For a parent of an autism spectrum child, anger is never far from the surface. On day three of the symposium, I sat in on a lunchtime session cheerily titled Dads ‘R’ Us: A Session by Fathers for Fathers. Two of the three men were fathers of children with classic autism. One of them paced with barely contained agony, seething as he described his diminished hopes for his child and his own thwarted career ambitions. I recognized that rage, the crushing letdown that comes with the realization that there is no easy fix, no long-term cure. The recognition came with a shaming relief: our situation is nowhere near as extreme. But here, too, lies a problem. There’s a tendency to say, “It’s not that bad,” to brush aside the experiences of those who have gone before us, and let our son muddle through. And then I just get mad at myself. My son needs my help. He needs advocates — at school, in the park, even at home.
More so than in cases of classic autism, the figurative expression “stumbling block” provides insight into the AS individual’s world view. Aspy children tend to interpret every utterance literally. “What block? I don’t see one. And I’m not stumbling. I’m walking normally.” Neurotypical children intuitively skip over superficial social exchanges and don’t ask, as Aspy children do, “Why would you ask me, ‘How are you doing?’ when you can plainly see that I am fine?” Not until you’ve taken an existential step sideways from the social world do you appreciate the utility of such interaction as a lubricant to making your way. As Aspy children decode their environment — interpreting everything literally — to the unaware observer, they may appear closed off or unwilling to acknowledge others.
For J., the social world can be an upsetting, even dangerous place. An example: the morning walk to school is the usual collection of neighbouring parents and children. My son walks ahead of them. Another group of parents with small children is ahead of him. My son walks through the small children as you or I might walk through a cornfield. Not over them, but brushing past them. It’s a bombardment of signals to the parents of these children — this boy is different; he is not to be trusted near small children; he is to be avoided.
Onstage, Attwood is ideally suited to his audience, mostly professionals who deal with people on the autism spectrum, parents, and a few AS individuals. The information is dense but structured, the delivery spiced with pathos and humour, with mime and performance acts such as Spot the Aspy. For this routine, Attwood apes the carriage, ambulation, and focus of an adult AS male — back rigid but tilted slightly forward, arms and legs straight, laserlike eyes gazing at a point on the ground two metres in front of him. The laughter is rich with recognition. But it is Attwood’s gift for metaphor that makes his presentation so lucid and welcoming.
“Imagine a clearing in a forest,” he says. “That clearing represents brain development. In [it], a number of tree saplings are growing. In the typical child, one tree grows quickly and dominates the clearing, shades the other plants, takes all the nutrients from the soil, and inhibits the development of competing plants. Now, for the typical child that [tree] is the social part of the brain. But if that plant is not as dominant and doesn’t inhibit the others, then other plants will thrive. Your brain inhibits other experiences, especially the sensory experiences. This means that these guys may have an ability that we have inhibited, in hearing, smell, touch, taste.” In other words, people on the autism spectrum may be socially awkward, but they are uniquely aware and sensitive to perceptions neurotypical individuals simply miss.
Attwood calls the positive attributes associated with autism the Three Ms: mechanical, mathematical, and musical ability — Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man, or Geoffrey Rush’s pianist in Shine. But because AS is at the milder end of the spectrum, an AS person with one of these “islets of ability” is more likely to find a traditional place in society. Indeed, there is strong evidence that AS adults are over-represented in the ranks of engineering and information technology. Incidences of autism diagnosis are greater in regions associated with the high-tech industry, such as California’s Silicon Valley and Redmond, Washington, home of Microsoft. One explanation for these regional spikes is assortative mating: geeks mating with geeks. In a groundbreaking 2001 article, “The Geek Syndrome,” published in the technology magazine Wired, Steve Silberman wrote, “As more women enter the IT workplace, guys who might never have had a prayer of finding a kindred spirit suddenly discover that she’s hacking Perl scripts in the next cubicle.”
Research points strongly to a genetic link. Simon Baron-Cohen, Uta Frith’s protege, now a professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge and director of its Autism Research Centre, is a leader in the field. In The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain, Baron-Cohen points to autism in twins. If an identical twin has autism, the chances of the other twin having an autism spectrum disorder are between 60 and 90 percent, whereas the coincidence in fraternal twins is about 20 percent. Since identicals share 100 percent of their genes, while fraternals share about 50 percent, “this strongly suggests that autism is heritable,” argues Baron-Cohen. People diagnosed with AS tend to have a parent or grandparent with similar traits — one of the reasons Sloman wanted to see me: Aspy kids often have (undiagnosed) Aspy dads.
Baron-Cohen postulates what he calls the “extreme male brain.” Using an extensive range of self-directed surveys, he charted a graph of humans on two axes: empathizing and systematizing. Neurotypical females figure slightly higher on the empathy axis, with men farther along the systematizing axis. But autistic males and females both show significantly higher rates of systematizing, and are lower on the empathy scale, indicating that autism spectrum individuals of both sexes tend to have brains dominated by male systematizing impulses.
I suggested to Baron-Cohen that AS is a condition we should try to harness, not cure. He concurred and, in an article published in the millennium edition of the journal Development and Psychopathlogy, wrote: “I wanted to shift people away from the idea that autism spectrum is a simple medical disease, which was the prevailing view and in some quarters still is. Disorder is an inappropriate term. AS involves a different form of neurological wiring in the way the person thinks differently and perceives differently. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are worse than other people.”
In her introductory essay, “Asperger and His Syndrome,” published seventeen years ago in the collection Autism and Asperger Syndrome, Frith wrote, “Asperger pleaded for the recognition of such children, pointing out the potential that they had to offer society . . . he also suggested parallels between autism, scientific originality and inversion.” The Roman poet Seneca, Frith reminds us, observed that there is no genius without madness, a notion (with us at least since Aristotle linked melancholia and creativity) that is now being seriously considered with regards to autism generally, and AS specifically. Says Baron-Cohen, “Of course, in certain situations — like when you’re required to socialize — it is a disability. But in other contexts, AS may confer certain strengths, and you wouldn’t want to treat those, or reduce or eradicate those qualities.”
