Title: On Autistic House & Stimming
Fandom: House M.D.
Content notes: None, apart from brief mentions of ableism.
Author notes: Second time writing meta ever!! Also fills the 'Ball' prompt in my FFW bingo card.
Summary: House, autism, and his over-sized tennis ball.

Cuddy: Other doctors actually use their offices for crazy stuff like seeing patients. Not throwing a ball against the wall and calling it work.

Wilson: It's his process. That ball saves lives.
— Season 5 Episode 10 Let Them Eat Cake

I have the long withstanding understanding of House as being in the autism spectrum, and as an autistic man myself it makes his character all that more relatable. The concept of House as an autistic person is toyed with in the show, especially in season 3 episode 4 Lines in the Sand, but there it’s dismissed as ridiculous. I’d like to put that as the fact that men in their forties addicted to painkillers aren’t the poster child for our diagnosis, and so it’s easy to miss obvious signs on them— it’s the same case with woman-presenting people, because of sexism in psychiatry and the study of autism.

The issue of House’s ball interests me a lot, as it’s clearly an example of self-stimulating behavior, or stimming. He’s seen doing such things across the entire show— twirling his cane, playing with cards while there’s no game going on, playing with elastics, etcetera. Here’s a link to a gifset on Tumblr that showcases some moments of it.

House’s stimming is clearly meant to focus and help him come up with ideas for his cases, and that’s a textbook example of what could stimming be used for. Apart from showing emotions, it can help autistic individuals to be focused on tasks. And then it’s the fact the starting quote has to do with the fact House is immediately put off when Cuddy takes away his balls while working at House’s office. That’s what leads me to believe that above all things he uses to stim, his balls are something of a comfort object.

House’s autistic behaviors shine through in most of the series— his disdain for social rules, his honesty that doesn’t seem to be held back no matter the situation, his lack of empathy. Of course, you can always give this to the fact he’s got a “much simpler diagnosis”-- being a jerk, as Cuddy stated in Lines in the Sand:

Wilson: I'm going to read you something. "Asperger's syndrome is a mild and rare form of autism. It is typically characterized by difficulty establishing friendships and playing with peers, trouble accepting conventional social rules, and they dislike any change in setting or routine"... or broadloom. Doesn't say that last part but you get my point.

Cuddy: House doesn't have Asperger's, diagnosis is much simpler; he's a jerk.

Of course, I can attribute this dismissal to many things, on both the writers and the public, and also the characters themselves. Such dismissal is likely, even from professionals who work with autistic patients at length— much more so from professionals who don’t.

Then, the fact House’s character is based on Sherlock Holmes— who, in his time of creation, might not have had a name for it, but comes across to modern audiences as clearly autistic-coded— obviously adds more to my theory and headcanon.

In conclusion, House’s attachment to his ball and his use of it is clearly self-stimulating behavior (also known as stimming), and it further adds to the belief that House is in the spectrum.