Famous People with Asperger Syndrome or Similar Autistic Traits

lostmyway said:

Claude really does have serious problems, doesn't he?

Nice illustration though.

I love some of those old book illustrations of him (and have had a couple of them printed on t-shirts!). A few years ago, I painted my own 'artist's impression' of him (in the style of Rogier van der Weyden). From the descriptions in the novel, one gets the impression of a very striking young man, tall and dark, with compelling eyes, but whose hair receded into his tonsure at an early age. The quotation I put on the background is from François Villon, and referred to Abelard: "For his love he had this punishment/suffering".

Mlle Lermontova said:

Chat up a girl I find attractive?  Are you kidding?  I've never understood that one!  I think I'd stop short of abduction, though...

Claude-logic tends to break down because he doesn't really get how other people will react – he's not good at theory of mind. I think it goes something like this:

1. I can't possibly talk to that girl in the street: she is a dancer, I am a priest. My reputation will be shot.
2. How can I get to talk to her in private?
3. Get someone I trust to bring her to me.
4. My brother? No: he's a randy, drunken undergraduate and will make off with her himself.
5. My adopted child? Yes!

Does not work because he does not consider:

How she will perceive this. Also, fails to consider (perhaps because he is used to the kid's deformities) that Quasimodo's appearance will scare the wits out of any unsuspecting female from a considerable distance, especially after dark; also, Quasimodo's communication difficulties mean he can't explain why she is to come with him.

And from this attempted abduction, the further catastrophes of the plot proceed.

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Claude really does have serious problems, doesn't he?

Nice illustration though.

Martian Tom said:

Chat up a girl I find attractive?  Are you kidding?  I've never understood that one!  I think I'd stop short of abduction, though...

1. I can't possibly talk to that girl in the street: she is a dancer, I am a priest. My reputation will be shot.
2. How can I get to talk to her in private?
3. Get someone I trust to bring her to me.
4. My brother? No: he's a randy, drunken undergraduate and will make off with her himself.
5. My adopted child? Yes!

Does not work because he does not consider:

How she will perceive this. Also, fails to consider (perhaps because he is used to the kid's deformities) that Quasimodo's appearance will scare the wits out of any unsuspecting female from a considerable distance, especially after dark; also, Quasimodo's communication difficulties mean he can't explain why she is to come with him.

And from this attempted abduction, the further catastrophes of the plot proceed.

I was/am very much the 'little professor/little philosopher' type myself. Academically over-achieving, but crap at the practical side of life. I know what you mean about feeling lost. I knew where I wanted to be, but the goalposts were changed with changes in academia and museums/galleries while I was trying to get there... I am an anachronism. Had I been a generation or 2 older, the niches were there where I could have fitted.

I do hope you look up Dom Claude. The other characters in his fictional universe, of course, do not really understand his crisis, and have an excuse in context (it's set in 15C, after all). However, I find it less excusable that some modern commentators simply treat him as a Gothic 'villain', rather than an Aspie having a catastrophic breakdown.

Mlle Lermontova said:

I adore Claude. He's an obsessive, geeky intellectual, hopeless with relationships, kind to orphans, but given to self-destructive melt-downs, self-harming (to the point he's having bouts of delirium from probable septicaemia for much of the later part of the book), cassock-ripping, and precipitating horrific tragedy... And I want to rescue him, tuck him up with a mug of hot milk and give him "the talk about girls" he should have had years ago. ("If you want to chat up a girl you find attractive, getting your hideously deformed adopted child to abduct her off the street isn't the best way of attracting her attention. And you could do better than that airhead dancer!")

Well... apart from the 'geeky intellectual' bit, he sounds very much like me!  Truly.  Chat up a girl I find attractive?  Are you kidding?  I've never understood that one!  I think I'd stop short of abduction, though...

Sometimes, I feel almost mystified that I've become this person that I am - with a degree, and a body of fiction and poetry, some of which has won prizes.  I don't know where it's all come from.  I was hopeless at school - probably because it was simply the wrong place for me.  I couldn't concentrate.  I couldn't learn.  I couldn't get on with anyone - teachers or fellows.  I failed the 11-plus, and my parents were told I'd always struggle.  At the comprehensive I went to, I was bottom of the year in my third year - in the CSE stream.    When I left school, I started work as a farm labourer.  All I wanted to do was write, but I had no idea how I would ever get there.  I didn't really start to read until I was 26.  And then I went to university.  And then... I seemed to become this entirely different person.  It was as if something opened up in my head.  In work terms, I've always been what might be termed a 'low-achiever'... but then, I can't think of a job that I've ever want to 'achieve' in.  Writing is all I want to do.  High-achievers in that field are rare birds indeed.

In a summarising statement, my diagnosis says 'The problems noted have interfered with the patient's life by causing depression, social isolation, difficulties at school and work, and an inability to attain life goals.'  It could be a standardised, cut-and-paste piece... but it's all perfectly true and accurate.  Having said that, 'life goals' sounds prescriptive.  'Life goals' in whose concept?  My 'life goals' may not be anyone else's at all.  

It sounds like an odd thing to say, maybe - but I quite often feel 'lost' in my life.  Like I don't fit in with where I am or what I do.  Like I can sense the existence of someplace else that's where I'm supposed to be - but I don't know how to get there.

Interestingly, the person I find most intimidating in an intellectual sense is a fellow Aspie at work.  He could easily be one of Hans Asperger's archetypal 'little professors'.  I've almost stopped speaking to him because I always feel like everything I say is being analysed for inconsistencies and flaws.  When I'm confronted by a person like that, I generally end up uttering inanities, anyway.

Again, though... I get by. I try to keep optimistic, though it doesn't get any easier.  I keep striving to find that place.

I also had a somewhat fraught time at school, though I recently attended a reunion and saw loads of people for the first time in 30-odd years and most had moved on from all the shenanigans from way back (or perhaps it was a self-selected group and the ones who were a menace didn't turn up!)  It was actually really nice, especially because none of us has really grown up!

I can't really add much of worth to the discussion though, I don't read anything like enough, although I did enjoy bits of Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming because lolnerd etc.

I enjoyed school apart from the other kids. I got on well with teachers and other adults, though one teacher told my parents she found me intellectually intimidating:I was 7 or 8 at the time. I thrived at university, but have struggled getting regular employment since: I'm a precariously employed university admin temp, despite a PhD and being a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Meursault – yes. I feel for him. I wasn't all that affected when my mother died, either: more concerned about the effect on my Dad, with whom I get on better.

I adore Claude. He's an obsessive, geeky intellectual, hopeless with relationships, kind to orphans, but given to self-destructive melt-downs, self-harming (to the point he's having bouts of delirium from probable septicaemia for much of the later part of the book), cassock-ripping, and precipitating horrific tragedy... And I want to rescue him, tuck him up with a mug of hot milk and give him "the talk about girls" he should have had years ago. ("If you want to chat up a girl you find attractive, getting your hideously deformed adopted child to abduct her off the street isn't the best way of attracting her attention. And you could do better than that airhead dancer!")

Mlle Lermontova said:

The conclusion that the superfluous man is 'a homeless man' seems quite apt to me.  In a psychological and social sense, I've often felt 'homeless'.  National identity, local pride, a sense of belonging... none of those things have ever meant anything to me.  I've only ever felt 'at home' with fellow outsiders or nonconformists (or freaks and oddballs as we were called at school).

Same here. I was bullied at every school, and my few friends were other misfits – from the girl in primary school with thalidomide to (at high school) science-fiction/fantasy geeks and archaeology enthusiasts.

My country is Academia: any old university town feels like home to me. My people, my tribe, are the scholars and geeks and passionate enthusiasts.

I discovered Lermontov (and Wilson) after doing an Existentialism course at university. Lermontov's Pechorin and Camus' Meursault both strike me as Aspie. Lermontov was killed in a duel after annoying an old friend, Nikolai Martynov, by persistently teasing him about his flamboyant clothes. When they turned up for the duel, he had to have the last word: as he aimed his pistol at the sky, he said: "I'm not going to fire at that idiot." It's not a good idea to call someone an idiot if he has a loaded gun in his hand... He also had a history of strange, obsessive and unsuccessful relationships with women, and some odd quirks. Once, another budding poet brought some poems to read to him, and a jar of preserved cucumbers. As he began to read, Lermontov munched some cucumbers, stuffed a few more into his pockets for later, and walked off while the other lad was still reading... His drawings are also interesting: sometimes he crams every space with sketches of people, horses, & c – as if he has hypergraphia and can't leave any blank areas.

My ultimate Aspie literary hero, though, is one I've 'known' since I was in my mid-teens, courtesy of Victor Hugo: Claude Frollo, the young priest who is the tragic hero/anti-hero of Notre Dame de Paris. I've written about him here. Yes, he screws up horribly and destroys himself and everyone he loves, but... Who couldn't fall in love with a brilliant scholar and alchemist who has lots of incunabula and his own laboratory? And he is so patently on the spectrum, it is extraordinary to think he was created by a novelist in the early 1830s. An unauthorised translation re-titled the book The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but Quasimodo is just a sidekick: if they want a disability-awareness title it should be after the main character: The Aspie Archdeacon of Notre Dame.

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Interesting stuff!  I was going to mention Meursault, but couldn't remember his name!

I, too, had bullying all the way through school.  It was purgatory from Day 1 until the final day, at 15, when I was hospitalised after being beaten up.  Practically the only things I learned at school were to read and write, and I was good at both.  Everything else passed me by.  What I know now, which is precious little, is what I've learned since - and I'm not a good learner.  My head is a scrap-book.  I know quite a lot about a few things, and precious little about a lot of things.

I managed to get into uni at 28, having taken an access course, and it was the best thing I ever did.  But I'm not a natural academic, and I'm a very slow reader, so it was hard work.  I did well in course work, but messed up on the exams. I really struggle with any type of formal examination.  I don't have the head for the discipline it requires.  Yet, like you, I feel comfortable in academic surroundings.  The life of the mind is certainly, for me, one that's well worth living.  I get by, somehow! 

Another writer who came to mind is Melville.  Bartleby the Scrivener is a story that I can now read in an entirely new light.

I'll check out your piece on Claude Frollo now. Thanks for the link.

Martian Tom said:

The conclusion that the superfluous man is 'a homeless man' seems quite apt to me.  In a psychological and social sense, I've often felt 'homeless'.  National identity, local pride, a sense of belonging... none of those things have ever meant anything to me.  I've only ever felt 'at home' with fellow outsiders or nonconformists (or freaks and oddballs as we were called at school).

My country is Academia: any old university town feels like home to me. My people, my tribe, are the scholars and geeks and passionate enthusiasts.

I discovered Lermontov (and Wilson) after doing an Existentialism course at university. Lermontov's Pechorin and Camus' Meursault both strike me as Aspie. Lermontov was killed in a duel after annoying an old friend, Nikolai Martynov, by persistently teasing him about his flamboyant clothes. When they turned up for the duel, he had to have the last word: as he aimed his pistol at the sky, he said: "I'm not going to fire at that idiot." It's not a good idea to call someone an idiot if he has a loaded gun in his hand... He also had a history of strange, obsessive and unsuccessful relationships with women, and some odd quirks. Once, another budding poet brought some poems to read to him, and a jar of preserved cucumbers. As he began to read, Lermontov munched some cucumbers, stuffed a few more into his pockets for later, and walked off while the other lad was still reading... His drawings are also interesting: sometimes he crams every space with sketches of people, horses, & c – as if he has hypergraphia and can't leave any blank areas.

My ultimate Aspie literary hero, though, is one I've 'known' since I was in my mid-teens, courtesy of Victor Hugo: Claude Frollo, the young priest who is the tragic hero/anti-hero of Notre Dame de Paris. I've written about him here. Yes, he screws up horribly and destroys himself and everyone he loves, but... Who couldn't fall in love with a brilliant scholar and alchemist who has lots of incunabula and his own laboratory? And he is so patently on the spectrum, it is extraordinary to think he was created by a novelist in the early 1830s. An unauthorised translation re-titled the book The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but Quasimodo is just a sidekick: if they want a disability-awareness title it should be after the main character: The Aspie Archdeacon of Notre Dame.