Asperger's and I...

''People with Asperger's syndrome are natural experts.'' (Tony Attwood, The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, Chapter VII, Special Interests, p. 178).

I thought I'd develop a post about Asperger Syndrome and how ''special interest'' relate to academia, since I find this interesting and perhaps some of my readers do also. Although people with Asperger Syndrome have difficulties in reciprocal social interaction (the intensity of this can decrease over time), most have a remarkable ability in a chosen area of expertise. In 1944, Hans Asperger wrote of one of his patients:

''Another autistic [it was not, of course, known as ''Asperger Syndrome'' in those days, but by a strange term - ''autistic psychopathy''] child had specialized technological interests and knew an incredible amount about complex machinery. He acquired this knowledge through constant questioning, which it was impossible to fend off, and also to a great degree through his own observations.''

An essential component of a specialized interest for someone with Asperger Syndrome is the accumulation and categorization of facts and the collection and cataloguing of objects related to it (such as books). Since, however, the ''special interest'' is of clinical significance, the interest is more than a mere hobby. Indeed, what makes the special interest of clinical significance is the abnormality of its intensity or focus. I was always good at drawing as a child (my Primary School teachers used to ''use me'' to draw school displays on what we had studied, such as the Romans), but until I was about 7 years old, I used to draw nothing but Crucifixes or depictions of the Crucifixion - they were accurate as well, after the manner of Duccio who painted accurate crucifixions, even if other depictions, such as that of Perugino or Raphael, tend to be more aesthetically pleasing! I clearly remember the first thing I think I ever drew which was not a Crucifix (after a thrashing from my mother, who was always more strict with me, because I was ''odd,'' than with my siblings) was the Apple Tree at the bottom of our garden - my mother kept it, but I haven't seen it since. I remember being tempted to depict Christ's Corpus suspended from the branches, remembering that someone had said that: ''the Lord reigns from the Tree,'' but I knew that this would upset my mother and so I left it out.

I am not so close to classic Autism on the Autistic Spectrum as to have remained altogether unchanged in my special interests over the years. My interest in Crucifixes has developed into a general interest in Religious art and the history of Art. This is comparatively common in in many children with Asperger Syndrome. The complexity and number of interests differs according to developmental and intellectual factors; some children can develop interests in specific periods of history (in my case, the Angevin Empire and the early Plantagenets), or some other interest. I used to read the Oxford English Dictionary and was fascinated by the entries, specifically the etymological explanations, which has developed into an interest in the Latin language. Having a strong interest in Art and language, I also became enamoured of styles of script and so my mother brought me a Calligraphy set to practice my handwriting. Unlike most children with Asperger Syndrome, my subtle motor coordinations were not erratic, nor did they fluctuate, and my handwriting has often been described as very neat. Alas, though, I no longer own a calligraphy set - I must acquire one, calligraphy is a noble art, one could say, a special union of Art and Intellect. This subtlety was also exemplified in my perfect sense of rhythm. My mother, as I have said in a previous post, took me to Irish dancing lessons (mostly in her attempts to instill within my siblings and I that we were Irish and not British - the British being equated with Protestantism in the eyes of my family!) and I developed a talent for that, and enjoyed it immensely.

I first read The Hobbit when I was 7 years old. My first copy was in fact a First Holy Communion present (an odd one, most others consisted of Mass books, Rosaries and devotional medals!). I enjoyed it immensely, and still do. I consider the book to be a masterpiece of childrens' literature. Having read and re-read The Hobbit several times, I asked my mother when I was 8 or 9 to find any other books about Hobbits, and so I was presented with the first part of The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, and I enjoyed that even more than I had enjoyed The Hobbit. By the time I was 13 (at about the time the Peter Jackson trilogy was first shown in cinemas around the world) I had read it about twice a year every year. I think I have only read it once this year, owing to academic pressures (which I will come to in a moment) - this will have to be rectified at Christmas! My mother gave my siblings (I have a younger brother and a younger sister, now 20 and 18 respectively) and I tickets to go and see the trilogy. In hindsight, I must have ruined everyones' experience of the film, because I had to keep telling my sister to shut up (she kept screaming, at the Black Riders mostly - she was only 10 at the time, and talking) and I kept commenting about the differences between the book and the film. When I was 15, I brought my first copy of The Silmarillion, and although I found all the names and different places difficult to remember at first, I enjoyed it greatly. Later I brought Unfinished Tales, and enjoyed that because of the greater detail. At Sixth Form, I began to read The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien and Tolkien's Biography, and I also began to collect the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth, beginning with the Lost Tales. Also, I began to read the Classics at Sixth Form - Plato and Aristotle, Homer, Virgil and Cicero - I also began to teach myself the rudiments of Latin. Indeed, I think I learned more in my two years at Sixth Form than I did in five years at school.

And so, having passed my A Levels (I did Religious Studies, Philosophy, History and Fine Art), I went to University to began my studies in Theology and Latin. I was optimistic at first, especially when I received the feedback from my first two essays in Church History and Fundamental Theology, on Origen's interpretation of Scripture and Avery Cardinal Dulles' book on the Models of Revelation respectively, and my first test in Latin (for the first one, we were asked to Conjugate Paro in the Present Tense, and I was given Optime! as the mark!). I got a First for my Church History essay, and a 2:1 for my Fundamental Theology essay - which was described as ''highly conservative and militant'' by my tutor - to my everlasting delight! But soon afterwards, I became too bogged down with making my work ''perfect'' and I spent literally hours over the connotations of single words, and the subtle implications of this point and that, and being so inclined towards my work, I began to miss deadlines and became very depressed and anxious. I felt literally crushed when my essay on the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis Creation story only achieved a 2:1, because I had spent a great deal of time making it ''perfect.'' Some essays I found too beyond my experience as to not bother at all about, and I dropped out of the course soon afterwards. I still have difficulty with time-management and I still cannot shake off my labour-intensive approach to work, but I try now, and I was more than a little encouraged when I got a First for my Latin - although my ''pushy'' mother was disappointed that it was a ''low'' first.

This brings me to one of the points of this post. A friend of mine asked me recently how Asperger Syndrome could possibly have a ''significant impairment in important areas of functioning'' aspect for me, because I seemed to be very polite, shy and intelligent (I don't know about the latter, but that seems to be the general consensus anyway). My answer is that, although I don't tend to think much about it, it pervades over almost every aspect of my life. One ''everyday'' aspect is simply doing the washing up (something I hate doing). I won't go into the minute details, but rest assured that everything has to be clean (thoroughly so) and well-ordered. My mother tells me that where it takes me, say, 2 hours to do the washing up, it would take her about 20 minutes to do the same amount. This is just one example, there are plenty of others (some I had not heretofore thought of in this way, until they were pointed out to me by friends or relatives). My approach to work perfectly encapsulates my academic difficulties. I am a natural perfectionist; something is either worth reading, or it isn't, something is black or white, there is no grey area. If I am asked, absurdly in my opinion, to write an essay on something entirely new to me then I think the better option is to not bother with it, because my appraisal or critique of the subject will be ultimately flawed, less than perfect.

In 1938, Hans Asperger observed:

''Where it is about logical thinking, where the issue is meeting their special interests, they are ahead, surprise their teachers with their clever answers; where it is about more or less mechanical learning by heart, where concentrated learning is demanded (copying, spelling, methods of arithmetic) these 'clever' children fail in a severe kind of way, so that they often are on the brink of failing their exams.''

The idea is that people with Asperger Syndrome have a peculiar profile of intelligence and cognitive ability. I have taken I.Q tests before and they always indicated that I am of below average intelligence. This, to me, indicates a serious discrepancy between what is written on paper and reality. I.Q tests seem to be geared more towards pattern recognition and arithmetic than actual learning. Is somebody's intelligence measurable? This is a complex question and beyond the scope of this post anyway, but it is worth considering. What does ''intelligence'' consist of? Does it entail the ability to memorize facts by rote? One thing that I have learned from some of the feedback from my essays is that I nearly always have a poor box ticked for the assessment criterion called: ''Focus on Key Issues.'' Why is this I wonder? My mother tells me that it is because I ''don't see the wood for the trees'' or some such saying. One tutor commented that he gave me a better mark on an essay not so much because of the content but because he recognized that there was ''intelligence'' behind it. And then there is that ''common sense'' phenomenon, which I will not elaborate here, as I did so in a previous post.

I have often wondered why I struggled so much at University when there were other people, clearly less intelligent than I, who didn't. During lectures, I listened patiently to some of the questions asked, no doubt sincerely, by some of the students, but privately I thought to myself: ''you're studying Theology at University level and you didn't even know that?'' It greatly irritates me that some people have University degrees when in my opinion they don't deserve them (some of my school teachers fall into this category). I personally think it scandalous that some people come out of University, on paper, more qualified than I, with better job prospects than I, and yet cannot string a sentence together without making some grammatical solecism. I am often astounded at how little they know about anything. I would go back to the days when University was the province of the Upper classes and the intelligent. I think it stupid that everyone is encouraged to go to University, because University is not suited to everyone. I also think that to deprive a child of a decent education (as I was) when they have better prospects than their peers is a form of abuse. Sometimes I think that everything I know, at least that which I consider to be of any importance and worth (save Latin), I have in fact taught myself.

I think I had better finish now. What I am going to do in life remains a mystery at present. I am technically irregular by default for Ordination (ever since I was little, everyone has assumed that I would become a priest - fortunately, I have no such vocation anyway!), my Latin is at present too embryonic to do anything with, and Theology is not my area (of course, as Tolkien said, nothing is ever one's sole area - one is either humbly engaged in learning or one obscenely attempts to adorn it - this is what people generally mean when they say ''my subject'' - as an aside, I wonder if this can relate to professional liturgists shut up in the Vatican who devised the Novus Ordo?). People suggest a doctorate in Tolkien - which is not of itself objectionable, but I would rather object to teaching ''Tolkien studies'' to hippies or other unsavoury people, and besides, one needs a respectable degree in order to even ponder doctoral theses. I would like to do Classics though, since devotion to the Classics is perhaps, next to Theology, the noblest form of study.

The above photograph is of Hans Asperger, after whom the condition is named, with one of his ''little professors'' (for so he was accustomed to name his patients).