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Amy S.F. Lutz
Born	United States
Alma mater	Penn State BA & PhD, Indiana University MA,
Occupations	Processor, historian of medicine, writer, parent-advocate
Website	amysflutz.com

Amy S.F. Lutz is an American historian of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2018 she is the Vice-President of the National Council on Severe Autism (NCSA) and founding member. She writes about autism topics, often using her son Jonah as an example of life with high support needs. Lutz is the author of three books, Chasing the Intact Mind (2025), We Walk: Life with Severe Autism (2020), and Each Day I Like It Better: Autism, ECT, and the Treatment of Our Most Impaired Children (2014). She publishes in various publications, The Atlantic, Psychology Today, Washington Post, Slate and others.

Early life and education

Lutz received her Masters from Indiana University in fiction writing which she pursed for years before giving it up, saying "[I]t just seemed a little self-indulgent. There was really nothing at stake. Nobody's lives were really impacted by what was unfolding ... as opposed to the really consequential things I was struggling with in my own life, raising a child with severe autism." She entered the PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania already a published author of Each Day I Like It Better, her advisor was Beth Linker. In 2022 she received her PhD from Penn State in the history and sociology of science. As of 2023 Lutz teaches "bioethics and the history of medicine."

“ This idea of the independent autonomous person that at the core of a liberal democracy like ours is kind of a mess. ... That’s what makes us human: is that we are all kind of interdependent. There isn’t anybody who doesn’t need some kind of support, and so we shouldn’t really judge people for the types of support that they need. ”

Severe autism advocate

Much of Lutz's research and writing is on the theory of an "intact mind" within the autism community. That is that autistic people have "a typical or superior intelligence ... [and] severe cognitive impairment" does not exist, but that there is just a part of the brain that is inaccessible, with the right treatment there is hope that they will live independently, communicate and function normally in society. Parents are not the only ones pushing the theory that an intact mind resides inside their child if only the right combination of therapy is tried, according to Lutz the neurodiversity community pushing the idea that autism is "an identity, not a disorder" leaves people like Jonah who are severely autistic and their families out of the discussion.

Journalist Judith Newman when reviewing Lutz's 2020 We Walk book said about the neurodiversity community "And when it comes to autism, the neurodiversity movement has a message for you: Autism is merely an alternative way of seeing the world, and don’t you dare say otherwise." Newman writes that this community does not want to acknowledge severely autistic people like Jonah. They prefer to blame parents and society, "autism isn’t a disease at all, but rather a different way of seeing the world." Newman and Lutz talked about the phenomenon of "inspiration porn", viral videos of a cheerleader taking the autistic kid to the prom. Newman said that Lutz does not see these videos as pity, as Newman does, but about kindness, "which is something that should be applauded always."

Pursuing miracle cures and treatments lead some to be vulnerable to pseudoscience like facilitated communication which Lutz states is like using a Ouija board. "Nothing is more predicated on the intact mind than facilitated communication because the whole enterprise hinges on this idea that there is a normal or even genius-level intellect trapped inside."

Lutz writes about Jonah's treatments as well as case studies of other severely autistic people which are included in her 2014 book Each Day I Like It Better. In Jonah's case, by the time he was ten, he had attacked family and helpers, he was violent not only to others but himself. He had been treated with applied behavior analysis (ABA) and medications, but with limited effect, as he aged and became larger and closer to puberty (which would make him more difficult to manage) the family turned to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) previously known as electroshock treatment. ECT was needed three times a week, and then over weeks ECT was weaned to where he is stabilized at three times a month. After treatment he was back to school and family trips and "Jonah had virtually no outbursts and much improved mood." In an interview with Stuart Vyse in 2025, Lutz states that now at the age of twenty-six, Jonah is "doing very well ... he is happy and thriving". Lutz believes that "ECT provided life-changing degrees of improvement."

Publications

As of December 2025, Scopus lists 11 publications by Lutz, which have been cited 124 times and a h-index of 5.

Books

• Chasing the Intact Mind: How the Severely Autistic and Intellectually Disabled Were Excluded from the Debates That Affect Them Most (2023). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0197683842.
• We Walk: Life with Severe Autism (2020). ILR Press. ISBN 978-1501751394.
• Each Day I Like It Better: Autism, ECT, and the Treatment of Our Most Impaired Children (2014). Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN 978-0826503558.

Selected articles

• Bioethicists Should Speak Up Against Facilitated Communication. with Dominic Sisti. July 29, 2024. The Hastings Center for Bioethics.

• I’m tired of disability activists pretending my son doesn’t exist. November 8, 2023. The Washington Post.

• What the Heck Is ABA, Anyway?. May 16, 2021. Psychology Today.

• Who Decides Where Autistic Adults Live?. May 26, 2015. The Atlantic.

• Where Should Special Needs Kids Be Special?. March 16, 2013. Slate magazine.

Personal life

She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and five children

See also

• Amy S. F. Lutz, PhD - Chasing the Intact Mind June 11, 2023 Lecture to the Voice of Reason's 40th Anniversary.