Most readers are probably familiar with the stereotype of the highly rational autistic geek with a mind designed for science and numbers — an idea made popular by Simon Baron-Cohen, who considers us “systemizers” with a particular talent for technology, science, mathematics, and related fields (Baron-Cohen 2011, 96, 106-107, 122). The stereotype appears in all manner of media — mainstream news stories, popular books, online articles, and Facebook threads. Based on this stereotype, you get the fascinating phenomenon of retroactive diagnosis, in which everyone from Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein was autistic. I understand the need to develop cultural role models as a source of pride, but there are lots of living, breathing autistic people excelling at the business of being human. Surely, we could concentrate on what they bring?
I tend to chafe against the stereotype of the autistic science geek, for a number of reasons. For one, I have absolutely no interest in science and mathematics. None. I respect science. I respect people who engage in scientific research with conscientiousness and rigor. But the closest I come to having anything to do with math and science these days is to balance my check register every week — longhand, using a calculator to check my math. I can’t say it’s something I love. I like knowing that the books balance and that our money is accounted for, and I’ll admit to a moment of satisfaction when everything comes out just right, but I can’t say that I look forward to the process with great eagerness. It’s just a necessity, like washing my clothes or mopping my floor. It’s something that must be done, and I try to get as much enjoyment out of the doing as I can, but that’s quite different from being naturally wired for it.
I will acknowledge, however, that I do a lot of systemizing. I make lists of tasks. I create rules to keep my blog a safe space. I’m a very organized writer; if I don’t outline my writing beforehand in Word, I write out ideas in my head and switch them around in my mind’s eye, as though they’re part of a visual composition that I have to get just right. I organize my email in folders. I organize my family genealogy in a database. I organize my graduate school research into a dialectic journal. I organize my weekly cleaning tasks into daily reminders on my Blackberry. I organize files and memorabilia into boxes in the attic. (And yes, they’re all labeled.) I made a living for 15 years as a technical writer organizing technical information, and I won an award for a 200-page manual that was basically an annotated list of industry acronyms. So yeah, you look at my life from the outside, and it just looks like my brain is wired to systemize the hell out of everything.
But here’s the thing: The problem is that people spend an awful lot of time talking about the fact that autistic people systemize, but they don’t ask much about why we systemize. Personally, I don’t make lists and rules and keep things in order because I have a natural love of lists and rules and order, or because my mind naturally gravitates to them, or because I’m wired to be a systemizer. I’d really rather not have to be making lists and organizing the hell out of things; I’d rather sail through life as messily and as clumsily as most other people. But I systemize because my experience of the world is intense almost beyond description, because I have to work very hard on things like hearing and speaking that most people don’t, and because most of the information that comes through my senses is not filtered in the way that most people take for granted. So yes, I do a lot of things to organize my life and my thoughts, but it’s an adaptation and a way to gain control over a very intensely felt experience.
It was a huge relief when I got diagnosed and realized I wasn’t a just a control freak. It was a wonderful day when I realized that I’m a person with a disability who has adapted to it by using my mind to structure my experience. And yes, I do have a very analytical mind. I can analyze the hell out of almost anything. But my analytical skills are in direct proportion to how painfully sensitive I am about a great many things that aren’t even a blip on the radar of most people.
Of course, the other problem with the whole idea of autistic people being systemizers is that systemizing is placed in opposition to empathizing (Baron-Cohen 2011, 117) — as though one can have a high level of one or the other, but not both. That’s absolute nonsense. My systemizing is directly proportional to my empathizing, which is directly proportional to my intensely sensitive experience of life. They’re all of a piece. They’re not in opposition. Not in any way, shape, or form. If I didn’t feel the experiences and the suffering and the joy of other people so intensely, I wouldn’t concern myself so passionately with creating structure.
Structure is good. Structure rocks. Structure is one of my favorite words. But it’s not because I have a mind that naturally gravitates to structure. It’s because I have a mind that needs structure to contain and make sense of the intensity of experience that is part of autism.
References
Baron-Cohen, Simon. The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2011.
© 2012 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg