James Joyce Asperger

Michael Fitzgerald and Antoinette Walker in their book Unstoppable Brilliance - Irish Geniuses and Aspergers Syndrome have choose nine Irish geniuses, being James Joyce one of them.

One obvious problem is that how can you diagnose for sure these people as such. They recognize that and I quote:"Only a clinical assessment would ultimately confirm a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, and this is clearly not possible. Even so, it is possible to make substantial claims about the subjects."Another problem is if they label them under that condition, won't it, and I quote?"reinforce negative connotations of the condition?"they kind of save face again by stating that, and I quote:"But Asperger's syndrome is also associated with magnificent, at times almost superhuman, abilities ante need to be accentuated too."

They practically defined Savant Syndrome and why then they did not addressed it to whom it may concern? It is understandable the issue Dr. Darolt advanced but the problem does not stop here.Although they recognize it, and I quote:"To all intents and purposes, this book is a snapshot of these Asperger geniuses; it is not intended to be exhaustive."If they removed Asperger from that assertion, it would be much more to the point, because they cannot validate themselves and they have no hard wired case, they have a supposition built around under a kind of "one size fits all" diagnose revolving around, and I quote:"Three spheres of interests have been selected: politics, science and the arts. Traditionally, Asperger's syndrome was associated with those in science and engineering fields, but there is growing awareness that is also seen in those in positions of political leadership and among creative artists. The nine figures inhabit these spheres were all extreme figures, and most are household names in Ireland, - In many cases, around the world ."

They loosely center Asperger syndrome on social interactions, which are very poor, being the subjects targeted for bullying. They have a high rate of drop outs, though Joyce got through College.The search for identity is a recurrent engagement and they adopt multiple roles to reinvent themselves, what in the case of Joyce is true when writing his novels..They point out that Aspergers tend to have numerous and quite different roles and occupations, what was also not the case of Joyce, which stood his lifetime only under one role, in real life.The sexual identity supposed for Aspergers most definitely does not fit Joyce, which stood passionately stuck to Nora.The concentration for Aspergers in language music and logic fairly fits.One odd fact is that they point out is that though Aspergers are good linguists, they have difficulty with Irish and the information that Boyle and Joyce were relinquished from the State exams is surprising.The peculiarity on how supposedly Aspergers handle languages, having to know first the rules otherwise cannot form mental images and the also supposedly absence of unconscious, what eventually might lead to not having repressed memories or regular thoughts, what might open a free flow, or true free association, is highly debatable.They quote Joyce's famous answer when rejecting psychoanalysis and when asked about "Mystery of the unconscious?" to what he answered "What about the mystery of consciousness?" does not resist the smallest of considerations, if you are aware about Joyce`s intentions when he wrote specially Finnegans Wake, which is supposedly "the" book of his uncounscious, including the fact that the whole action happens during sleep.They browse on what they call "competitive" theories and stress that under one of the theories Aspergers, or autists, have exceptional skills at processing detail, but fail to see the "big picture" and see the world in a fragmentary way, which in the case of Joyce, specially Finnegans and Ulysses is completely the opposite which happens.The evidence of arrest in Joyce because he did not develop his tenor voice and his observations that it didn't happen because he was committed to Finnegans Wake is an offense to the intelligence of the reader, specially if he had taken care of figuring out what Finnegans is all about.Although there is a warning that, and I quote:"Because of the heterogeneity in autistic spectrum disorders, there can be considerable variety or difference in the features observed" this probably the best connection between real Aspergers and an eventual diagnostic and it is worth geting acquainted with it: (it seems a direct transcription from DSM but it is not). Incidentally, let's take a luck what Aspergers looks like at DSM.

Unfortunately, although in the foreword it is said, and I quote: "We were reminded in a recent 'disABILITY' campaign to focus on a person's ability, not his or her disability", they created a criteria that focus more on the disability aspect than anything else and goes against the idea of what the book is supposed to be. Another flaw is that they take for granted that they did the right thing and do not leave the benefit of the doubt. Another thing, yet, is that in the foreword it gives you the impression that Ireland is the cradle of Asperger's syndrome and it is a racial genetic problem the same way that as if they have blue eyes or are blond...

This problem had surfaced previously in a book the author Michael Fitzgeral had done on the same subject in 2007 Genius Genes: How Asperger Talents Changed the World, with Brendar O'Brien.

In this book it is particularly odd the review at the introduction about, and I quote: "Important aspects of creativity, imagination, genius, and autism and how these may be interlinked."

There is the story of trying to fit a square peg on a round hole, but in this case, they fit any kind of format, provided it belongs do a genius, in one hole... The note about Gender and Genius is the best of them all... Comes very close to the note on Mathematics and Autism, where the item nr. 3 "May marry other mathematicians" brings immediately to mind one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, Alan Turing...

Dr.Michael O'Brien publishe in 2005 what is perhaps the genesis of the evolution which would succeed with his book Autism and Creativity: Is There a Link between Autism in Men and Exceptional Ability?

Michael Fizgeral, already diagnosed 900 indviduals with Aspeger skyndrome, as it is informed on a note about him in Wikipedia, and in this note it is also informed, and I quote:

Speculation about diagnoses in historical individuals is, by necessity, based on behaviour as reported by others and anecdotal evidence rather than any clinical observation of the individual. Retrospective diagnoses are often controversial (Oliver Sacks wrote that many of these claims seem "very thin at best",[9] and Fred Volkmar of the Yale Child Study Center has remarked that "there is unfortunately a sort of cottage industry of finding that everyone has Asperger's".[10]) Fitzgerald's work was described in a British Journal of Psychiatry book review of Autism and Creativity as "fudged pseudoscience"[11] and in Mark Osteen's Autism and Representation as "frankly absurd".[12]

(9) There has been some tendency recently to claim Einstein, Wittgenstein, Bartok, and others as exemplars of autism, claims that seem very thin at best.

(10) But Dr. Volkmar said that even with the descriptions of Cavendish's peculiarities, he remained skeptical that the scientist had the syndrome.

Cavendish was taciturn, and yet, Dr. Volkmar said, Asperger's patients often talk incessantly about their interests. And though Cavendish did not publish much, he still made significant discoveries, in contrast to many Asperger's patients Dr. Volkmar sees, whose illness interferes with any sort of real accomplishment.

''The trouble for many of our folks is they just engage in an endless acquisition of facts, without doing anything productive,'' he said.

(11)Fitzgerald finds what he’s looking for, trawling life stories for nuggets to fit his theory: Hitler’s autistic psychopathy, Wittgenstein’s autistic superego, Yeats’s classic ‘Asperger pose’ and ‘autistic aggression’. One might be forgiven for thinking that this sort of fudged pseudoscience comes with the genre. But retrospective psychobiography can be done without succumbing to this book’s shortcomings. Kay Redfield Jamison’s brilliant and captivating book Touched with Fire examines the relationship between bipolar disorder and creativity by presenting extracts of psychohistory as recorded by writers and artists themselves and consulting widely with colleagues working in the humanities (Jamison, 1991).

Fitzgerald’s conclusion is touted on the back cover as ‘ spirited and controversial’. I think it’s shaky. Statements that he makes, such as ‘another important point emerging from this book is that the autistic spectrum is very wide and this book widens it still further’, seem as absurd as arbitrarily altering the definition of fever to fit a hypothesis that there is a link between pyrexia and genius.

Since our subject is James Joyce I made some aditional observations which goes in line with the notes above:

There is a timing problem in using these theories on the subjects:

Robert Emmet 1778 - 1803
Padraig Pearse 1879 - 1916
Eamon de Valera 1882 - 1975
Robert Boyle 1627 - 1691
William Rowan Hamilton 1805 - 1865
Baisy Bates 1859 - 1951
William Butler Yeats 1865 1939
James Joyce 1882 - 1941
Samuel Beckett 1906 1989

It goes against a very basic assumption of an (scientific) experiment as diagnostics: Point of view of the observer...If, in the case of Joyce they cannot determine whether he was short or long sighted, or had syphilis, with all medical records on hand, how would it be possible to come up with such a conclusion as they did about all these subjects?

Speech & Language

Idiosyncratic or peculiar language:
-Fascination with words
-Word repetition or echolalia
-Pronoun reversal/poor syntax/literal meanings (difficulty with figurative language)
Inventive use of language:
Neologisms/liking for word games/puns/rhymes/capacity for poetry
Higher verbal IQ
Linguists/polyglots
Monologues
Pedantic/verbose/malapropisms
Unusual voice qualities: high-pitched tone or monotone/unusual stress patterns
Simple, slapstick humour/talent for mimicry and impersonations

Social Impairment

Liking for solitude
Solitary pursuits
Difficulty showing emotions, especially affection
Variable desire for company: selective company;preference for family members;close friends
Difficulty reading other people's minds and behaviour
Failure to recognise faces
Lack of empathy
Gullibility;naivety
Excessive formality;robotic
No turn-taking;adapting content of speech to listeners
Inappropriate behaviour;rudeness
Childlike capacity;immaturity(in adulthood)

Narrow Interests

Limited/eccentric interests
Intense focus on one of two subjects
Preoccupied with own agenda/self-motivated/autodidact/insatiable curiosity/avid reader
Non-compliant/non-conformist
Originality of thought/innovative/inventive
Intense
concentration/hyper focus/phenomenal energy
Excellent rote memory for facts and details
Preoccupation with details
Computer style thinking
Preoccupation with parts of objects, especially mechanical
Difficulties prioritising except own interests
Collecting instinct

Non-verbal behaviour

Repetitive routines or rituals (compulsive)
Desire for sameness
Repetitive motor mannerisms:
hand/toe/finger flapping, rocking
Impaired sequential time? being 'in their own world' living in the 'here and now'
Few facial expressions (apart from anger or misery)
Lack of eye contact
Innocent, charming faces, flashing eyes
Autistic charisma/poise

Miscellaneous

Identity confusion
Poor autobiographical memory
Cannot construct narratives of self
Restlessness
Potent imagination/fears, paranoid traits
No pretend play (as children)
Difficulty differentiating fact from fiction
Musical ability/understanding of musical form
Controlling an aggressive (autistic aggression)
Hypersensitive to criticism
Vengeful
Autistic superego/harsh conscience/moral intensity, or, rarely the opposite
Religiosity/interest in metaphysics/supernatural/immortality
Co-morbidity/impaired or poor health, especially depression/poor hygiene

Sensory perception/motor co-ordination

Good visuo-spatial skills
Unusual reactions to sensory stimuli:
-hypersensitive, especially touch, hearing
Synaesthesia (missing up of senses)
Absolute pitch
Food fads
Insensitivity to pain
Attention deficits
Delayed sensory processing
Peripheral perception - peering, squinting
Anxiety due to sensory overload
Huge capacity for observation
Fragmented perception - e.g. seeing only the door handle in the room
Motor clumsiness/awkward motor movements.
Poor handwriting
Clumsy, awkward gait
poor balance (proprioreception)
Poor muscle tone/lax joints
Rapid movements
unusual postures
Poor aptitude for sports

On light of that, I applied the duck test and decided to leave aside the hypothesis that Joyce is Aspergers as those authors see it and although , he can swim, walk,quack and look like an Asperger, he is not one of them. And again, as it was the same problem with schizophrenia, then, where is his group? I decided to pursue Savant and I rest my case. Anyway, you can judge by yourself:

Let's take a look on James Joyce as Savant.