The Illusion of Camouflaging: How Science Mistook Standard Learning for a Psychological Deficit

Current science frames autistic camouflaging as a learned social strategy and screens for it through self-report instruments such as the CAT-Q and RAADS-R. This paper argues that camouflaging cannot be reduced to a strategy or its deployment, because it is a complete mechanical sequence. There is a Cause, an internalized structural mismatch. There is a Camouflage, the strategy integrated into the internal record. There is Camouflaging, the active deployment. And there is the Mask, the integrated and unconscious state. Drawing on the Theory of the Continuum, the paper reframes this sequence as a thermodynamic process governed by environmental friction rather than a psychological deficit. The same learning mechanism operates in all minds. What differs is whether the acquired knowledge resolves the friction or merely manages it at a permanent metabolic cost. On this account, existing screening tools fail structurally. They measure conscious awareness and so remain blind to the fully integrated mask, and they pathologize one half of a bidirectional mismatch, an error grounded in the physics of relativity and mirrored in Milton's double empathy problem. The paper traces the downstream cost of sustained masking to its terminal outcomes, including burnout, neurodegeneration, and elevated suicide rates, and argues for a shift from behavioral checklists toward an accounting of structural sustainability and environmental friction.