“This is the culmination of a 2.5-year passion project—completed with absolutely no funding. Back in 2023, my practicum students came to me wanting to conduct research that truly mattered. My mind immediately went to how small our little bubble of autistic therapists and clinicians really is, and to the deeply harmful myth—still very much alive—that autistic people can’t be competent clinicians.

That belief doesn’t come out of nowhere. We’re still surrounded by myths that autistic people can’t have friends, can’t sustain relationships, and can’t possibly hold meaningful conversations. So we started looking. And we searched everywhere. What we found was startling: zero peer-reviewed studies on autistic psychotherapists, anywhere in the world.

I reached out to Megan Anna Neff, assuming that if anyone knew of something—someone—working in this space, it would be them. They generously shared a handful of website articles and personal case studies, but even they didn’t know of any peer-reviewed research. That’s when we realized: if this work didn’t exist, we had to create it.

We chose a qualitative approach so we could get to the heart of autistic therapists’ lived experiences. Listening to their stories and analyzing the data was profoundly moving. Many times, I found myself tearing up—and honestly, I still do when I read quotes from the manuscript.

Since then, a couple of studies have emerged on this topic, including one from the UK, with more on the way.

It has been an absolute honor to contribute to this growing body of work and to the community it represents.

I hope you find as much meaning in our participants’ stories as we did.”— Dr. Hogan