CRM Analysis: Input Restriction and Non-Verbal Autism with Insistence on Sameness

This analysis was prompted by an observation from Przemysław Sliwinski, in conversation following publication of “Mental Health Through the CRM Lens: Applying Coherence Resolution Modes to Clinical Conditions” (Jennings, 2026h). Section 7 of that paper applied the CRM framework to autism. Its broader-spectrum framing characterised a presentation that was “too broad, too stable, and too coherent to be captured well as one or two broken modes.” The observation is appreciated. Any substantial clinical category may cover a range of presentations, and a method applied at a broader level may not characterise more constrained presentations within that category in the same detail. The author is not a clinician and was not in a position to enumerate those presentations independently. The observation prompted the question of what the CRM method produces when applied directly to a more constrained phenotype within the autism spectrum. The phenotype chosen is the one Sliwinski works with clinically and theoretically: non-verbal, low-functioning individuals with pronounced insistence on sameness. The choice was made because analysis is likely to be more useful when applied to a phenotype that an expert in the domain studies than to a phenotype constructed for analytical convenience. This is a method-application exercise rather than a critique, defence, or extension to Section 7. The CRM method is applied as a stand-alone analysis. The phenotype derives from clinical observation. The candidate correspondences derive from the CRM framework. The selected correspondence is chosen on CRM-internal grounds. Whether the resulting correspondence converges with, diverges from, or stands orthogonal to other theoretical accounts of the same phenotype is observable after the analysis is complete; it is not a reason for any of the analytical choices.