'Outsider Science' and literary exclusion: A reply to denials of autistic imagination

Scientific narratives often assert that autistic people – supposedly predisposed to 'systemizing' and lacking empathy – are, by definition, indifferent to or confused by fiction. In a process exacerbated since the late 1990s, autistic ability has come to be associated somewhat exclusively with STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) areas. The standard implication is that the arts and humanities, and particularly literary studies, are the province of neurotypicals only. Yet the rarely questioned assumption that autistic people are automatically unlikely to enjoy, critically engage with or express themselves through literature has become problematic for a spectrum of reasons. Medically, the implications are considerable. Assumptions about STEM and autistic talent are encoded in certain questionnaires used to screen for autism, potentially making some autistic adults less likely to receive a diagnosis or indeed recognition – simply because they happen to read novels. Culturally, too, the dismissal of autistic literary sensibilities is troubling. It both signifies and reinforces deeper, dehumanizing suppositions that autistic people are devoid of imagination. Moreover, as widely disseminated scientific beliefs that autistic adults struggle to comprehend fiction have become steadfast, the past two decades have also yielded countless novels that depend on standard but often simplistic notions of autism for character construction. Tellingly, few 'autistic' characters in novels are ever portrayed reading fiction. In Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003), an autistic adult is even depicted as ideologically (and destructively) opposed to the existence of art and literature in the world. In effect, the autism narratives in both science and fiction critiqued in this chapter collusively perpetuate what is becoming a barbarically clichéd assumption: that autistic people are good at either STEM subjects or nothing. I argue that this notion both underestimates and undermines autistic diversity, and address possible consequences of this. The chapter thus details where and why it is both scientifically and culturally necessary to rethink certain dominant theories which have hitherto excluded literary engagement – and by extension, imagination itself – from the namings, and the meanings, of adult autism.

The main scientific narratives of autistic ability critiqued in this chapter come from the University of Cambridge's Autism Research Centre (UCARC) and are led by the centre's director Simon Baron-Cohen (Professor of Developmental Psychopathology). The name and notion that most extensively characterizes Baron-Cohen's interpretation of autistic subjectivity is systemizing. Summarizing the UCARC's ongoing research into systemizing and autism, the centre's website defines the former: 'Systemizing is the drive to analyse or construct a system. A system is anything that follows rules' (my italics). The examples of systemizing listed on the website are noticeably geared towards the practical and the scientific. Systemizing can be 'mechanical', 'abstract' (e.g., 'number patterns'), 'natural' or 'collectible' (e.g., 'classifying objects'). Thus, the key feature of the autistic mind as defined by UCARC excludes any interest in people. Although UCARC is a cross-disciplinary unit, its principal investigators' work includes neuroscience, biochemistry, psychiatry and psychology: none of the centre's affiliates or collaborators represent the humanities.

I title the processes and perspectives of the present chapter 'Outsider Science'. The term was introduced by science historian Margaret Wertheim (2011) as an equivalent to 'Outsider Art' or Art Brüt. Wertheim surveys the work of independent scholars who had little formal scientific training and yet, through experiment, made pioneering contributions to physics, biology and chemistry. I name this chapter 'Outsider Science' for much less grand but more specific reasons. First, I am not a trained scientist: my critique of scientific autism research is essentially literary in its questions regarding narrative and representation, but also in its focus on a particular aspect of autistic subjectivities and identities – namely the relationship of autism to literature itself. But, second, the scientific research addressed in the chapter also constitutes Outsider Science. The authors whose influential constructions of autism I critique are not, to my knowledge, autistic. Their scientific research, although invaluable, remains 'outside' the condition it narrates. Third, the chapter concerns Outsider Science in a more hypothetical manner: I am arguing for greater recognition of autistic sensibilities and identities which have so far been marginalized from dominant narratives. Thus, while I cite hitherto neglected evidence that autism and literary engagement have coexisted, can coexist and do coexist in many adults, my emphasis is also intended to point towards a wider reality: the fact that dominant autism portrayals in both science and culture are problematically reductive; propagating notions of uniformity at the expense of diversity or, indeed, equality.

The emphasis on autism and STEM talents since the 1990s is part of a cultural shift that gives increased attention to autism as a condition that – contrasting with dominant associations in the preceding half-century – does not necessarily mean a drastically limited lifestyle for all individuals so diagnosed. Essentially, the most culturally prominent narratives have switched from sensationalizing 'classic' autism, as conceptualized by Leo Kanner (1943), towards sensationalizing what has crudely (and ominously) been termed 'high-functioning' autism, based primarily on Hans Asperger's research (1944). This intensified focus on autism as a condition that can sometimes coexist with spectacular talent – even if, for most of us, it does not – ostensibly celebrates autism and autistic potential. However, it incurs expectations that could actually reinforce the disablement of many autistic people.

I write as an academic whose qualifications and profession are based in literary studies, but also from the seemingly inescapable perspective of an adult diagnosed autistic. In critically reviewing the most influential narratives of a link between autistic talents and STEM subjects, I do not suggest that such associations are inaccurate but that they present a misleadingly incomplete profile of what it means to be, and be diagnosed, autistic. Autistic literary authors and scholars (not unlike autistic adults in STEM areas) most likely constitute a minority when the fuller autistic spectrum is considered. Yet, as later citations will show, there are innumerable autistic individuals emerging in literary areas, and in this chapter, I begin to outline why their wider recognition is beneficial to both autistic and neurotypical communities.

Suggestions that autistic people don't 'get' fiction presuppose that we are excluded from the audience of a form which simultaneously exploits neuro-typical curiosity about our condition and influences how others may think of us. But there is also a deeper reason to interrogate both scientific and cultural notions that autistic people are unable to identify with or express themselves via fiction. In recent scientific discourse and diagnostic texts, such assumptions reinforce a still more oppressive preconception: that autistic people, by definition, lack imagination.

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CHILDHOOD AUTISM AND THE PSYCHIATRIC IMAGINATION

Reviewing Baron-Cohen's neuroscience monograph Zero Degrees of Empathy (2011), Terry Eagleton cautions against culturally engrained notions that imagination is an exclusively positive attribute. The tendency criticized by Eagleton also marks the potentially dehumanizing implications of suggesting – or, indeed, imagining – that autistic people do not express, nor even have, imaginations of their own.

To briefly illustrate the literary and social reverence for imagination as a human property, radical poet and pamphleteer Percy Bysshe Shelley's essay 'A Defence of Poetry' (1821) is instructive:

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

Shelley clearly refers to the process which, almost a century later in 1909, would be named by psychologist Edward Titchener as empathy. But even now, another century on, it is possible to see how, in autism discourse since the late 1970s, the naming of empathy drags behind it the conceptual baggage of 'imagination' at large. In effect, differences in social imagination as seen in autism remain conflated with suppositions of autistic impairment in all aspects and uses of imagination, including 'pretend play' in childhood as well as creativity, reading comprehension and intellectual originality throughout autistic life.

In 1979, Lorna Wing and Judith Gould – two most dedicated, progressive researchers on autism – recommended 'Abnormalities of Symbolic, Imaginative Activities' as a new diagnostic criterion for autism in children. Two types of 'abnormalities' were identified: the absence of pretend play and demonstration of 'repetitive, stereotyped symbolic activities'. Wing and Gould thus proposed what became known as the 'triad of impairments', naming autism in terms of apparent deficiencies in social skill, communication and imagination. In 1981, another influential article by Wing – elucidating and modifying Asperger's research to enable its clinical recognition as a 'syndrome' – further emphasized pretend play as the main signifier of imagination (or its lack). However, a decade later, a study profiling individuals with Asperger syndrome from childhood to adulthood by psychologist Digby Tantam (1991) presented enough evidence of pretend play – and making up stories – to conclude that people with the syndrome 'are not always deficient in imagination', contrary to Wing (1981). Interviewed about her work by autism historian Adam Feinstein in 2010, Wing confirmed:

We now emphasize that it is social skills, communication and imagination which are impaired. Autistic children do have imagination, but it is not social (Wing's emphasis).

Thus, 'play' is only equated with 'pretending' if it involves interaction with others. Yet despite Wing's honourable acknowledgement that her earlier usage of the term 'imagination' could have been more specific, the legacy of the 1979 terminology persists.

The most prominent research on autism and empathy itself has been authored by Baron-Cohen – who, from outside, defines autistic thought as a predisposition to systemizing, the effective cost of which is impairment in empathizing. But despite presenting a more specific focus on empathy, UCARC's narratives tend less to nuance than to reinforce in bulk the older suppositions that autistic people are devoid of imagination itself. In UCARC's adult autism AQ test, 10 of the 50 statements were designed to assess imagination. These include questions relating to visualizing processes imagination, pretend play (but only with others), empathizing and the enjoyment and comprehension of fiction. The answers are scored in such a way that imagination itself is exclusively equated with neurotypicality. Thus, in one of the most widely used diagnostic tools, created by some of the world's most prominent specialists, the assumption is implicit: autism means a lifelong lack of imagination. However, a more complex process is at work and one which the dominant scientific discourse around autism seldom acknowledges. To recognize this process, an 'inside' perspective is crucial.

Sociologist Dr Damian Milton – who himself has Asperger syndrome – has written extensively on what he terms the 'double empathy problem' between autistics and neurotypicals. In a 2012 article drawing on both sociology and philosophy to elucidate the double empathy problem, Milton justifiably argues that the

'empathy' so lauded in normative psychological models of human interaction refers to the ability a 'non-autism spectrum' (non-AS) individual has to assume understandings of the mental states and motives of other people. When such 'empathy' is applied toward an 'autistic person', however, it is often wildly inaccurate in its measure.

Milton (2012) concludes:

It is true that autistic people often lack insight about non-AS perceptions and culture, yet it is equally the case that non-AS people lack insight into the minds and culture of 'autistic people'.

Although Milton refers here to narratives of empathy specifically, his emphasis on the uneven reciprocity between autistic and non-autistic perspectives is pertinent to 'outsider' narratives of autism and imagination itself. In short, autistic people are assumed to lack imagination because their expressions of it may not conform to neurotypical expectations. Yet, as with the double empathy problem, this also signifies a limitation or impairment of imagination on the part of neurotypicals – including, as Milton suggests, the authors of 'normative psychological models'. However, some prominent neuro-typical voices in autism discourse are beginning to advocate more empathic viewpoints.

One of the more innovative commentaries on autism from outside is Jonathan Alderson Challenging the Myths of Autism (2011). The author is a Toronto-based childhood autism consultant. I remain cautious of Alderson's optimism that a mid-way stance on 'cure' between scientists and autistics is possible. However, I admire his separate implorations that something approaching a meeting point between autistics and non-autistics can be reached if the latter apply their own imaginations in more questioning ways. Alderson emphasizes that orthodox psychiatry has dismissed the presence of autistic imagination simply because it shows itself differently from neuro-typical imagination. Alderson critiques another psychiatrist's narrative of a boy with Asperger syndrome, who was reported to show no evidence of 'imaginative play', preferring to manipulate toy trains in a 'routinized way'. Yet the same boy was observed to enjoy walking backwards, apparently imitating the sensation of riding in a train. As Alderson points out, the latter detail could actually be proof of the boy's 'capacity for make believe and imagination'. And it's possible to go further: I would also suggest that playing with the toy trains in a routinized way can be read as an act of imagination.

AUTISM AND THE MACHINE

Dr Sonya Freeman Loftis – a literary scholar who states her own autistic identity in Imagining Autism (2015) – points out that the common comparison of the autistic mind with a machine or computer suggests 'a less-than-human quality to those with cognitive differences'. But why has autism, of all cognitive identities, been so conducive – or vulnerable – to associations with machinery? As we shall see, science has proven itself more interested in how autistic adults systemize than how we empathize. Nonetheless, since computer technologies are created according to systems, often for the function of creating further systems, it makes logical sense that a computer scientist with Asperger syndrome is presented as a case study alongside a mathematician and a physicist in an early journal article on autism and systemizing skills by Baron-Cohen et al. (1999). And, by the time the 1999 article appeared, associations of autism with both mathematics and computers were already long-standing in popular culture. Therefore, I will first discuss how the figure of the adult autist as the computer-esque computer programmer emerged in broadcasting, journalism and cinema.

Morten Tyldum's 2014 film The Imitation Game utilizes and projects the autism and computer association backwards to the Second World War period, portraying the life of polymath Alan Turing with accentuated autistic traits, based on post-Asperger 21st-century readings of biographical sources. However, the earliest cultural associations of autistic minds with computers occurred in the mid-1960s, following various media profiles of savant twin brothers George and Michael Flinn. Born in 1940, the Flinn brothers had been variously diagnosed as autistic, psychotic and 'severely retarded'. They also showed superlative talents in calculating days of the week on given dates centuries into the past and (with effect that quietly underlined the apparent otherness of these twins) thousands of years into the future. In retrospect, the Flinn brothers' media appearances together seem to have established two related antecedents for autism associations: first, with mathematics; second, with contemporary technology. For in the 1960s, a new labour-saving computer device was appearing in workplaces internationally: the desktop calculator, introduced in 1961. Popular associations of the autistic mind with machinery have since developed in loose accordance with technological progress and its social and cultural impact.