Larry Bissonnette
American autistic artist and activist
Larry John Bissonnette (born 1957 in Winooski, Vermont) is an American autistic artist who starred in two films showcasing his art and travels. 2005 in My Classic Life as an Artist and in 2011 Wretches & Jabberers. Both films have been criticized by the science community for claiming that Bissonnette can communicate through the discredited pseudoscience facilitated communication.
Biography
Bissonnette is the son of Albert Bissonnette and his wife Alma Marie, née Bashaw. He has three brothers and sisters. At age two, he experienced a high fever, which might have caused some kind of damage to his nervous system. By the time he was eight, he was sent to the Brandon Training School, which was Vermont's only institute for people with intellectual disabilities at the time. During this time, he used techniques of art such as drawing and painting to help himself through self-expression. By the time he was 18, he was transferred to Vermont Psychiatric Hospital in Waterbury, Vermont. In 1991, Bissonnette was introduced to facilitated communication.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q55386705. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 2005, 2011 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Larry Bissonnette” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.