In
their book, The Stigma of Genius, the biographers Joe L. Kincheloe, Shirley R.
Steinberg, and Deborah J. Tippins puzzled over the dichotomy between Einstein's
public charm and charisma and his private life as a loner. He was an aloof
observer of people and a solitary child. In The Private Lives of Albert
Einstein, Roger Highfield and Paul Garter wrote, "Einstein described his
dedication to science as an attempt to escape the merely personal by fixing his
gaze on the objective universe. The desire to locate a reality free of human
uncertainties was fundamental to his most important work" (referring to the
theory of relativity). I can relate to this. On weekends I write and draw by myself,
and during the week I give talks and act very social. Yet there is something
missing in my social life. I can act social, but it is like being in a play.
Several parents have told me that their autistic child has done a great job in
the school play, acting like somebody else. As soon as the play is over, he or
she reverts to being solitary
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Like
Einstein, I am motivated by the search for intellectual truth. For me,
searching for the meaning of life has always been an intellectual activity
driven by anxiety and fear. Deep emotional relationships are secondary. I am
happiest when I see tangible results, such as giving a mother information on
the latest educational programs that will enable her autistic child to achieve
in school. I value positive, measurable results more than emotion. My concept
of what constitutes a good person is based on what I do rather than what I
feel.
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Einstein
had many traits of an adult with mild autism, or Asperger's syndrome. Kincheloe
and his colleagues reported that Einstein's lectures were scattered and
sometimes incomprehensible. Students would often be confused because they could
not see associations between some of the specific examples he gave and general
principles. The association was obvious to Einstein's visual mind but not to
his verbal-thinking students. Students reported that Einstein would lose his
train of though: while writing a theorem on the blackboard. A few minutes later
he would emerge from a trance and write a new hypothesis. The tendency for
scattered thought is due to associative thinking.
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Einstein
also did poorly in school until he was sent to one that allowed him to use his visualization
skills. He told his psychologist friend Max Wertheimer, "Thoughts did not
come in any verbal formulation. I rarely think in words at all, thought comes,
and I try to express it in words afterwards." When he developed the theory
of relativity, he imagined himself on a beam of light. His visual images were
vaguer than mine, and he could decode them into mathematical formulas. My
visual images are extremely vivid, but I am unable to make the connection with
mathematical symbols. Einstein's calculation abilities were not phenomenal. He
often made mistakes and was slow, but his genius lay in being able to connect
visual and mathematical thinking.
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Einstein's
dress and hair were typical of an adult with autistic tendencies, most of whom
have little regard for social niceties and rank. When he worked at the Swiss
patent office, he sometimes wore green slippers with flowers on them. He
refused to wear suits and ties in the days when professors dressed for
teaching. I wouldn't be surprised if his dislike for dress clothes was sensory.
The clothes he preferred were all soft, comfortable clothes such as sweatshirts
and leather jackets. Nor did Einstein's hair meet the norm for men's hair
fashions. Long, wild hair that was not cut was definitely not the style. He
just did not care.
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It
has been suggested by Oliver Sacks that the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was
probably a high-functioning person with autism. He did not talk until he was
four years old, and he was considered a dullard with no talent. It is likely
that his family history included depression, because both of his brothers
committed suicide. He had great mechanical ability, and at age ten he
constructed a sewing machine. Young Wittgenstein was a poor student, and he
never wore a tie or hat. He used formal pedantic language and used the polite
form of "sie" in German to address his fellow students, which
alienated them and caused them to tease him. Overly formal speech is common in
high-functioning autistics.
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Vincent
van Gogh's artwork reveals great emotion and brilliance, but as a child and a young
man he had some autistic traits. Like Einstein and Wittgenstein, van Gogh
showed no outstanding abilities. Biographers describe him as an aloof, odd child.
He threw many tantrums and liked to go in the fields alone. He did not discover
his artistic talents until he was twenty-seven years old. Prior to establishing
a career in art, he had many of the characteristics of an adult with Asperger's
syndrome. He was ill groomed and blunt. In his book Great Abnormals, Vernon W
Grant describes his voice and mannerisms, which also resemble those of an adult
with autistic tendencies: "He talked with tension and a nervous rasp in
his voice. He talked with complete self-absorption and little thought for the
comfort or interest in his listeners." Van Gogh wanted to have a
meaningful existence, and this was one of his motivations for studying art. His
early paintings were of working people, to whom he related. According to Grant,
van Gogh was forever a child and had a very limited ability to respond to the
needs and feelings of others. He could love mankind in the abstract, but when
forced to deal with a real person, he was "too self-enclosed to be
tolerant."
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Van
Gogh's art became bright and brilliant after he was admitted to an asylum. The
onset of epilepsy may explain his switch from dull to extremely bright colors.
Seizures changed his perception. The swirls in the sky in his painting Starry
Night are similar to the sensory distortions that some people with autism have.
Autistics with severe sensory processing problems see the edges of objects
vibrate and get jumbled sensory input. These are not hallucinations but
perceptual distortions.
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Bill Gates, the head of Microsoft and the inventor of
Windows, is another person who has some autistic traits. Time magazine was the
first to make the connection, comparing Oliver Sacks's New Yorker article about
me with John Seabrook's article on Gates in the same magazine. Some of the
traits that were similar were repetitive rocking and poor social skills. Gates
rocks during business meetings and on airplanes; autistic children and adults
rock when they are nervous. Other autistic traits he exhibits are lack of eye
contact and poor social skills. Seabrook wrote, "Social niceties are not
what Bill Gates is about. Good spelling is not what Bill Gates is about."
As a child, Gates had remarkable savant skills. He could recite long passages
from the Bible without making a single mistake. His voice lacks tone, and he
looks young and boyish for his age. Clothes and hygiene are low on his list of
important things.
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Temple
Grandin "Thinking in Pictures" (1996)
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