Albert Einstein's Son - A Cautionary Tale

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I woke up this morning thinking about the genealogy of Albert Einstein. He presented many Aspie traits. Since Aspergers and HFA are genetic traits, did any of his family present these traits?. According to Wikipedia:

Eduard Einstein (28 July 1910 – 25 October 1965) was born in Zürich, Switzerland, the second son of physicist Albert Einstein from his first wife Mileva Marić. Eduard was a good student and had musical talent. After gymnasium [the equivalent of a preparatory school in the U.S.], he started to study medicine to become a psychiatrist, but by the age of twenty he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was institutionalized two years later for the first of several times. Biographers of his father have speculated that the drugs and "cures" of the time damaged rather than aided the young Einstein. His brother Hans Albert Einstein believed that his memory and cognitive abilities were deeply affected by electroconvulsive therapy treatments Eduard received while institutionalized.

So in a world of theories was Eduard Einstein the son of Albert Einstein an Aspie/High Functioning Autistic?

He appeared to be smart and talented but his life began to fall apart as a young adult. One thing I noticed is that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome was unknown at the time. Even today sometimes Aspies are misdiagnosed as schizophrenic.

So how was his condition treated? He was subjected to drug therapy and to electroconvulsive therapy. It appears these treatments did more harm than good. I am not a big fan of either approach.

What caused people to recommend Edouard Einstein for initial diagnosis?

Sounds like this was a very common thing: misdiagnosis because of ignorance.

Rosemary Kennedy might be a worse example. She had slightly lower than average intelligence and some behavioral problems. She was forced to undergo a lobotomy, which rendered her a virtual vegetable for approximately 60 years.

I know that often times Autism and schizophrenia run in the same families. It does in mine. I read a study a long time ago that said that they are the same mutated gene pool. I wish I could remember what study that was but it was several years ago. But the study had said that in many families you have an Autistic child and a schizophrenic child.

Rosemary Kennedy was never a vegetable even after her lobotomy.

We may never know.  No one on this website (afaIk) is qualified to diagnose a developmental disorder in someone who has been dead for nearly as long as he was alive.  Unless you are one of his direct descendants, it may be best to simply accept the official diagnosis and deal with reality in "The Here and Now".

I should have said that she was THOUGHT OF as being a vegetable. She really wasn't in good shape after the lobotomy.

It was thought that I was a "vegetable," too, when I was 3 years old.

There was an episode of Barney Miller where each of the officers was being interviewed. Nick Yamana told the interviewer that he was Japanese, not Chinese. The interviewer said, "That doen't matter". To which Nick replied, "Not now".

There can be a penalty for appearing different, especially if one is perceived as burdensome (it was not only Jews that were exterminated). Masking can be a survival skill as well as a social skill.

It may not be Aspergers that is dangerous as it is just being different.

I understand you now. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah, the lobotomy did hurt and change her.

I would have to know more about his life than just this original post in order to make even an amateur guess.

Based upon what the information in your post its impossible to say. And if anything its more likely that your implication is wrong (that he was just an aspie and got turned into a psychotic). Most autistics and aspies are noticed as acting different when they are gradeschool age, or younger. We don't usually wait until we are 20 to get noticed (if our life falls apart or not). But its quite common for schzophrenics to show no sign of the illness until that very age: early adulthood. That's when psychosis often onsets.

I know a guy who held down a high powered job, and then started to hear voices around 23.

Einstein's son might well have been made even worse than he already was by what they did to him after they diagnosed them though. But that is not proof in its self that he wasn't really somewhat psychotic by modern standards when they diagnosed him at 20.

I am pretty sure that the person in my family has both. So maybe Einstein's son also had both.

I got misdiagnosed with schizophrenia during my burnout.
It has been debunked but it's a mix of luck and my "superpowers" that I got out of it.

Either thing is possible.

I knew a young lady who had been in psychotic as a child. And she had many (of what I now know, but didn't know at the time I knew her) are aspie traits. Like suddenly becoming obsessed with special interests.

He was at the age when autistic burnout commonly affects AS people for the first time. And he lived in a time when this was mistaken for mental illness. So this may be what happened.

It went on happening, to many AS people and it still goes on happening. And if they don't know and never discover that they are on the spectrum, they tend to be written off by others as chronically mentally ill, overmedicated with medications that stun their brains and stunt their lives.

It is a tragedy that has befallen many.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1165 ... KmtyZznwrk

Excerpt:

A Burnout hits quite suddenly, I think, most of the time. And from what I gather, and my own experience, it is like someone pulls a plug on some vital, unknowable aspect of your personality. Something seems to almost literally *break* inside your head.

it is worse than depression. I can vouch for this, having had both. Depression is awful and deathly and one of the worst things ever, but burnout - somehow - is worse. It's sort of, more rational? Like, you know you're f****d, whereas depression can be irrational

Thirdly, it affects your ability to mask. Maybe no bad thing, considering, but its a shock for both the #autistic person and their loved ones. No longer masking can (and this is the most heartbreaking thing) be perceived as a total personality change. Its not.

In fact it's the world seeing you how you really are, and the fact that can go down so badly is a surefire recipe to add some depression garnish to your burnout.

But this is real, and it quite possibly kills people, and yet no one knows anything about it. The world really is crap sometimes. But if you have your very own #autistic in your life, then here are some things to consider...

just be aware that burnouts are a thing. This will help if/when it happens.

...

I would add, "educate yourself well on this before it happens. It may never happen. However it often does happen at late adolescence early 20s and in the 40s. And other times, though those two age groups mostly. Knowledge is power.

At university he fell in love with an older woman. The relationship ended disastrously. Then his mental health took a turn for the worse. He attempted suicide and then was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Eduard would spend three decades in an asylum.

Reminds me of what happened to New Zealand novelist Janet Frame, who after falling in love and going into burnout after trying to cope as a beginning schoolteacher was "put away" for years as a "schizophrenic", and saved from an imminent lobotomy planned to "cure" her from a mental illness she never had.

Fortunately those in the literary world who had recognised her superb literary talent managed to rescue her in the nick of time, and helped resettle her in the world, and she immediately began work on continuing what became an illustrious literary career.

Frame, born in the 1920s, would instantly be recognised as an aspie today. Despite all that happened to her, she triumphed over very extreme adversity during the decades of incarceration and electric shock therapy which shredded a lot of her memory.

Her life story is very well known in New Zealand, though if you would like to know more, I highly recommend reading her 3 sequential volumes of autobiography, (To The Is-Land, An Angel at My Table, The Envoy from Mirror City) which totally beguiled me as another AS woman. They were also hugely admired by NT readers.

She was nominated for (but did not win) a Nobel Prize for literature.

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/book ... dness.html

What made them think schizophrenia? I don’t see the overlap.

Welcome to WP Eltros!