Re: An interesting new autism theory

This post below from David Seagrave is in response to an article recently posted on the ELAS Google Group.  See here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/05/11/a-radical-new-autism-theory.html

 

From David Seagrave

 

As a small boy I was convinced that I was a LUNATIC and that was greatly reinforced by the events in 1953 which I have described in detail,which are outside the scope of this Account I can recall how my photographic memory picked up trivial details even when I was aged 5 and living in Bideford (for instance coming across a seemingly empty shell on Westward Ho beach and finding a hermit crab inside it which squirmed and I was frightened of it) Then  such matters as the route numbers of buses Perhaps someone can check to find that Route 101 ran from Bideford to Barnstaple in 1945 ! It was as if my developing brain was a blank videotape which recorded things entirely at random if it had a shutter mechanism that took snaps as I travelled around and a few of these "mental  snapshots"  persist in my mind even now

 

With ageing these mental photographs fade and nowadays I have acquired a filtering mechanism for example I skim headlines but a few things stick easily such as reports of sex-abuse by Catholic priests I once had a photographic memory for junk facts about railways After diagnosis with AS I became aware how I BORE PEOPLE so I consciously willed myself to forget junk facts about anything When afterwards I met rail enthusiasts who rabbitted on about railway matters imperceptible to nearly everybody  else I saw myself as a CRASHING BORE  I found that this tendency crept into my knowledge of photography when junk facts about the subject crept into my short stories 

 

We are perhaps unable to judge the relevance of all this detailed input to everyday life It DOES come in useful for example in remembering the precise location of road hazards so I recall how when returning to Stafford after dark I would crawl past a crossroads with sign for DERRINGTON to look for a raised grating that nearly threw myself off my scooter and then weave past it at about twice walking pace THIS is Asperger strength !

I cannot explain  why EYES SCARE ME so intensely that I cannot bear to look at people even now and eye contact induces mental tremors utterly beyond the limits of language  So I have never learned enough about body language or facial expression to be an accurate judge of it Yet in today s portrait of Andrew Marr in the Herald I see a man whom I would describe as a Radiant Vessel of God - it conveys the image of God Revealed In All His Beauty gushing  forth from a courageous man who has conquered a stroke Andrew Marr has a timelessness in his face I can spot facial expressions of what I call degenerate people but I cannot define what it is about their faces which silently shouts that they are alcoholics or drug users   

 

Whenever I feel GUILTY I cannot bear to look at myself in a mirror Yet when the light is in the right face I see myself as a timeless Radiance and never more so than in my Mynydd Mawr portrait taken in 1982 when I was 40 years old with ample shock of hair

 

 There are many sensory inputs which disturb me in the same way I find that the type face now in use on Ryvita cartons is too frightening to look at I have ALWAYS felt that certain lettering is  frightening ,for I could read at the age of three by means of the contemporary advertisements for Oxo,Bovril & all in distinct type faces I perceived car and bus radiators as MOUTHS OF MALEVOLENT CREATURES

 

In "The High Road To Bickulphstow " I explore the language leakage with germs and Germans and how as a very small boy Alan confuses flies with aircraft This is a reconstruction of my own earliest perceptions of aircraft as malevolent beings .

 

I have written how I was scared at the sight of a burnt out Womens Institute on the way to primary school ,and an overturned car and particularly disturbed by photographs of railway accidents and air disasters in the contemporary newspapers where facts such as the location and type of aircraft stuck readily in my mind

 

My conviction of being a LUNATIC ,as a boy was in fact a precocious foreknowledge of my present panache as a writer where my characteristic style is to put myself into the shoes of my leading characters -including SCHOOLGIRLS and ELDERLY LADIES ! as i write through their voices as their streams of consciousness  in "the First Person Present Immediate " to convey often very tragic themes and above all the stories about Parfitt and Smethurst that lead to their deaths  and of course John Barming s streams of consciousness in both the Narrative (Welcome To Alloa ) and the Radio Dialogue 

(The Arnsbrae Litter Bin ) whilst I use the same technique in my most wicked story of all-perhaps unpublishable -I wo nt reveal the plot -who se title refers to me- 

 

WITH A LOUD CREAKING OF HIS ARTIFICIAL LEG   !