Autism and the authentic self

First off, let me say that I am not autistic (or at least I've never had any reason to think so), and I have no special insights into autism, beyond what I've seen autistic people say about it.  Nor do I want to encourage the fad (irritatingly pervasive on Tumblr at least) of people laying claim to various ill-defined mental conditions in a transparent effort to gain "cred" or sympathy or to appear more colorful.  Such attention-seeking merely distracts from the needs of those who actually do suffer from such conditions.  Rather, my point is that learning about the autistic experience may provide insights useful to self-understanding even for those who are not autistic themselves.

This insight came to me via two recent podcasts by blogger Johnny Profane at AutisticAF which can be found here and here (if you are not a fan of the podcast format, the first is fairly short and the second has a transcript, though I think the audio version is more effective).  The second, in particular, discusses "autistic joy" or "flow", a state of total focus and immersion in an experience fascinating to the individual.  Most people, I think, achieve something approximating this at least occasionally, though it sounds like the autistic experience is much more immersive, sometimes making the individual completely oblivious to distracting stimuli.  The state is a "blissful" one, not exactly tranquil but fully engaged, such that being jerked out of it by the demands of the external world causes real psychological pain.

Listening to this, I felt a startling sense of familiarity.  I can remember, when I was young, sometimes going into somewhat similar states of absolute absorption with something that fascinated me, sometimes to the vexation of people who had to deal with me, when it led me to forget things I was expected to do.  As an adult, of course, it is easier to limit one's access to that state to times when no such expectations will likely arise.  However, socialization in our culture actively discourages experiencing it at all, dismissing it as "daydreaming" or the like.  We are relentlessly encouraged to turn our attention outward, to focus on the world of work and mass media and group recreational and social activity, even while Americans are notorious for the shallowness and superficiality of friendship and social interaction.  The kid who sits alone engrossed in a book or, even worse, absorbed in some intricate phenomenon like a flower or a swarm of insects, is a weirdo who needs to be cajoled into roughhousing with other kids or something else more "normal" and group-oriented.

People in general, and Americans especially, are not very introspective or self-analytical, and are socially discouraged from ever becoming so.  Autists may have no choice but to become so.

(I was actually luckier than most in having a family environment where intellectual interests were usually respected.  I have, for example, an early and fragmentary memory of one night when my parents rented a telescope and set it up in the back yard for me to look through.  I can still vividly recall the sight of the Moon, suddenly huge and rugged-surfaced, drifting slowly across the field of view, due -- as I knew even then -- to the Earth's rotation.)

Johnny Profane also feels that when he was young he didn't have a "personality" as the concept is generally understood, rather simply drifting through alternating states of autistic joy and the stresses of dealing with the baffling and increasingly intrusive social world.  He eventually had to essentially fabricate one, in the sense of an alertness and set of responses to social stimuli, but it always felt awkward and unnatural, like an ill-fitting set of clothes.  Again, I suspect that many people experience a less stressful version of this.  As a child, you constantly struggle and flounder in social interaction, sensing the existence of some kind of rule book of proper behavior that the adults all know but you don't.  When you become an adult yourself, you realize there is no such rule book and the adults were all just winging it as best they could.  You merely learn from experience to avoid the most damaging blunders, and surprisingly many adults remain rather inept even at that.

Even as a child I was profoundly aware that as time went on, I was increasingly being taught and expected to behave and express myself in ways which were at odds with my real personality, or at best irrelevant to it.  For many years I consciously maintained an outward façade, a fake self which manifested the behaviors and feelings expected of me (not that I was ever very good at it), while also consciously cultivating and preserving my real self deep inside, in a spirit of deliberate hidden defiance, constantly reminding myself that someday I would be an adult and more able to let that authentic self rise to the surface and live free.  That way of being stood me in good stead later in situations like jobs, where I usually ended up knowing a lot about my co-workers while they knew almost nothing about me.  Even the people closest to me have never known about most of what goes on in the depths of my inner mind.  They would not have understood and there was never any reason to let them in.

And for years it never occurred to me to wonder to what extent other people were doing the same.

Johnny Profane's insights about the value of unstructured time, and how time spent in intense absorption in your own personal interests and pleasures is the only time which is truly not wasted, also perfectly agree with the view of life I arrived at years ago.

I encourage readers to check out the podcasts.  You may see more of your authentic self reflected there than you expect.