I read an article in the paper last week about an art exhibit by children with Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism that seems to be the diagnosis of the year. Pictured was an intricate drawing of an alien planet. The reporter engaged the ten year old artist in a detailed discussion of his imaginary world, which included two suns, several moons, and an alien civilization complete with language and customs.
So I’m trying to figure out…what precisely is wrong with this child? Better correct it now, before he grows up to be an artist, or God forbid, a science fiction writer.
Perhaps I feel a special empathy for this child because I spent half my childhood drawing detailed drawings of imaginary solar systems in the bluebooks my professor father used for exams. During the other half, I created imaginary societies back here on Earth, complete with families whose ages I would cross off and change when another imaginary year went by.
Luckily Asperger’s hadn’t been invented yet so I couldn’t be diagnosed. A psychologist did label me hyperactive, though. I read a symptom list for hyperactivity once that included the danger signal “cannot pay attention to things that are boring.”
My youngest son spends an untoward amount of time making detailed drawings of cities, “comics”, and little books he staples together about adventures with dinosaurs, mummies, and–yes–aliens. I guess these abnormalities are genetic. I did read–no kidding–a checklist for signs of “excessive creativity hyperactivity disorder”. My son met every danger sign, but excuse me if I don’t run for the Ritalin. He tells me that when he grows up he wants to be a rock star and a writer, and if he does so, I’ll be a very proud mommy.
It seems like if a person deviates in any way from a very bland and limited “normal” they get slapped with a pathological psychiatric diagnosis (that just coincidentally might be helped by some new form of psychotropic medication). I also read last week an article in the New Yorker about a psychologist who participated in a trial of a new antidepressant. I am not attempting to trivialize the pain of people who suffer from severe clinical depression. But in this study participants were asled questions like “do you ever wonder if life has any meaning?” and if you answered something like “well, sometime I wonder if we’re just a random collection of atoms”, then uh-oh–points add up against you on the depression scale. You’re also penalized if you’re depressed about something that’s genuinely depressing, whether it be divorce or an illness or global warming.
The message? Don’t be introspective. Don’t have deep feelings that cut you to the core. Don’t ever, ever, think outside the box. Don’t question the existence of the box or who made it, or whether other boxes of different configuration exist somewhere out in the universe.
The truth is, that while existence may be easiest in the mild middle, man’s greatest joys and greatest achievements only come from dancing dangerously close to the extremes. Some types of extremity I have no personal conception of, which doesn’t mean I’m not impressed by them. What about astronauts who can strap themselves in a little box and fly to the moon? That degree of fearlessness is not standard. Or “hyperactive” people who can multitask in the most confusing and stressful of environments, like a hospital emergency room. Or the professionally diagnosed obsessive compulsive jewelry artist, who strings utterly intricate and perfect necklaces out of tiny beads?
Personally, I’m more of the hyper creativity disorder sort, and while it’s sometimes made my life more difficult, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t know any other way. I certainly couldn’t write decently if I wasn’t an observer, a questioner, always a bit on the outside, a little weird. Or lets put it more accurately. I might still be able to write grammatically and concisely, but I wouldn’t have anything to say.
I wanted to quote Paul Bowles for this blog post, from one of my favorite books, The Sheltering Sky, but I couldn’t locate the book (Excessive Clutter Syndrome). In the Sheltering Sky, the protagonist, Tanner, is suffering from typhoid fever hallucinations in a remote Moroccan village and he (in much more evocative phrasing) pierces through the sheltering blueness of the sky and sees the vastness of the universe beyond. It’s an eerie and disturbance passage, cold and scary, one of those rare pieces of writing that leaves you stunned and wondering how the author saw something like that and came back to translate the experience for the rest of us.
Paul Bowles was a strange guy who didn’t play well with others. In his autobiography he describes a childhood of writing and illustrating detailed little stories of imaginary worlds. Maybe he had Asperger’s. I’d call him an artist.
Instead of labeling children (and adults) who don’t fit a limited cultural mold as deviant, we as parents and as a society should encourage people to build on their strengths and manage their weaknesses. Not everybody has extreme gifts of any nature, but those who do, and stifle them, are truly living what Thoreau termed “lives of quiet desperation”.
pierce the sheltering sky
April 25, 2007I read an article in the paper last week about an art exhibit by children with Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism that seems to be the diagnosis of the year. Pictured was an intricate drawing of an alien planet. The reporter engaged the ten year old artist in a detailed discussion of his imaginary world, which included two suns, several moons, and an alien civilization complete with language and customs.
So I’m trying to figure out…what precisely is wrong with this child? Better correct it now, before he grows up to be an artist, or God forbid, a science fiction writer.
Perhaps I feel a special empathy for this child because I spent half my childhood drawing detailed drawings of imaginary solar systems in the bluebooks my professor father used for exams. During the other half, I created imaginary societies back here on Earth, complete with families whose ages I would cross off and change when another imaginary year went by.
Luckily Asperger’s hadn’t been invented yet so I couldn’t be diagnosed. A psychologist did label me hyperactive, though. I read a symptom list for hyperactivity once that included the danger signal “cannot pay attention to things that are boring.”
My youngest son spends an untoward amount of time making detailed drawings of cities, “comics”, and little books he staples together about adventures with dinosaurs, mummies, and–yes–aliens. I guess these abnormalities are genetic. I did read–no kidding–a checklist for signs of “excessive creativity hyperactivity disorder”. My son met every danger sign, but excuse me if I don’t run for the Ritalin. He tells me that when he grows up he wants to be a rock star and a writer, and if he does so, I’ll be a very proud mommy.
It seems like if a person deviates in any way from a very bland and limited “normal” they get slapped with a pathological psychiatric diagnosis (that just coincidentally might be helped by some new form of psychotropic medication). I also read last week an article in the New Yorker about a psychologist who participated in a trial of a new antidepressant. I am not attempting to trivialize the pain of people who suffer from severe clinical depression. But in this study participants were asled questions like “do you ever wonder if life has any meaning?” and if you answered something like “well, sometime I wonder if we’re just a random collection of atoms”, then uh-oh–points add up against you on the depression scale. You’re also penalized if you’re depressed about something that’s genuinely depressing, whether it be divorce or an illness or global warming.
The message? Don’t be introspective. Don’t have deep feelings that cut you to the core. Don’t ever, ever, think outside the box. Don’t question the existence of the box or who made it, or whether other boxes of different configuration exist somewhere out in the universe.
The truth is, that while existence may be easiest in the mild middle, man’s greatest joys and greatest achievements only come from dancing dangerously close to the extremes. Some types of extremity I have no personal conception of, which doesn’t mean I’m not impressed by them. What about astronauts who can strap themselves in a little box and fly to the moon? That degree of fearlessness is not standard. Or “hyperactive” people who can multitask in the most confusing and stressful of environments, like a hospital emergency room. Or the professionally diagnosed obsessive compulsive jewelry artist, who strings utterly intricate and perfect necklaces out of tiny beads?
Personally, I’m more of the hyper creativity disorder sort, and while it’s sometimes made my life more difficult, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t know any other way. I certainly couldn’t write decently if I wasn’t an observer, a questioner, always a bit on the outside, a little weird. Or lets put it more accurately. I might still be able to write grammatically and concisely, but I wouldn’t have anything to say.
I wanted to quote Paul Bowles for this blog post, from one of my favorite books, The Sheltering Sky, but I couldn’t locate the book (Excessive Clutter Syndrome). In the Sheltering Sky, the protagonist, Tanner, is suffering from typhoid fever hallucinations in a remote Moroccan village and he (in much more evocative phrasing) pierces through the sheltering blueness of the sky and sees the vastness of the universe beyond. It’s an eerie and disturbance passage, cold and scary, one of those rare pieces of writing that leaves you stunned and wondering how the author saw something like that and came back to translate the experience for the rest of us.
Paul Bowles was a strange guy who didn’t play well with others. In his autobiography he describes a childhood of writing and illustrating detailed little stories of imaginary worlds. Maybe he had Asperger’s. I’d call him an artist.
Instead of labeling children (and adults) who don’t fit a limited cultural mold as deviant, we as parents and as a society should encourage people to build on their strengths and manage their weaknesses. Not everybody has extreme gifts of any nature, but those who do, and stifle them, are truly living what Thoreau termed “lives of quiet desperation”.
Posted in cultural commentaryy | 1 Comment »