Waite and Asperger's Syndrome???

Teheuti

Waite (who was distantly related to Charles Dickens on his mother's side) describes his first experience of school in his autobiography:

"Backward, nervous, self-conscious and self-distrustful as I always was, I recollect nothing unfavourable in that class of quiet boys, though I made no friends among them. It is to be doubted even whether I spoke to any and they were content to let me alone, if that was so." On the next couple of pages he lists all the strange books that he came across in those early years.

As a young child he, his mother and sister moved a great deal and in one move he came across a chest full of copies of the London Journal. He goes on for several pages talking about how he read them "through and through." He lists particular articles and authors and gives details of the articles that still obsess him—like several on the difficulties of international copyright, one of which he says was "eloquent reading."

Next, he goes into how "the number four has served me always well." For instance, as he says, he had "four manners of schooling."

He made one good friend in his entire childhood: "I made a good friend also in Gilbert Bryant and loved him greatly." They would walk back and forth between their two houses for hours: "We repeated it over and over till moon and stars came out. It was thus—as might it be—for under two years; and then my Sister and I fell ill with scarlet fever and an end came to schools for months and months."

Regarding physical and communication difficulties that are typical of AS: "The truth is that I was not much more than twelve at sixteen years of age and had not reached intellectual puberty when I lived to be twenty-one. As a fact, I was poor and weak of body during my years of growth. But more than all it was the dreadful narrowness in all my ways of life that kept me stunted, alike within and without; and when something not myself moved me to make a beginning with verse, Salvator meus was prescribing a rule of life. It made for my redemption." He's saying that poetry "saved" him.

Poetry became his redeeming "rule of life" (and most ASs do well with rules). Now, I understand that AS includes a lack of understanding of metaphor, yet what we find in Waite, is an obsession with the rules of poetry, with the system of metaphor. We also find, that among the famous that have been named as having AS is the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins, possibly Bob Dylan and quite a few songwriters.

Maybe I'm making more of this then I should . . . but he seems to fit in with some of the other famous creative Aspergers (see several lists via google).
 

Teheuti

Carla -

Thanks for speaking up. I'd love to hear what you think of these comments that come from only a few pages of Waite's autobiography. I find it interesting that these are the things he mostly chooses to mention from his school-age years.
 

Teheuti

BTW, I've brought all this up because I get tired of always trying to make excuses for Waite. I admire him greatly and I think that many of his works are brilliant. I see him as gifted but in a way that most of us find hard to comprehend. Possible AS helps me put his mental quirks into perspective where they begin to make more sense.
 

Richard

Teheuti said:
BTW, I've brought all this up because I get tired of always trying to make excuses for Waite. I admire him greatly and I think that many of his works are brilliant. I see him as gifted but in a way that most of us find hard to comprehend. Possible AS helps me put his mental quirks into perspective where they begin to make more sense.
I appreciate this effort, as I also am an admirer of Waite, which you may have surmised from my posts. It may not be possible to prove conclusively that he suffered from AS, as the disorder has been discovered only fairly recently.

I had ADHD as a child, but I was just classified as a troublemaker. The fact that I was considered fairly intelligent only served to reinforce that opinion. I don't blame anyone. I know I really was a pain in the _____ to my parents and teachers.

It is generally thought nowadays that Friedrich Nietzsche's insanity was due to syphilis, but there seems to be no way to prove that posthumously. (It is interesting that Nietzsche himself said, "I was born posthumously.")
 

Aerin

Teheuti said:
Poetry became his redeeming "rule of life" (and most ASs do well with rules). Now, I understand that AS includes a lack of understanding of metaphor, yet what we find in Waite, is an obsession with the rules of poetry, with the system of metaphor.

It is a syndrome, and diagnosed by "tick list" (simplifying I know) - not everyone with Asperger's will be the same and exhibit identical symptoms or to the same extent.

My nephew is diagnosed with AS, and on some areas he isn't what you might think of as typical - he is imaginative for example and likes jokes with wordplay.

Mathematicians and scientists tend to score highly on screening tests e.g. this site http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/arc/default.asp has this paper

http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/2001_BCetal_AQ.pdf

ps I took the AQ online a while back and I score over the 32 mentioned in the paper. I am not diagnosed with Aspergers though. I might well have met some of the criteria they mention at school though, had anyone seen me as having "a problem" (or as the paper puts it "suffering a clinical level of stress as a result of their autistic traits", a criterion for diagnosis).
 

Teheuti

LRichard said:
It may not be possible to prove conclusively that he suffered from AS, as the disorder has been discovered only fairly recently.
Many people nowadays are looking at AS, not as something you 'suffer from' (except in our society), but as an alternate way of being 'wired'. Just as a segment of the population has a gene that makes spinach truly taste awful, so, too, there are people who are neurologically wired differently than the majority. They have to learn social skills that most of us pick up by osmosis (not a technical term), plus not all are savants. Also, as I understand it, there are few absolute diagnoses as it tends to be just an educated deduction on the part of the psychologist based on trends. So even when someone like Bill Gates is diagnosed as AS, what does that really mean?
 

Teheuti

Aerin -

Thanks. The metaphor thing had me a bit thrown for a loup, but as you say (and I'm now discovering) the signs can vary a great deal.

My youngest brother has a condition that has never been able to be diagnosed. In fact, I've only heard of one other person who had almost the exact same traits - and his father had also been an army observer at the nuclear tests in the 50s shortly before he was born. But, who knows since the experts could never figure out what was going on?

Mostly, I don't find myself so annoyed by Waite when I think of him with AS, but instead try to figure out what his rather unique thinking has to offer the rest of us. I don't think of him as trying to be mean or supercilious as some people seem to assume.

I find it interesting how, in a single short chapter of his autobiography, Waite describes a whole list of childhood traits, even using key phrases that are among the main traits listed for AS.
 

gregory

Oh goody. I just took the test and am borderline Asperger's. :D

And I would not see it as "suffering" except that it is so easy to be misunderstood, I suspect. Even when being what you'd feel as normal ! I don't get annoyed by Waite - but then, I guess in this case - I wouldn't would I !!
 

Carla

gregory said:
Oh goody. I just took the test and am borderline Asperger's. :D

And I would not see it as "suffering" except that it is so easy to be misunderstood, I suspect. Even when being what you'd feel as normal ! I don't get annoyed by Waite - but then, I guess in this case - I wouldn't would I !!

What test? I want to take it!