FROM The Genesis of Artistic Creativity: Asperger’s Syndrome and the Arts:

Persons with the Asperger's syndrome are often highly  persistent, workaholics, content with their own company and solitary artistic occupations; they focus on detail with massive curiosity and total immersion; they are novelty-seekers in terms of their art, with massive imagination in their specialized spheres. They are also far less influenced by previous or contemporary artists in their work than are ‘neurotypicals’. It appears that the autistic artist, because of his or her rather diffuse identity and diffuse psychological boundaries, has the capacity to do what the artist George Bruce described as being necessary for art: ‘One must not just depict the objects, one must penetrate them, and one must oneself become the object’.” ■

Morton Gernsbacher, parent of an autistic child, says:

” … research demonstrates that autistic traits are distributed into the non-autistic population; some people have more of them, some have fewer. History suggests that many individuals whom we would today diagnose as autistic – some severely so – contributed profoundly to our art, our math, our science, and our literature. “

Frank Klein, on the difference between low functioning autism and high functioning autism: Autism itself is not the enemy… the barriers to development that are included with autism are the enemy. The retardation that springs from a lack of development is the enemy. The sensory problems that are often themselves the barriers are the enemy. These things are not part of who the child is… they are barriers to who the child is meant to be, according to the developmental blueprint. Work with the child’s strengths to overcome the weaknesses, and work within the autism, not against it, to overcome the developmental barriers. You do not have to wipe all of us out (“cure autism”) to solve the problems that the low-functioning autistics face. As I see it, autistics are another kind of person, almost like another species, that has an unfortunately high rate of sensory dysfunction and resultant mental retardation in its children. You do not have to get rid of the whole group (again, by that, I mean curing autism) to get rid of the retardation that is all too common among my kind. That would be like trying to get rid of sickle-cell anemia by “curing” blackness (eliminating blacks). We have too much to offer society for that to be allowed to happen… if we are helped to develop as much as possible. I think that is a great and wonderful goal, and I hope you will agree.” From ODD ONE OUT

■Trisha Van Berkel says:

“Autism is not a puzzle, nor a disease. Autism is a challange [sic], but certainly not a devistating [sic] one.

Autism is about having a pure heart and being very sensitive… It is about finding a way to survive in an overwhelming, confusing world… It is about developing differently, in a different pace and with different leaps.

Autistic beings develop and bloom if their spirits, talents and self-esteem are not destroyed by bullies, prejudice, ‘doggie-training’, and being forced to be ‘normal’.” ■Jim Sinclair says this in “Don’t Mourn For Us:”

This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces. ■BTW, this one by Jim Sinclair reminds me of the line from the movie Batman Begins, where Ducard says this to Bruce Wayne:

But I know the rage that drives you. That impossible anger strangling the grief, until the memory of your loved one is just… poison in your veins. And one day, you catch yourself wishing the person you loved had never existed so you’d be spared your pain.