Recently my wife observed that my work is deeply intertwined with my identity. It was not the first time she observed it, but sometimes the Nth time you hear something is when you start to think about it.
I hadn't really thought about it before because she was and is right. And it seems so natural to me. I am a poet/playwright/interdisciplinary scholar/spontaneous order theorist. When I awake, those things are on my mind; they are on my mind throughout the day; they are on my mind when I go to sleep. My mind is always active thinking about my various projects.
Asperger's has been called the "Little Professor Syndrome," and I certainly fit that description. When I was obsessed with dinosaurs, I could have held my own with a paleontologist; when I was obsessed with sharks, I learned everything I could find on sharks; when I was obsessed with plants -- and later narrowed that obsession to orchids -- I learned everything I could find on plants and, particularly, orchid. That obsession later turned into molecular biology in college, then economics, then quantum physics (at least, to the degree one can learn about it without math), then chaos theory and complexity, then fiction writing, then poetry, then play writing. The older I have gotten, though, the more I have retained past interests. I remain curious about molecular biology, and I very often think with the concepts of biology; I have increased my interest in economics, combining my interest in complexity with economics into Austrian economics and spontaneous order theory; I still write plays and poems.
One of my more recent obsessions is learning about autism. When I learned my son had autism, I did the autistic thing and became obsessed with the topic and learned everything I could about it. My familiarity with molecular biology and neurobiology helped. It was in dong this research that I learned I had Asperger's.
It turns out that those with Asperger's deeply identify with the work they do, with the work with which they are obsessed.
If the person with autism can find a place that will indulge his obsessions, he will be a great worker and will do great work. If the person with autism cannot find such a place, he won't allow that job to interfere with his "real" work. One can perhaps imagine what the outcome of that is likely to be.
For autistics with advanced degrees, like me, the logical place to work is a university. And if universities were primarily interested in research, scholarship, and teaching, they would be the ideal place for autistics. Unfortunately, universities are primarily interested in more fully developing their bureaucracies, playing university politics, and engaging in all sorts of other social games at which those with autism are terrible. If universities were places where a professor could see that something was not working, and the next semester change the way he taught classes based on his observations of what worked and what did not, they would be ideal places for those with autism. However, universities are in fact places where professors are pressured into teaching the same way as everyone else, no matter what the educational outcomes may be.
It seems, then, that there are no places to support people with autism. There is no institutional support; the institutions we have are structurally opposed to both the strengths and weaknesses of autistics, while thoroughly supportive of both the strengths and weaknesses of neurotypicals.
Worse, because people like me are so personally identified with their work so that there is little differentiation between the work and person (please note I said "the work" and not the ideas, as particular ideas will be chucked if they are shown not to work out), we tend to take it quite personally that nobody wants us or wants us to do what we are good at. We resent the fact that we cannot make a living being who we are, because of the prejudice against us built into the institutional structures of society. I do not know if there was ever a time when things were better for those with autism; however, I suspect that before the growth of bureaucracy as a fundamental institution in all areas of life, life for those with autism was much easier.
"It turns out that those with Asperger's deeply identify with the work they do, with the work with which they are obsessed.
ReplyDeleteIf the person with autism can find a place that will indulge his obsessions, he will be a great worker and will do great work. If the person with autism cannot find such a place, he won't allow that job to interfere with his "real" work. One can perhaps imagine what the outcome of that is likely to be."
This may as well describe any master of a craft: the obsessive syncretic impulse to see everything through that lens, to possess, own--to know it so intimately it becomes the knower. What, I wonder, is the source of that impulse, which can be debilitating, destructive, even as it is creative, restorative. What makes the mind so inclined to obsess over an abstract kind of monistic metaphorization where everything must become linked up, organized in such a way, and body itself into a whole, cohesive inner cosmos? I would argue there is something of the left hemisphere interpreter to thank (or blame) for this. Still, I wonder.
One must wonder to what degree the obsessed, the analytical -- the artists and the scientists who can be accurately described as such-- are and were "on the spectrum."
ReplyDeleteThe beautiful prophets of old, the seers and magicians, are all now diagnosed with schizophrenia. To the great detriment of life.
What place is there for heterogeneous thinkers?