Charles Darwin had autism, leading psychiatrist claims

Post Reply New Topic

Charles Darwin probably had a form of autism called Asperger's syndrome which is related to creativity and originality, a leading psychiatrist claims: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... laims.html

Oh, yay, more Michael Fitzgerald. He has a rather eccentric definition of autism in my view.

Yes, Darwin was autistic. He was a naturalist, for heavens' sake, and took a round the world voyage studying animals. (The sort of job there's tremendous competition for these days - like getting into the astronaut program.) If he'd been NT he'd have stayed home, become an MD, and spent most of his time at some fuddy-duddy Victorian men's club. /sarcasm

So where's the impairment??? I mean, the impairment that actually counts? Does Fitzgerald think he's doing us a favour with this stuff? It doesn't make me feel better about being autistic - I don't need to be like anyone famous to feel good about myself, after all. And I don't think it will stop the eugenics types either. They'd just say it's HFA vs LFA or something, and that their kids are different and need fixing. /end rant

Do autistic people actually get anything out of this? Especially once they've been in the real world for a while and need realistic role models?

Thanks for the link, Ken. I would say please put Fitzgerald's name in the title as a warning next time, but I knew. It had to be him. Read it anyway.

Diagnosing the dead shouldn't be done, there is no gaurantee anyone of the famous people held up as possibly autistic/aspie were.

QFT! I think people look a little too hard to try and see what isn't there sometimes. Sometimes maybe it really is there, but at the end of the day what difference does it make in the world if some dead guy was AS or not?

I felt like killing the psychologists at Attwood's who spoke idealized words of Einstein, Gates, {insert someone else who has "made" it}, etcetera; it's as if they were telling me this to show that yes, I can be like them too! I just have this untapped "skill" that society doesn't appreciate (in their words)....

Ug, I don't care about people, I don't care about "making it", and I don't have low self-esteem; I just want to be left alone.

They just don't understand.

O, and God has LFA, as he's totally nonverbal.

Caligula and his sister suffered from Asperger's Syndrome.

So many famous people have been posthumously diagnosed with autism.

Certainly some of them are, but which ones? I don't know, and guess what? I don't really give a damn. I know that I'm autistic, so now I have to decide what to do with that information. Whether or not some dead guy from a couple hundred years ago was also autistic doesn't factor into my decision.

If this site had a karma system I would + that post Inventor.

Anemone called it right, all these untestable, unverifiable claims that Eratosthenes, Archimedes, Pythagoras, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Brutus, Jesus, the Twelve Apostles, Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, Danny Thomas, St Thomas Aquinas, Marylin Monroe, Lou Reed, Lou Dobbs, Lou Christie, Lou Rawls, Chief Winnebago, Iron Eyes Cody, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Cortez, Rembrandt, King David, the Queen of Sheba, Scheherazade, Romeo Montague, Juliet Capulet, William Shakespeare, William Congreve, Ahab, Jezebel and a baby's arm holding an apple were all aspies are just plain ridiculous.

Quite unlikely: Regarding Suetonius, the only real source about Gaius Germanicus, he was a quite reasonable rule till he went serious ill. Suetonius wrote that Gaius killed Tiberius, but does not provide good sources and according to Suetonius own story there couldn't be a lot of witnesses.

If we take Suetonius for face values, it is more likely that Gaius was quite normal till his illness and this illness did some damage on Gaius' brain. We shall also not forget that Suetonius bias against all the most members of Julian-Claudian dynasty. It could be even argued that some of Gaius's worst "madnesses", like promoting his horse to become consul, would make some sense and that Claudius and the so positive portrait two members of the Flavier used the structures of administration Gaius had created.

look guys, we need any positives we can get at the moment...our kind is on the brink of extinction, and to have very clever, amazing people being postumously diagnosed can only do good for the autism rights movement...

would you rather have people think you might be a genius or would you rather think that you might be a serial killer/fire-bomber? x

I was told in school that it was lead poisoning, since their wine caskets were lined with lead.

The lead seal in tinned goods on the Franklin expedition is supposedly what did them in, too.

This is a great list! Obviously, since they were so weird, they must have been autistic!! ! Let's start by making a case for Jesus. Or should we start with the baby?

Seriously, though, I do think it is possible to find historical figures that may have been on the spectrum (we can't be any more sure than that). Henry Cavendish and the Canadian golfer (both linked from that Wikipedia page) both look like good bets. Or at least reasonable approximations.

I also think that Paul Cezanne and Greta Garbo may have been on the spectrum. And maybe Glenn Gould (gotta reread that one). But out of the several hundreds of biographies of famous people I've read, I've only come up with those ones. (I wasn't looking for them, I just tripped over them looking for something else.) And not any of the ones Fitzgerald cites that I've read up on (except maybe Gould).

My objection is not in diagnosing the dead, it's in being so careless (carefree?) about it.

i think we shouldn't bother with diagnosing people who died more than 50 years ago, because history sometimes has a way of distorting truth...

but i'm damned sure stanley kubrick was a massive aspie ^.^

Suetonius was the AOL and USA Today of his time, he was just a flack for the anti-restore the Julian-Claudian line to power. He wrote 80 years after the fact. It was a coverup.

Promoting his horse to consul was to show that the clever and crafty were not what was needed, but the plain and simple was. Incitatus was a dependable horse, and that is what Rome needed.

He was quite normal until he was poisoned, then when he recovered a lot of people died, all connected to the Senate. Those who killed him were all connected to the Senate, and were killed by his Germanic Guard.

The Senate tried to form a Republic upon his death, but the Pretorian Guard put Claudius in power.

Giaus Germanicus published the accounts of public funds, a Senate secret.

He opened the closed Equestrian and Senatorial Orders which had become private culbs.

He saw to the road system and demanded repayment from the contractors the Senate had paid, but who did not keep the roads in repair.

He killed the people who had annexted Mauritania by plotting with their family to kill the line of kings, this was in attempt to end the long and costly war with Numidia, seven years then. It was an unjust war, as Numidia had supplied one third of the oil and grain that Rome ate, and the Senate thought it would be cheaper not to pay, but to plunder. The war caused unemployment and famine.

Germanicus had many nations on his borders who felt threatened by the Senate, and thier lust for more power.

Statecraft means behaving with honor toward friends and enemies, for truth and being good for your word ends wars, and promotes trust and trade, no one trusted the Senate.

His road building, one of the great, and his new harbors to import Egyptian grain, were to end the Numidian war that was draining Rome, as the Senate was spending money they did not have on two wars they were not winning, that had gone on for seven years, and Rome the great was bankrupt.

"Little boots" had the support of the army, and the Pretorian Guard made Claudius, the surviving member of his family, Emperor.

Much was lost, there is much propaganda written much later.

What all agree on was Gaius Germanicus was most known for was his stare, his eyes were not like those of other men.

The Imperial Traits,

not caring for the social mindlessness, of the common people.

Holding truth above personal gain,

being honest and clear spoken to all,

taking a strong personal interest in road building, harbor construction, and sound money,

As Alexander the Great said,

"He who subdues or surpasses mandkind, must look down upon their wrath."

I agree - in some cases it seems like the historical evidence is probably strong enough to make a diagnosis, especially for someone who did not live that long ago (it is a lot easier to "diagnose" someone who lived in 1800 CE than someone who lived in 18 CE). It's obvious, for example, that Lincoln had depression, even though modern psychiatry didn't exist then.

But when it seems like every unusually intelligent person gets diagnosed ... there is something wrong.

Surely Uncle Claudius would be a more likely candidate?

I agree that all this posthumous "diagnosing" is a bit....well odd.

It's not like I never speculated about Darwin myself, but I can do no more than speculate as a lay-person. What value is Fitzgerald adding to this as a non-lay person? Surely any of us here could make equally speculative, non-provable assessments that have zero clinical validity, so ought not this person put their professional standing and qualifications to some more productive purpose than endless speculation about who among the no-longer living, did or did not have autism?

Why not Louis XVI (of France) while he's at it? Or do only the "successful" get thrown into the autism lolly scramble.