Beyond Understanding

Andy Martin

I ought to have known better than to have lunch with a psychologist.

"Take you, for example," he said. "You are definitely autistic."

"What!?"

"I rest my case," he shot back. "Q.E.D."

His ironic point seemed to be that if I didn't instantly grasp his point -- which clearly I didn't -- then, at some level, I was exhibiting autistic tendencies.

Simon Baron-Cohen, for example, in his book "Mindblindness," argues that the whole raison d'être of consciousness is to be able to read other people's minds; autism, in this context, can be defined as an inability to "get" other people, hence "mindblind."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 22, 2010 1:50 AM
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