in the first place and why outwardly similar forms of masking can have qualitatively different causes and consequences. In particular, it remains unclear why neurodivergent people frequently show high masking scores without this allowing the conclusion that masking is fundamentally a specifically neurodivergent or necessarily exhausting activity. The present paper therefore develops, building on a general theory of competing relevance orders, a spatial field model of masking. Masking is understood here not primarily as a property or strategy of a person, but as form-building and compatibility work within a multidimensional social space in which different world-bindings, relevance orders, and normative rasters encounter one another. What is decisive, therefore, is not only how strongly a person masks, but within which structural constellation masking emerges. The proposed model distinguishes in particular between the structural distance or possible incommensurability of the relevance orders involved, the asymmetry of the required translation work, and operative viability or resonance within the respective field. On this basis, the hypothesis is developed that at least part of particularly pronounced neurodivergent masking cannot be adequately explained by pressure to conform, stigma avoidance, or strategic self-presentation. In certain neurodivergent constellations, masking may instead emerge from a deeper structural non-coincidence between different forms of perceptual, attentional, meaning-related, and world-organisational structure. The concept of incommensurability is introduced here explicitly as a relational theoretical dimension and not as a universally established property of neurodivergent existence. It designates a possible degree of structural non-coincidence between world-bindings, the form, depth, and situational significance of which may vary considerably across different neurodivergent profiles. At the same time, the field model makes it possible to differentiate between different masking generators. Strategic, stigma-induced, role-related, and incommensurability-induced masking can produce outwardly similar forms of behaviour even though the underlying relations differ. Exhaustion, intensity, and duration are therefore not understood as defining properties of masking, but as possible consequence variables of the respective field constellation. High energy expenditure indicates how costly a particular compatibility operation is, but identifies neither its generator nor the structure that makes this operation necessary. This shift also changes the understanding of unmasking. A reduction in subjective burden does not have to mean that a supposedly original or authentic identity has been uncovered beneath a social mask. It may equally result from a change in the relational field: expectations are modified, translation work is taken over by other participants, Eigenzeiten are made possible, or normative rasters are opened. Unmasking can therefore be understood as a reorganisation and redistribution of compatibility work and morphogenetic pressure (Speed 2026a), without the underlying difference between world-bindings necessarily disappearing. The proposed model thus shifts the central research question from How strongly does a person mask? to Within what space must this person operate, which non-neutralisable differences encounter one another there, and who carries the work of their social compatibilisation? From this perspective, neurodivergent masking appears not merely as a particularly intensive variant of general adaptive behaviour, but as a possible limit case in which the spatial and relational structure of masking becomes particularly clearly visible. The paper therefore proposes a connection between neurodivergence research, relational ontology, and a theory of social fields, and opens an approach to investigating masking not only psychologically, but geometrically, relationally, and structurally.
Author: Speed, Timothy
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7202364102