Autism Awareness: More Einstein Was Autistic Nonsense

The formula for concluding that an historical genius was autistic is simple:

Genius + Eccentricity + Aversion to Small Talk = Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Autism researchers in the UK and Ireland are at it again. Not finding causes of autism or developing knowledge of treatment and possible cures. No our good friends on the other side of the Atlantic are busy promoting the "Einstein was Autistic" picture of autism spectrum disorders. When it comes to autism, our English and Irish friends have no qualms about abandoning scientific certainty and the realities of the severely autistic living today for ideological, historical speculation about whether Einstein, and in addition Newton might have been autistic.

The bold headline on World Update News declares that Einstein and Newton ‘had autism’. In the article Cambridge University researchers are reported to have stated that Einstein might have had Aspergers. The article itself is fairly balanced and cites Dr. Glen Elliot from the University of California at San Francisco as stating that the eccentricities of both esteemed scientific geniuses can simply reflect their high intelligence without indicating that either was autistic. Professor Simon Baron Cohen of Cambridge University, however, clings to the genius as autism speculation. In February Professor Michael Fitzgerald offered his latest in a very long list of historical geniuses that he specultes were autistic - Charles Darwin. Professor Fitgerald even speculates that Mozart was autistic. This is the same Mozart who married, had several children and was a member of more than one lodge including the Freemasons in which he achieved the status of Master, had many friends and was well regarded. Just your typical autistic?

In the formula above "learned" professors like Mr. Baron Cohen and Mr Fitzgerald simply disregard some uncomfortable realities in making their historical speculative diagnoses:

1) Total lack of observation of the "patients"

2) Reliance on second and third hand accounts of persons no longer alive many of whom were not health care of psychological professionals.

3) Contrary evidence concerning ability to form intense interpersonal relationships iincluding marriages.

4) Lack of discomfort in public speaking.

Professors Fitzgerald and Baron Cohen are academics. They are of course free to speculate about any subject that flits through their consciousness. But it seems strange that these two learned men do not find it worthy to mention that there are many severely autistic persons living lives dependent on the care of others, some with limited intellectual and practical skills.

It seems, for one reason or another, that the learned professors are ashamed of the plight of the severely autistic who live with us today, preferring to speculate about long dead historical geniuses.

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Topsy Turvy Irish Times Article Demeans Autism Parents, Promotes Reality Challenged Professor

Corrrection: This comment initially, and incorrectly, identified Professor Michael Fitzgerald as being the author of Defining Autism – a damaging delusion, instead of Dr. Mike Fitzpatrick. Thank you to Mike Stanton for the correction. This comment has now been corrected and modified accordingly.


It is Topsy Turvy Day in an Irish Times article Darwin is the origin of new thesis on Asperger's. In "Darwin" Dr. Muiris Houston promotes the latest effort by Professor Michael Fitzgerald to assign yet another historical genius, this time Charles Darwin, to his speculative list of persons with Aspergers. Dr. Houston glosses over entirely the fact that Professor Fitgerald's opinion is pure speculation, having never met Darwin who died before Asperger's was even defined as a medical condition. Nor does Dr. Houston mention Professor Fitzgerald's career of assigning many historical geniuses to his speculative Asperger's list. Parents once again are the villains in Dr. Houston's and Professor Fitzgerald's Topsy Turvy fantasy production.

Wikipedia, in People speculated to have been autistic, has a summary of Professor Fitgerald's career in historical genius autism speculation:

Michael Fitzgerald, of the Department of Child Psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin, has speculated about historical figures with autism in numerous journal papers and at least three books: The Genesis of Artistic Creativity: Asperger's Syndrome and the Arts,^[4] Unstoppable Brilliance: Irish Geniuses and Asperger's Syndrome^[5] and Autism and Creativity, Is there a link between autism in men and exceptional ability?^[6]

Fitzgerald speculated the following were autistic in The Genesis of Artistic Creativity:

• Writers – Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, Bruce Chatwin, Arthur Conan Doyle, Herman Melville, George Orwell, Jonathan Swift and William Butler Yeats.
• Philosophers – A.J. Ayer, Baruch de Spinoza, Immanuel Kant and Simone Weil.
• Musicians – Bela Bartok, Ludwig van Beethoven, Bob Dylan, Glenn Gould, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Erik Satie.
• Painters – Vincent van Gogh, L.S. Lowry, Jack B. Yeats and Andy Warhol.

Unstoppable Brilliance discusses Daisy Bates, Samuel Beckett, Robert Boyle, Eamon de Valera, Robert Emmet, William Rowan Hamilton, James Joyce, Padraig Pearse and W.B. Yeats.

Autism and Creativity says the following may have been autistic: Lewis Carroll, Eamon de Valera, Sir Keith Joseph, Ramanujan, Ludwig Wittgenstein and W.B. Yeats.

While Professor Fitzgerald visits history, and his imagination, to speculate about historical figures he never met, most of whom lived and died before autism and Asperger's were known to the world, parents in the real world today struggle with the real challenges of caring for, raising and preparing their autistic children for a future without them.

Dr. Houston, clearly enamored with Professor Fitzgerald's historical speculation, also shares Dr. Mike Fitzpatrick's demeaning characterization of parents facing autism reality who take a biomedical approach to their children's autism. He promotes Fitzpatrick's book Defining Autism – a damaging delusion:

“Parents who share the unorthodox biomedical outlook project a negative view of autism, as a destructive disease process which is sometimes described as ‘worse than cancer’.”

And he says that some parents implicitly dehumanise people with autism by describing “their own predicament in terms of grief and loss and as one of unremitting battle against the corrosive impact of autism on their child, their marital relationship and their wider family”.

Dr. Houston then goes on to point out that there is no scientific evidence, only anecdotal evidence, in support of biomedical treatments. And therein lies the rub. Dr. Houston and the Irish Times reject anecdotal evidence, direct observation by parents of their children, of real situations and people, as being unscientific. Yet, he embraces, without question, the historical speculation of Professor Fitzgerald that Darwin, and other historical geniuses, people that Professor Fitzgerald never met, most of whom died before autism or Aspergers were recognized conditions, had one of these disorders.

Parents who actually care for and raise their children, who can see the realities of their children's autism spectrum disorders, and who try to help them live the fullest life possible are increasingly under attack today. Medical authorities fiercely intent on protecting vaccine programs from ANY criticism or question dismiss as hysterical parents who see their children regress after receiving vaccines. Parents who provide ABA or biomedical treatments to help their children are accused of oppressing them by some neurodiversity advocates.

Professor Fitzgerald has built a career writing articles and books and making presentations to learned societies speculating about the possibility that people he has never met might have had either autism or Aspergers. Dr. Mike Fitzpatrick, himself the parent of an autistic child, has the incredible arrogance to to demean and dismiss parents who fight for their children, who struggle to care for them every day. He speculates, with no solid evidence, that parents efforts to help their own children has a corrosive impact on autistic people. Describing our children's realities as we see them every day is actually harmful? Meanwhile Professor Fitzgerald sits in the library imagining that Darwin had Aspergers. Dr. Muiris and the Irish Times embrace both of their evidence bare theories while dismissing the daily observations of parents from around around the world.

If you are the parent of a child recently diagnosed with an autism disorder welcome to the Topsy Turvy world of autism parenting. Parents know nothing and hurt their autistic children while purporting to help them. Professors who prowl the library speculating that historical figures were autistic are taken seriously while parents who observe and deal with their children's autism challenges every day know nothing. In the world of autism parenting every day is Topsy Turvy Day as described in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame:

Once a year we throw a party here in town
Once a year we turn all Paris upside down
Ev'ry man's a king and ev'ry king's a clown
Once again it's Topsy Turvy Day
It's the day the devil in us gets released
It's the day we mock the prig and shock the priest
Ev'rything is topsy turvy at the Feast of Fools!

Crowd:
Topsy turvy!

Clopin:
Ev'rything is upsy daysy!

Crowd:
Topsy turvy!

Clopin:
Ev'ryone is acting crazy
Dross is gold and weeds are a bouquet
That's the way on Topsy Turvy Day

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Good Grief! Now Darwin Was Autistic? Give It A Rest!

As a parent of a boy with autistic disorder, assessed with profound developmental delays, and focused on the real life challenges of helping my son, I get tired of the endless speculation that attributes to every historical genius a diagnosis of Aspergers or Autism. Einstein is the most oft mentioned. Now a psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Fitzgerald is is presenting to the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Faculty of Academic Psychiatry his speculation that Charles Darwin was autistic or at least that he had Aspergers.

Perhaps psychiatrists like Dr. Fitzgerald would have more time to actually help autistic children and adults if they just went through the history books and claimed that every historical genius known to humankind was autistic or had Aspergers. Then they could close off the discussion before anyone started speculating about whether history's brutual tyrants and serial killers might also have been autistic.

autism