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I'm trying to find autism in mythology and folklore.

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Woodpeace
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11 Mar 2010, 4:06 am

Narcissus was Narcissistic.



Moog
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11 Mar 2010, 5:32 am

Inventor, that was really interesting. Thanks for posting.



Electric_Spaghetti
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11 Mar 2010, 6:07 am

In Scottish Mythology beings called "Selkies" lived most of their lives as seals but occasionally came onto land, where they shed their seal skins and assumed human form. There are legends of male Selkies seducing women and then returning to take the resulting offspring off to sea, and of female Selkies being taken as wives by human men.

In these stories a young man sees a group of maidens dancing naked on a beach at night. He hides to watch them and sees that when they are finished, they put on seal skins, transform, and return to the sea. Some time later he sees them again and steals one of their skins. At daybreak he finds a beautiful young woman, one of the Selkies, on the beech. He takes her home and cares for her, and is advised by a village elder that if he wants to keep her he must burn her seal skin so she can never return to her own kind. He can't bear to do this and hides the skin instead. Eventually he marries her and they have children, but she always seems unhappy. One day the man comes home to find his wife gone- she's found her seal skin and returned to the sea. In some versions she takes her children with her, in others they remain. In these versions their descendants are sometimes credited with having second sight and/or an exceptional knowledge of healing. Webbed hands and feet also crop up occasionally. Like the changeling stories it wouldn't surprise me if the legend of the Selkie didn't arise to explain the occasional appearance of children who were born deformed or who seemed alien.



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11 Mar 2010, 6:34 am

Electric_Spaghetti wrote:
In Scottish Mythology beings called "Selkies" lived most of their lives as seals but occasionally came onto land, where they shed their seal skins and assumed human form. There are legends of male Selkies seducing women and then returning to take the resulting offspring off to sea, and of female Selkies being taken as wives by human men.

In these stories a young man sees a group of maidens dancing naked on a beach at night. He hides to watch them and sees that when they are finished, they put on seal skins, transform, and return to the sea. Some time later he sees them again and steals one of their skins. At daybreak he finds a beautiful young woman, one of the Selkies, on the beech. He takes her home and cares for her, and is advised by a village elder that if he wants to keep her he must burn her seal skin so she can never return to her own kind. He can't bear to do this and hides the skin instead. Eventually he marries her and they have children, but she always seems unhappy. One day the man comes home to find his wife gone- she's found her seal skin and returned to the sea. In some versions she takes her children with her, in others they remain. In these versions their descendants are sometimes credited with having second sight and/or an exceptional knowledge of healing. Webbed hands and feet also crop up occasionally. Like the changeling stories it wouldn't surprise me if the legend of the Selkie didn't arise to explain the occasional appearance of children who were born deformed or who seemed alien.


John Sayles used this beautifully in his film The Secret of Roan Inish.



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11 Mar 2010, 10:32 am

Hey, suggestion: why don't we expand this topic to modern stories as well, instead of just mythology? Cause I heard someone mentioning some charaters he claimed were aspies: Sherlock Holmes. And Doctor House, who was supposedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes.

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Some of the prophets in the Old Testament display spectrum like tendencies. The level of detail in descriptions of buildings not yet built, but only imagined, that you see in the Torah, the precision of food laws etc. I'm not saying Moses was aspie, but you can certainly see how those particular traits helped form a nation... if they hadn't had those rigid food laws in the middle of a desert they'd have died.


Allow me to nitpick: this is assuming they ever spent so much time in the desert in the first place. I believe it's a common criticism that such a journey, even at that time, would have taken 10 days, not 40 years. And I'm also sceptical that those food laws did any good at all..



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11 Mar 2010, 12:16 pm

I've often heard that the "fairy changling" was actual early reports of autism.



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11 Mar 2010, 1:21 pm

PunkyKat wrote:
I've often heard that the "fairy changling" was actual early reports of autism.


Yes it was many children died from parents believing their children were not their own or possessed by a spirit.



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11 Mar 2010, 2:31 pm

Interesting topic. :D


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11 Mar 2010, 5:29 pm

hmm i always thaught that in the dark ages aspys would end up as hermits or monks. that isn't realy mythology though.



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11 Mar 2010, 6:13 pm

thedaywalker wrote:
hmm i always thaught that in the dark ages aspys would end up as hermits or monks. that isn't realy mythology though.


Most that weren't killed by their parents or the church were consider Demons, Elves, Fairies, or Trolls.



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11 Mar 2010, 7:09 pm

Kewona wrote:
Hey, suggestion: why don't we expand this topic to modern stories as well, instead of just mythology?


There is always a zillion of threads about that.



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11 Mar 2010, 10:36 pm

TPE2 wrote:
Kewona wrote:
Hey, suggestion: why don't we expand this topic to modern stories as well, instead of just mythology?


There is always a zillion of threads about that.


I guess we could but I was hoping to find at least what other cultures thought of us before they knew about us.



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13 Mar 2010, 1:49 am

Prometheus?


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13 Mar 2010, 1:55 am

This is more fairy tale than mythology but the Groke from the Moomins is an Aspie imo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Groke



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13 Mar 2010, 10:42 pm

Carmel wrote:
For me, the tale of Echo and Narcissus speaks of autism. Echo could only repeat what others said; Narcissus fell in love with his reflection in a pool, not realizing it was himself. Both were seen to be 'cursed by the gods.' Maybe ancient peoples invented myths to explain what they couldn't understand? This one strikes me as a way of 'explaining' why people who otherwise looked 'normal' and attractive displayed autistic traits: an inability to use language to communicate; an 'obsession.'


Thank you Carmel. I was going to mention Echo and Narcissus until you mentioned it...

I read on Wikipedia that imps from Germanic mythology often wanted to be friends with humans but didn't keep freindships very well. I think many of us can relate to that.



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30 Mar 2010, 9:33 am

What do you think about Kullervo, a hero of Finnish mythology ?


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