Historic Autistic geniuses?

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Hey there, I am just looking for your opinions on the whole "historic geniuses with autism" theory, you know like Beethoven, Einstein, Charles Darwin, JFK ( lol kidding) etc.

I keep hearing about historic autistic geniuses, and part of me believes it, but part of me really does not. Just look at ( only high functioning) autistics today. Even those with HFA and Aspergers syndrome, many have a very tough time just functioning in the world ( holding down a job, graduating from school, living independently etc) let alone finding a cure for cancer or bring about world peace. It apparently is considered remarkable for a person with any form autism to graduate successfully from college or hold down a long term job ( happy to say I have done both! )

At the time when many of these geniuses lived, schools offered no form of accomdation for anyone, and verbal/physical abuse by teachers to students was common and considered normal by society. How could people with autism have even survived that environment, never mind become intellectual greats?

Furthermore given the many problems that people with autism suffer from today, even if you made an allowance that a lot of those geniuses were autism, you would have to look at the other side of that coin. For every "genius" there were probably 10 aspies who just couldn't make it at life, and became beggars, vagrants, or jesters in the kings court ( many jesters in midieval times probably had an intellectual disability )

Einstein is the most famous example of a historical aspie. But he seemed to have a wide circle of friends ( including quite a few mistresses, including a ballerina 8.) This does not sound like a man who had trouble relating to other people.

Im sorry if I have offended some people here, but I honestly would like to hear what you think of my ideas, and maybe you can convince me otherwise? Ultimately I think it is fairly unimportant what "disability" these figures may or may not have had, its more their contributions and interesting intellect that I think is ultimately worth the discussion. Any thoughts?

I always thought it was those on the spectrum classifying these individuals as autistic posthumously as if they were saying 'cool, this person invented relativity theory lets claim him as our own'. There are many child prodigies who are distinctively Aspie in the present day and people like Stephen Wiltshire the artist who is a successful Autistic highly talented adult. I think its possible but I agree that there is probably many who don't make it.

AsperT - I agree with you. Those who celebrate autism usually associate it with some kind of ability to change the world, but most of us are just losers.

I don't agree with you guys. I feel like a loser right now but I know I will change the world or die still trying. Don't give up.

Go Get It Girl! Life is a Game of Chance - I did extremely well for many years, but I now get maximum pleasure from teaching my grandchildren to swim and to ride their bikes.

einstein woud never had been diagnosed with aspergers even if he was definitely on the spectrum,he actualy fit the profile of classic or PDDNOS autism because he had a significant speech delay which woud have discounted him from a asperger diagnosis.
am just saying this as aspies are always claiming him as their own,people automaticaly think smart autistic=aspie when classic autism has no minimum or limit where iq is concerned.
theres even a very famous completely non verbal LFA called tito mukhopadhyay who has wrote published books,so it doesnt matter where a person is on the spectrum.

What KingdomOfRats stated.



Well, as far as the mistresses go, I knew a guy with very apparent AS and oh boy, he would have loved some mistresses? The only problem was that he didn?t have the fame, position and publicity of Einstein. Add those to your mix and you'll turn into a popular Casanova in no time - no matter your other qualities!

I'm always on the fence about diagnosing historical figures. On the one hand, we do have accounts of their lives that seem to fit (Michelangelo, Newton), but it's hard to say without them being alive to actually be tested. But I do think it's likely, just statistically speaking, that plenty of historical figures were autistic. We just might not ever know who they were for sure.

That is no small thing.

It's true most people on the spectrum encounter barriers that prevent them from realizing their potential, so it stands to reason that at various times in the past they likely would have encountered barriers as well. It's also true that a few people with an official diagnosis living today have made huge advances.

Temple Grandin comes to mind. She completely changed the world of animal behavior science as it relates to livestock management, and she credits her autism for giving her the unique perspective that allowed her to do it.

One of my instructors in college used to work at NASA. According to him autism is very common among the engineers and scientists there.

If many of the top tier engineers and scientist alive today have various autism spectrum diagnoses, it's really not so far fetched that some of history's noteworthy engineers and scientist had it.

Teaching kids to ride bikes and to swim, and discouraging them from driving a car can be a way to change the world as well

I don't mean to sound arrogant but I have a very high IQ. Am I successful, changing the world etc? No. I subsist on benefits and I need a support worker just to go to uni (which I get a free taxi service to because I can't even use public transport in rush hour).

I will hopefully make it one day but despite my high IQ I cannot relate to those "historical geniuses".

TLDR: it is impossible to diagnose the dead, but that widely attested biographical detail can show that a person had traits consistent with an autism spectrum disorder or that are characteristic of the broader autistic phenotype.


So I looked into this a bit for personal reasons. When I first began to read and study everything I could about autism, I discovered that two of my ancestors were listed in books of famous people who were likely to have been autistic by a man who goes in for posthumous diagnoses, Michael Fitzgerald, an Irish professor of child and adolescent psychology. http://professormichaelfitzgerald.eu/

So this was interesting. I looked into it further and found that he is regarded by many as a bit of a crackpot, going out on a limb to diagnose all these long dead people, and engaging freely in speculation with only a tiny bit of evidence. His approach leads him to speculate about and then declare as fact a relationship between autism and certain kinds of genius (sounds, great, right?) and a relationship between serial killings and extreme crime of violence (suddenly not so great!). He goes so far with this as to promote a new diagnosis "Criminal Autistic Psychopathy." So, perhaps not the most reliable resource.

Since ancestors were in his books, though, I had to find out what he said about them--and I was surprised at how strong the cases he made were. There was a lot of questionable stuff, but in amongst the controversial assertions, there was some very clear record of traits consistent with autism. In one of the two cases I looked at, this evidence was very, very suggestive of an Aspergers diagnosis under DSM IV. But the man is long dead so a valid diagnosis is impossible.

I came away from these investigations with the understanding that it is impossible to diagnose the dead, but that widely attested biographical detail can show that a person had traits consistent with an autism spectrum disorder or that are characteristic of the broader autistic phenotype.

Unless some conclusive DNA test is discovered, that weakly positive conclusion is where it has to say.

I am personally convinced that one of my ancestors had aspergers and the other either aspergers or was BAP, but this cannot be declared a turth established through scientific investigation.

It's incredibly unlikely that Einstein was on the spectrum. It's not true he had speech difficulties either. Personally I don't think any of the scientists listed as being possibly on the spectrum were autistic. And all the arguments put forward are quite weak. I think Uta Frith is right about Hugh Blair of Borgue. Hugh Blair wasn't an enigmatic scientist, but rather a Scottish noble whose probable autism meant his own marriage was annulled because he was judged as mentally incompetent. That isn't as romantic as an ingenious inventor or brilliant scientist being on the spectrum.

http://www.albert-einstein.org/article_handicap.html

Last edited by Acedia on 20 Jul 2014, 9:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have a very high IQ as well but that doesn't mean sh!t in most circumstances. Just like Darwin put it. It's not the "strongest" nor the "smartest" that survive. It's those who are willing to "adapt".

I don't know what my IQ is, but I hope to be a genius one day.
I am not into diagnosing dead or live people with autism, since I am not qualified to diagnose autism.