The Construct of Asperger's Syndrome

Post Reply New Topic

Why am I different than most people? What makes me tick? Why do I have unique strengths and weaknesses?

I am 73 years old but I am still a child deep down inside me. If I had a name, they would call me Peter Pan. I suffered a massive stroke a little over a year ago. I experienced two severe elements of Aphasia, but I fought hard, very hard and broke lose. After my stroke I lost my ability to read. The letters broke apart into pieces and reassembled into an entirely different alphabet system - one I could not read. As if that wasn't enough, I also lost my knowledge of words. It is difficult to communicate when you lose your words. But the strangest thing was that I did not lose my ability to write. Luckily, my deepest elements of aphasia, I was able to break loose and begin the learning process again.

I have Asperger's Syndrome. At this point in my life I think I understand ME and how I came to be ME.

It all began when I was about 3 years old. I was you typical 3 years old living on a farm. But we had a cow. And I did the one thing that you never do. I walked behind the cow. It attacked me and I fell to the ground unconscious and dying. The cow weighed over 1,000 pounds and I weighed less than 20. My parents picked up my body and brought me into our farmhouse and placed me into a bed. They were scared and horrified. They were about to experience a great loss. The loss of their first born child. I sensed this and came back to life. But I was a different person, a different me that returned.

The human brain is much more complex than what present science understand. If you look at the human skull, you will see that it has two halves. One on the right side and the other on the left side of the brain. The left side is dominant. The left side contains a little bit of extra tissue that joins to the right side. At around the age of 12 years these two distinct sides complete the final merging and humans change from and a child to a young adult. But in my case that transition didn't happen because I had become a right side dominant brain because of the brain injury I experienced around the age of 3 years.

As a child, I was a happy child. I was a little different than most children. BECAUSE I WAS FEARLESS. But for the most part, the other children did not seem to mind. It was only when I began to pass into adulthood that my entire world changed. Like many Aspies, I was physically and mentally attacked daily at school for 3 years between the 6th and 8th grade. At the graduation party and the end of elementary school, I was voted LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED.

One of the problems I experienced as a right hand person was it affected my reading ability. I loved to read comic books, but that was the extent. My basic problem was short term memory. I move at the speed of light and reading just didn't work for me. Fortunately back in those days they had a solution for a defect like mine. In the 9th grade, I was placed in a class called SPEED READING. It essentially taught me how to read. Most people read word by word from start to finish in a paragraph. Speed reading throws that approach out the window. In speed reading, you read from the INSIDE OUT. You find the key words in a paragraph and then begin constructing the various pieces together. It is a totally different approach to reading and for me it opened me up to the world of higher education. When I graduated from high school, they held a class party and voted me THE CLASS GENIUS. What a difference a few years made.

I went on to college and graduated with a degree in Physics at UCLA. I helped to put myself through college and worked to pay my way through. After college, I worked for 40 years as an Engineer and then retired a little over 10 years ago.

Because of my brain injury as a small child of 3 years, I became a right side lead brain. My left side eventually came back online and filled the void performing the functions normally done by the right side. In other words, I changed polarity. In this case, I did not follow the normal flow of human development. I never grew up. I never made the transition from a child to an adult. I am still a young child even though I am 73 years old. I am a version of Peter Pan. When I became around 20 years old, I began wearing a mustache and as a result most people could no longer recognize that they were talking to a child.

For the last several years, I have been studying ME. Why am I different than most people. What are my strengths and weaknesses. How did I come to be. What makes me tick. This study did not stop after my massive stroke. I just kept going and going.

After my stroke when I lost my ability to READ, my daughter bought me some books. These were books about other stroke victims. Normally I would say this didn't make much sense to me. I am old enough that I could probably spend the rest of my life without EVER READING AGAIN. But that is what she did. One of these books was by a woman named Jill Bolte Taylor. She suffered a massive stroke at the age of around 35 and described her experiences. She was a type of medical doctor before the stroke and when she recovered from the stroke she was an entirely different person. I would probably describe her as NEW AGE. Her whole personality changed. She went on to write a second book called Whole Brain Living. This book goes a long ways on describing how the human brain works. It provided me the knowledge of WHO I AM. In a way each human being has four different brains and we switch between them at a moments notice.

Because of my brain injury as a young child, my characters changed position. I have two characters (right side) that dominate when I am awake. The other two characters (left side) come on line during the deepest part of my sleep cycle called REM sleep.

I love to watch movies. I have watched thousands of movies over my lifetime. I have two dominant characters and I come across them many times when I watch movies. One of these characters is described very well in the recent movie titled Top Gun: Maverick and the other character appears in another recent film called Free Guy. In "Free Guy", the character is a bank teller who discovers he is a background player in an open world video game. (Jill Bolte Taylor refers to these two types as Character Type 3 and 4.)

JM,
I am impressed that you got a degree in physics at UCLA. I have a degree in Computer Science from WPI, in Massachusetts. At WPI the choice of majors was Engineering, Engineering, Engineering, Engineering, or Business with an Engineering focus.
Of all the people I knew in college, the physicists were the biggest philosophers.
Asperger's Syndrome is many things to many people. As you say, the human brain and the typical (or atypical) development thereof is exceedingly complex. We know a lot of things about the brain. We also do not know a lot of things about the brain.
My father just had a stroke and is currently recovering from and in therapy for aphasia.
As a computer scientist who also was diagnosed as having a "brain wired different from other people" in 4th grade (age 9) I have learned as much as I can about the brain. I am currently 2022 - 1968 years of age ( = 54 ).
What I know - it's complicated.
Your post also reminded me of two songs each of which have really stuck me deeply:

None of us knows and that makes it a mystery
If life is a comedy, then why all the tragedy
Three-and-a-half pounds of brain try to figure out
What this world is all about
And is there an eternity, is there an eternity?

God if You're there I wish You'd show me
And God if You care then I need You to know me
I hope You don't mind me askin' the questions
But I figure You're big enough
I figure You're big enough
Lying on pillows we're haunted and half-awake
Does anyone hear us pray, "If I die before I wake"
Then the morning comes and the mirror's the other place
Where we wrestle face to face with the image of Deity
The image of Deity

God if You're there I wish You'd show me
And God if You care then I need You to know me
I hope You don't mind me askin' the questions
But I figure You're big enough
I figure You're big enough

When I imagine the size of the universe
And I wonder what's out past the edges
Then I discover inside me a space as big
And believe that I'm meant to be
Filled up with more than just questions

So, God if You're there I wish You'd show me
And God if You care then I need You to know me
I hope You don't mind me askin' the questions
But I figure You're big enough
I figure You're big enough
'Cause I am not big enough

Big Enough - Chris Rice


There was a time when I was alone

Nowhere to go and no place to call home
My only friend was the man in the moon
And even sometimes he would go away, too

Then one night, as I closed my eyes,
I saw a shadow flying high
He came to me with the sweetest smile
Told me he wanted to talk for awhile
He said, "Peter Pan.
That's what they call me.
I promise that you'll never be lonely."
And ever since that day...

I am a lost boy from Neverland
Usually hanging out with Peter Pan
And when we're bored
we play in the woods
Always on the run from Captain Hook
"Run, run, lost boy," they say to me,
"Away from all of reality."

Neverland is home to lost boys like me
And lost boys like me are free
Neverland is home to lost boys like me
And lost boys like me are free

He sprinkled me in pixie
dust and told me to believe
Believe in him and believe in me

Together we will fly
away in a cloud of green
To your beautiful destiny
As we soared above the
town that never loved me
I realized I finally had a family
Soon enough we reached Neverland
Peacefully my feet hit the sand
And ever since that day...

I am a lost boy from Neverland
Usually hanging out with Peter Pan
And when we're bored
we play in the woods
Always on the run from Captain Hook
"Run, run, lost boy," they say to me,
"Away from all of reality."

Neverland is home to lost boys like me
And lost boys like me are free

Neverland is home to lost boys like me
And lost boys like me are free

Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Wendy Darling,
Even Captain Hook.
You are my perfect story book
Neverland, I love you so,
You are now my home sweet home
Forever a lost boy at last
Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Wendy Darling,
Even Captain Hook.
You are my perfect story book
Neverland, I love you so,
You are now my home sweet home
Forever a lost boy at last

And for always I will say...

I am a lost boy from Neverland
Usually hanging out with Peter Pan

And when we're bored
we play in the woods
Always on the run from Captain Hook
"Run, run, lost boy," they say to me,
"Away from all of reality."

Neverland is home to lost boys like me
And lost boys like me are free
Neverland is home to lost boys like me
And lost boys like me are free

Lost Boy - Ruth B

I suspect that I am not the only Aspie that understands the identity of Peter Pan. That is because I am Peter Pan.

Your life and experiences are fascinating, Jimmy. Thank you for sharing them with us. I have been learning all sorts of things about the brain hemispheres lately. It's incredible what people can recover from. I hope you continue to improve.

I read your whole post, it is interesting but don't know what else to say

I take it you relearned the ability to read if you are here

After my stroke, I experienced two types of Aphasia damage and also I suffered vision loss. I have made significant progress on recovering from this stroke damage but I am around the 80 percent mark.

In the area of Aphasia, I lost my ability to read and I lost my knowledge of words. It makes it extremely difficult to communicate when you no longer know your words. But the strangest thing was that I did not lose my ability to write. So it essentially REALLY DID A NUMBER ON ME. During this time I even wrote myself notes, notes that I couldn't hardly read at the time. I have recovered some of my reading ability and would say that I am currently at the 8 th grade level in speed. I suspect this condition is common in some stroke victims. I think I have seen numbers of around 2 million people in the U.S. suffering from Aphasia.

I was able to regain my ability to read within the first 5 days after my stroke. It was very slow at the beginning. At the very beginning it took me 20 minutes to read a simple 3 letter word. But my speed increased over time.

I describe my experience as follows:

My Journey Through the Shadows of Death

So I thought I might spend a few minutes and describe the characteristics of our fourth person inhabiting the human body. This character was the first person that came online after we were conceived.

Jill Bolte Taylor in her second book describes this character in the following way:

Over the course of a nine-month gestation, that ball of cosmic energy (the consciousness of our Character 4) directed the expressions of our genes, which contained the blueprint of our molecular profile. As a result, the cells that would make up our form developed at a rate of 250,000 new cells per second. (Yes, per second. not per minute!) As impossible as that may be to imagine, that universal power of our Character 4 consciousness directed our transformation from the single zygote cell into the structure of our emerging body.

By the time we completed a normal nine-month gestation, all of the cells making up our tissues, organs, and organ systems were lined up in perfect formation and ready for our next stage of development that would occur when we left the womb.

In most humans, they develop their four brains in the first ~ 12 years of their lives. Characters 1 & 2 becomes dominant because of the way the left and right halves of the brain are connected. The left side contains extra tissues that makes this side dominant. The right side develops linkages to the left side. And this process is complete as we move from childhood into adulthood around age 11 or 12. But in my case due to a massive brain damage at a very early age, my right half of my brain (Characters 3 & 4) became the dominant and my other side (Characters 1 & 2) took a support role which comes online during my sleep cycle. [It's a brain reversal. We are a very complex being. We go on ticking and ticking and ticking]

I can see these characteristics of Character 4 in the recent film called Free Guy. When humans sleep, we alter through various stages of sleep during the cycle. Some of these stages are called REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep and NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. So in general I relate heavily to REM sleep, it was my Character 4 before my brain injury around the age of 3. And after my injury, it became part of my primary daytime being.

One of the duties of the REM brain is an element of data keeping. Everything that happens to us during the day must be cataloged and filed away in our brain at night when we sleep. This information must be moved from Short Term Memory into Long Term Memory. That is one of the duties that Character 4 performs. But it also provides one other step in this process. AS A FINAL STEP, IT ERASES EVERYTHING FROM SHORT TERM MEMORY. In the 2021 film Free Guy, each day the character begins his life anew. As a result, Character 4 starts each day anew.

This also explains another trait. When we are born and are infants, we spend a large number of hours each night in REM sleep. [Newborn babies spend roughly 50% of their time asleep in REM. Since newborns sleep up to 18 hours each 24-hour period, that means they experience up to nine hours of REM each day. As babies grow and sleep fewer hours, they spend less of their sleep time in the REM stage. By adulthood, people experience REM for roughly 20% of each night’s sleep, which is far less than the 50% of sleep newborns spend in REM. Source: How Your Baby’s Sleep Cycle Differs From Your Own]

Before I move on to discussion the third brain, I thought I would do a recap.

Humans are one of the most complex beings that have ever existed. The reason why is because we have four beings inside us. Two exist in the light of day and the others come out to play at night in our dreams.

Each of these beings are very different from the others. They are all unique with their own skills.

In my particular case, I suffered a great injury at around the age of three. It devastated my two left side (dominant brains). But my right side survived and took their place. Eventually my left side came back online but it took the place normally reserved by my right side. Essentially I experienced a brain switch.

After my injury, I became fearless. I would walk alone through the deep woods for hours at a time. What child does this? (One who has no fear of DEATH.) Why is that? Well my third brain does not die. During the night in our dreams we encounter danger in our bad dreams. We can die many, many times BUT WE ALWAYS COME BACK. So death has no hold on us. I even collected snakes. I would capture them and bring them home and make a place to store them underground.

Before my injury, I was a wimp but afterwords I became Superman.

In Defense of Pig Pen

Humans have four independent brains. The third brain Jill Bolte Taylor in her second book called Whole Brain Living describes as Pig Pen.

Yes, that is me. But what they fail to understand is that I am the third brain, a brain that normally only exist during dream time. So let me give some explanation.

When I was small my mother normally picked out what I wore each day. But as I grew up and went to live on my own, I took on this function. But you see I am Pig Pen. I would dress in such wild combinations of clothing that people walking on the street would almost faint. Pig Pen. So where did Pig Pen come from? Well Pig Pen had one of the most severe forms of color blindness. Think of early color television sets. They were designed using RED/GREEN/BLUE (RGB). These three colors can be combined to form almost all the know colors. But in my case, my eyes only saw two colors. It was one of the most intense forms of color blindness. BUT I DID SEE COLORS. You see my eyes added an IMAGINARY color to the mix. It filled the void. So I saw all the colors but they were just not the same colors that everyone else saw.

Most people bath every day or two. But my pattern is about once a month or two. If it wasn't because of my wife, most people would find it difficult to be around me. I would be called PIG PEN behind my back. This is an interesting trait. It probably developed in humans a few thousand years ago. So let me explain. When I was in my early 20s I was a member of the Sierra Club. I would go on daytime hikes, climb hills and mountains and exist in the elements of nature. It was wonderful. Sometimes they provide overnight excursions. Well one time I went on a 5 day hike in Baja, Mexico. I would describe this trip as a Death March. There were around 50 of us. Perhaps a half a dozen females. On the first day we hiked straight up a mountain. All day climbing UP and UP and UP and UP. It was brutal. On the first night, the women took all their extra clothing and burned it on the fire. That is how hard this hike was. Well I discovered something very interesting from this hike. All of my sweet and dust combined on my flesh and produced a grime layer. It wouldn't come off by washing. It could only be removed with soap. But this layer of grime made me invisible to mosquito bites. I became invisible. So maybe there is value in being PIG PEN. It is a form of protection from insect bites.

So I need to set the record straight. There is more to Pig Pen then meets the eye.

I suspect that my encounter with a bull (for a young child this is like being attacked by a dinosaur.) at around age 3 may have also caused one other defect. When I entered school, my eyesight was very poor. They moved me to the front of the class to sit just so I could see the board and even at that I could hardly see. My dad was against prescription glasses. When he was young very few people wore glasses and often those few were called bad names such as FOUR EYES. So he just wanted me to not undergo this harshness. But I was almost blind and the effect was causing me problems at school so eventually he gave in and I was one of the first members of our family to wear glasses. WAS THIS VISION LOSS RELATED TO MY BRAIN INJURY AT AGE 3? Not enough information to tell but perhaps.

When you come back after dying, many things change. My character 3 is very unique. Some might call it strange. It has given me a skill set that many people hardly knows exist.

When I was about to graduate from college, the government put in place the DRAFT. I drew lottery number 1 in the draft. So there was no possibility that I was not headed to war. I thought that perhaps I might be rejected because I was color blind. But I found out quickly that rather I was a prime candidate. WHY? My color blindness meant that I could become a snipper. Soldiers could not hide from me by wearing special clothing.

Keep going, your history is fascinating!

In describing 4 brain theory, Jill Bolte Taylor in her book Whole Brain Living misses one point about Character 3. That character is fearless. I do not know for sure WHY THIS IS. Perhaps it is because in our dream state we experience something called BAD DREAMS. We die in our dreams but then magically we return back to life. This ingrained perception makes us different. We are no longer afraid of death. Character three has a type of built in immunity.

In the movie Free Guy, the main character dies almost every day, but then always comes back to life the next day. In the movie Top Gun: Maverick. Here is a short summary of the film.

Over 30 years after graduating from TOPGUN, United States Navy Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell is a test pilot. While he has won many honors, repeated insubordination has kept him from flag rank. The Navy has been tasked with destroying an unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant, which sits in a deep depression at the end of a canyon. It is defended by SA-3 Goa surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), GPS jammers which render the F-35 Lightning II unsuitable for the job, and what appear to be fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57 fighters. Maverick devises a plan to attack with two pairs of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.

Now here is the main point. Maverick and the team that was assembled are very unique. They are all Character 3's. They are not afraid of putting their lives on the line. THEY DO NOT FEAR DEATH.

The movies are full of Character 3s. People who were affected by a brain switch early in life where their left side of their brain went dormant for awhile and the right side stepped it and managed to keep the person alive. I love to watch movies and many times I come across others like me. People who do not fear death.

But perhaps there is another point. They do not only exist in movies. We (Character 3s) exist in real life.

When I was young a half century ago, I purchased a fast car from a close friend. It was one of the fastest cars ever built. It was called a 426 Hemi Cuda (A Barracuda with a 426 Horsepower hemi engine). [It didn't matter that it was a stick shift and that I never drove a stick shift before. It was UNIQUE AND SPECIAL.] It was built for acceleration not top end speed. In a way it was like flying a rocket ship. Now the car had one flaw. It would get up to around 110 mph and start to miss and hick-up. It was a minor flaw. It was due to petroleum oil. One needed a special oil for the engine. It had to be a synthetic oil to perform properly. Often I would take the car out for a quick spin especially after a tuneup, just to make sure the tuning was good. Well I got in the car down some deserted street and opened it up. It accelerated to 150 mph going 10,000 rpm without even a stutter. That was really one magnificent car.

This is one of the qualities of a Character 3. FEARLESSNESS

In the story of Peter Pan, there is a scene where he is about to die. Most people (adults) would be horrified by such an event but Peter says:

"To die would be an awfully big adventure."

This image is from the original 1911 book.



HE WAS FEARLESS This is the framework of a well developed Character 3.

One thing that Jill Bolte Taylor wrote in her book that makes a lot of sense to me was that
"when you have a major life decision to make it is important to SLEEP ON IT first"
The reason why is because it allows all four of your characters to provide an input. We have two brains that live in the real world and two that live in our dream state and these four characters ALL need to be given the ability to provide an input.

Some of us suffer massive strokes and fight and claw our way back to the land of the living. We are some of the strangest people that have ever existed. We are not afraid of death because we have died a million times before (in our dreams).

My mind is very good at coming up with a variety of solutions to a problem. Some of these solutions will work and others have flaws. To narrow down the final solution there is only one approach. And that approach is to try it, put it to the test. The best solution is a solution that WORKS.

"I go where no man has gone before." It is part of my nature and it is built in. It describes a CHARACTER 3. It means FEARLESS.
"Where no man has gone before" is a phrase made popular through its use in the title sequence of the original 1966–1969 Star Trek science fiction television series, describing the mission of the starship Enterprise.

One of the natures of Character 3s is that we are problem solvers. We are game fanatics. We love games and puzzles. And we are very good at solving real life problems. We fix things and make them work or invent things. We delve into the world of make believe and create things that are real. This quality is not unique to only Character 3s, but it is the fact that we take it to an entirely new level.

It is like I suffer a massive stroke. I lose almost half of my vision. One side (the right side) gone. I lose my ability to read. I lose my knowledge of words. My brain comes back online after dying and says, "O.K. this is some type of a strange game, a contest. How do I fix myself?"

Jill Bolte Taylor is not the only person that is describing FOUR BRAIN THEORY. There are several others. So I thought I might locate some more information. But then I ran into another article, that I found interesting. It was about NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES.

4 Theories That Could Explain Near-Death Experiences

At around the age of 3, I was attacked by a large bull. I weighed less than 20 pounds and the bull weighed over 1000 pounds. It was like being attacked by a dinosaur. When I came back, I came back as a different person. Instead of being a left dominant brain, I came back as a right brain, the one that exist in our sleep state.

According to the article cited above:

I am sure most readers have heard of Out of Body Experiences (OBEs) and Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). Psychiatrist Raymond Moody coined the term Near-Death Experiences in his 1975 book, Life After Life, in which he detailed the experiences of more than 100 people who survived “clinical” death but were subsequently revived.

NDEs are triggered during singular life-threatening episodes such as a heart attack, asphyxia, or shock. When revived, these people tell us what it was like for them to exist suspended between life and death. They share strikingly similar narratives: they speak of having experienced peaceful tranquility and happiness, seeing a golden light, often at the end of a tunnel, being greeted by deceased relatives, or detaching from their body and floating above it. They often report feeling obliged to make a choice—remain in this other world—or, return to their life.

Usually, they relate perceiving themselves from a perspective above or to the side of their physical body and describe accurately the conversations of the medical staff present in the room as well as the medical interventions that were performed on them. Given that they were clinically dead, how is this possible? Skeptics have raised objections to the credibility of these accounts by pointing out that they may be due to religious indoctrination.

In 2014, Sam Parnia, a critical care and resuscitation specialist at New York University's Langone Medical Center, published the world’s largest study of what happens to the human mind and consciousness in the early period around the time of death. Based on his research, Parnia believes that the conscious mind continues operating after the heart stops beating and the brain stops working for some period of time. Studies of near-death experiences are challenging the idea that our mind fades to black when our body expires.

So in a way the near death experiences are real. It is caused by how the human brain is constructed with a separate right and left side, that are really very different people.

I have no memory of the bull attack. All I remember is what came afterwards. Of my body placed in my bed and my parents standing next to me, fearful that I was dying. They were in terror, in great fear. They were horrified and scared. I saw them, like looking at them from off to one side of my body. And I thought, they miss me. I must do something and take away their fear and pain.

Maybe it is time for a little RECAP. Humans are some of the most complex creatures that have ever existed on Earth and perhaps THE UNIVERSE. Our brains have two sides - one on the left which is the dominant side in adults and one on the right which normally performs a support role. The left side RULES during the daytime and the right side RULES during sleep.

But sometimes problems can arise causing the damage to the LEFT side of the brain and it DIES. At this point, the RIGHT side of the brain can be given a choice. LIVE or DIE. If it chooses LIFE, the right half of the brain can rearrange itself and become the dominant brain, with all the thought properties of a RIGHT brain.

In my case this occurred around the age of 3 years old when I was attacked by a large bull, THE DINOSAUR. And I lived my life as a RIGHT brain living in a LEFT brain world (i.e. the Wrong Planet). Or in the case of Jill Bolte Taylor who suffered a massive stroke and came back as a different person, a RIGHT brain person for several years and then finally reverted back to LEFT brain dominance.

Humans have devised a name for people like me. We have Asperger's Syndrome. It has some downsides but it also has some upsides.

If you went back a thousand years and looked at the world, walking the streets, working very hard just to stay alive, toiling in pain and hardships, but also united with others making up a strong family
and then compared to the modern age, the progress made in the last thousand years. Much was due to Aspies. Because we have the ability to dream marvelous dreams and make them reality.