Neuroqueering Monotropic Time: A short summary

Autistic/ADHD people are more likely to be monotropic and resonate with the theory of monotropism. Dinah Murray, Wenn Lawson, and Mike Lesser developed the theory of monotropism in the late 1990s. It is typically described as a neuro-affirming theory of Autism, but I think it is also a temporal mode.

I am considering whether being monotropic is not just about using attentional resources differently, but could also be about experiencing time differently due to how we use our attentional resources.

If you’re monotropic you may notice that:

Time is immersive and fluid.

Transitions may feel disruptive because they pull us out of durational temporal coherence and flow.

How you use your attentional resources may feel like being in a tunnel, and the world outside of that tunnel may feel like it is melting away or completely disappearing.

Temporal markers (like deadlines, calendars or clocks) may lose meaning or become really stressful and cause intense dysregulation.

Transitions may feel disruptive because they pull us out of durational temporal coherence and flow.

Autistic people often have to mask to fit in, we may struggle to be understood due to differences in our lived experience with other people. This mismatch of ways of experiencing the world is not just a communication gap and difference, as described in the Double Empathy Problem (Milton 2012) it may also be a Double Temporality Problem. Perhaps the world and the majority of people run on neuronormative time (temps), but monotropic people live and experience life more in felt experiences (durée) – in fluctuating flow states, a different internal rhythm that is unique to each person.

The philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941) distinguished between two kinds of time:

Temps: spatialized, quantitative, clock-measured time.

Durée: lived, qualitative, and immersive duration. This is the rhythm of consciousness itself and FELT experiences.

Temps divides time into identical units, i.e., seconds, minutes, and hours. Durée is felt time. It is how we experience time from the inside, and for Autistic/ADHD people, that may be more sensory and dependent upon the environment and how safe we feel. Bergson saw durée not as a subjective illusion but as the real nature of time, with clock-time being the abstraction.

Monotropic time is FELT. It is immersive, expansive, flowy, omnidirectional and deeply rhizomatic. Monotropic time is like a temporal home.


I believe we need to release ourselves from the grip of neuronormative time. To neuroqueer time is to subvert expectations of how you think you should be living according to the unwritten rule book of society’s norms set out by the majority of the population. Neuroqueering time isn’t just for neurodivergent people; it could benefit everyone. 

By neuroqueering ourselves and neuroqueering time, anyone and everyone can break free from the neuronormative time structures that bind us all to capitalism and restrict and cause harm to lives in so many ways. We may be able to live more attuned to our own temporalities and more at one with our environment and those around us if we liberate ourselves from the ticking hands of the clock and find more flexible ways to manage our flow and our own time.

Let’s dwell in our natural flow and rhythms, actively resist neuronormative time, find spaces to neuroqueer time further in the liminal spaces and embrace our own unique rhythms and monotropic time.

Further reading and a more in-depth exploration can be found in my blog:

Bergson, H. (1889). Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness.

Bergson, H. (2022). Creative Evolution. Routledge.

Edgar, H. (2025, April 21). Neuroqueering Time: Bergson, Deleuze, and Monotropism (an exploration). Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/neuroqueering-time-bergson-deleuze-and-monotropism-an-exploration/

Edgar, H. (2024). Quantum Neuro-Holographic Thoughts from a Liminal Space. Autistic Realms. https://autisticrealms.com/quantum-neuro-holographic-thoughts-from-a-liminal-space/

Milton, D. E. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: the ‘double empathy problem.’ Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008

Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398

Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Autonomous Press.