Joanne Ruthsatz

People with autism are known for their extraordinary directness. So: You just don't get it, do you?

That would be the question I would really want to ask Joanne Ruthsatz (the lead author and the one who did the research underlying this book), although I might not have the nerve to do it. This is a book about two very important phenomena -- autism and prodigies -- but I just don't feel like she understands either.

She certainly doesn't know how people with autism feel. If she did, she wouldn't talk about successful "cures" (of which she discusses a handful). What she is describing is not cures; it's successful covering of symptoms. Look, I'm autistic -- but, 99% of the time, you can't tell. When does it show? Only the much-less-than 1% of the time when I'm in a situation that I don't understand. There aren't many of those, these days -- but when I do encounter one, believe my, you know I'm out of my depth. These kids she claims are cured? What happens when they get thrown in a situation they don't understand? I thought so....

And then there are the prodigies. I'm not a prodigy or a savant, but I have near-prodigious music skills -- and I really don't think Ruthsatz understands musical prodigies. What I read in this book is not how I think, at least.

To be sure, the book devotes relatively little attention to musical prodigies, and even less to mathematical prodigies (my other strong area), and still less to the rarer phenomenon of linguistic prodigies. Most of the attention is on art prodigies. I suspect that those are the ones Ruthsatz personally understands, or at least likes best. So that part of the book may be better.

And there is some advice that I think is very good: "Train the talent." That is, in dealing with autism, instead of going all-out in behavior modification, take the autist's special skills (many, even those relatively hard to work with, have them) and build on those. It will often induce them to learn better behaviors just to enrich their experience in their special areas. Ruthsatz and several others have discussed this technique, and it really does seem to work.

And we really do need to understand prodigies (and savants) better. So this is, on the whole, an important and useful book. Just... can you talk to us first, before you decide who we are?… (mer)