We hear a lot about autism these days, usually in connection with its devastatingly early onset and bleak prognosis. It is therefore of interest when a recognised authority on the subject claims that most of those whom he cites as “the intellectual giants of the twentieth century” (including Einstein, Freud, Yeats, the philosophers Russell and Wittgenstein, and the mathematicians Ramanujan and Turing) had high functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome. Moreover, in this book, Michael Fitzgerald (professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin) advocates and consolidates a more positive perspective on autism: that this fascinating condition might be a necessary ingredient of human creativity, perhaps even the crucial ingredient.
Figure 1.
Michael Fitzgerald
Brunner-Routledge, £29.99/$47.95, pp 304 ISBN 1 58391 213 4
Rating: ★★★
The book's first part tries to explain key diagnostic issues regarding conditions on the autism spectrum and their psycho-pathology. Subsequent chapters cover disparate biographical subjects, primarily focusing on Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein is an important thinker because he accomplished the unique feat of developing not one but two original philosophies, published respectively in his two great works, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations. In highly simplistic terms, the Tractatus sets out to calculate what can meaningfully be said by language in order to show what is beyond it. In contrast, the Philosophical Investigations concentrates on what Wittgenstein called “the language-game” and the importance of how language is used in a social context.
Fitzgerald states that Wittgenstein focused on these two areas (language and its social context) precisely because they confounded him, because of his high functioning autism. The author goes on to argue that Wittgenstein's eventual development of an intellectual (as opposed to instinctive) understanding of the social dimension in his second philosophy was a result of the process of social maturation that occurs in many people with the disorder.
The book's analyses of its other subjects are also enlightening and thought provoking. Fitzgerald's scholarly inquiry carefully represents wide ranging views of leading researchers in the field of autism and covers a broad range of biographical material.
However, it is not clear why Fitzgerald chose some subjects (such as the English Conservative politician Keith Joseph) while more fascinating people such as Einstein (whom Fitzgerald refers to as having high functioning autism) were omitted. I also experienced patches of clumsy style, puzzling leaps of logic, and some gasp-inducing overgeneralisations, which lessened the overall effect.