Max Marnau is a person-centred therapist living in the Scottish Borders. As the autistic daughter of refugees from Hitler’s Nazis, she feels a particular affinity with all the exiled, the othered, and the displaced. Among whom she counts both autistic people and survivors of abusive cults.

Her parents quite consciously did not transmit their culture to her for fear of making her an outsider. That’s quite funny, given that she’s autistic! She sees herself as a second-generation exile who never quite fitted anywhere, and that may have made her particularly vulnerable to the attractions of an apparently friendly and supportive cult with clear rules.

With the understanding that she is autistic came the discovery of her tribe, and Max has become an “out, loud and proud” autistic psychotherapist, activist, writer, and trainer.