Particularizing the picture: Features and uses of instantiation stories told by clinicians doing autism diagnosis

Diagnosis is the narrative process through which professional clinicians transform experiences of illness and disability into disease (Hunter, 1991; Jutel, 2009; Kleinman et al., 1978). Maynard and Turowetz (2017a) found that the narrative structure for autism diagnosis consists of two primary story types concerning the conduct of children under assessment: (1) tendency stories about propensities or quantifications of behavior, and (2) instantiation stories that describe single instances of conduct occurring at a specific time or place. Instantiation stories represent a mechanism by which clinicians might preserve particulars about children under assessment in a way that is informative for configuring diagnoses that attend to the child's individuality rather than as a generic autistic child. This paper constitutes an investigation into the uses and features of instantiation stories as told by clinicians doing autism diagnosis. Clinicians primarily use instantiation stories to support generalizations about the child that relate to official diagnostic criteria (Excerpt 1). Clinicians also use instantiation stories to index instances of conduct that apparently misalign with a tendency description and the diagnostic picture (Excerpt 2). In such cases, clinicians work to demonstrate how the generalization endures despite the apparent misalignment. Furthermore, clinicians may use instantiation stories to tell about humorous or otherwise “storyable” (Sacks, 1992) conduct (Excerpt 3). Finally, clinicians sometimes use instantiation stories to mitigate the delivery of a diagnosis (Excerpt 4).