Thinking in pictures

Many people with autism are fans of the television show Star Trek. I have been a fan since the show started. When I was in college, it greatly influenced my thinking, as each episode of the original series had a moral point. The characters had a set of firm moral principles to follow, which came from the United Federation of Planets. I strongly identified with the logical Mr. Spock, since I completely related to his way of thinking.

I vividly remember one old episode because it portrayed a conflict between logic and emotion in a manner I could understand. A monster was attempting to smash the shuttle craft with rocks. A crew member had been killed. Logical Mr. Spock wanted to take off and escape before the monster wrecked the craft. The other crew members refused to leave until they had retrieved the body of the dead crew member. To Spock, it made no sense to rescue a dead body when the shuttle was being battered to pieces. But the feeling of attachment drove the others to retrieve the body so their fellow crew member could have a proper funeral. It may sound simplistic, but this episode helped me finally understand how I was different. I agreed with Spock, but I learned that emotions will often overpower logical thinking, even if these decisions prove hazardous.

Social interactions that come naturally to most people can be daunting for people with autism. As a child, I was like an animal that had no instincts to guide me; I just had to learn by trial and error. I was always observing, trying to work out the best way to behave, but I never fit in. I had to think about every social interaction. When other students swooned over the Beatles, I called their reaction an ISP — interesting sociological phenomenon. I was a scientist trying to figure out the ways of the natives. I wanted to participate, but I did not know how.

In my high school diary I wrote: «One should not always be a watcher — the cold impersonal observer — but instead should participate.» Even today, my thinking is from the vantage point of an observer. I did not realize that this was different until two years ago, when I took a test in which a piece of classical music evoked vivid images in my imagination. My images were similar to other people's, but I always imagined them as an observer. Most people see themselves participating in their images. For instance, one musical passage evoked the image of a boat floating on a sparkling sea. My imagery was like a postcard photograph, whereas most other people imagined themselves on the boat.

All my life I have been an observer, and I have always felt like someone who watches from the outside. I could not participate in the social interactions of high school life. First of all, I could not understand why clothes were so important when there were much more interesting things to think about and do in the science lab. Electronics and experimental psychology were much more intriguing than clothes. My peers spent hours standing around talking about jewelry or some other topic with no real substance. What did they get out of this? I just did not fit in. I never fit in with the crowd, but I had a few friends who were interested in the same things, such as skiing and riding horses. Friendship always revolved around what I did rather than who I was.

Even today, personal relationships are something I don't really understand. And I still consider sex to be the biggest, most important «sin of the system,» to use my old high school term. It has caused the downfall of many reputations and careers. From reading books and talking to people at conventions, I have learned that the autistic people who adapt most successfully in personal relationships either choose celibacy or marry a person with similar disabilities. By successful adaptation, I mean being able to lead a productive, satisfying life. Marriages work out best when two people with autism marry or when a person with autism marries a handicapped or eccentric spouse. The two partners get together because they have similar interests, not because of physical attraction. They are attracted because their intellects work on a similar wavelength.

I've remained celibate because doing so helps me to avoid the many complicated social situations that are too difficult for me to handle. For most people with autism, physical closeness is as much a problem as not understanding basic social behaviors. At conventions I have talked to several women who were raped on dates because they did not understand the subtle cues of sexual interest. Likewise, men who want to date often don't understand how to relate to a woman. They remind me of Data, the android on Star Trek. In one episode, Data's attempts at dating were a disaster. When he tried to be romantic, he complimented his date by using scientific terminology. Even very able adults with autism have such problems.

In News from the Border, Paul McDonnell describes an experience with dating, explaining that «things were going fine between us until I started being obsessed with seeing her very often.» Paul realized that he was pushing the woman to spend more and more time with him when she just wanted to be friends. He was not able to recognize that his girlfriend didn't want constant togetherness. Autistic adults with more rigid thinking have even worse problems when they attempt to date. They have no idea of appropriate behavior. One young man became interested in a girl and went to her house wearing a football helmet to disguise himself. He thought that it would be all right to look in her windows. In his literal, visual mind he thought that since he would not be recognized, it was okay to stand outside and watch for her.

Although business relationships can easily be learned by rote, dating is difficult. The social skills one needs to rent an apartment and keep a job were easier for me to learn than the social skills for dating, because I have very few emotional cues to guide me during complex social interactions. After one of my lectures, I received a totally inappropriate Valentine from a young man with autism. It was the kind of Valentine that third-graders give to each other. He expected me to consider it as a serious proposal and was disappointed when I ignored him. I did not write back, because I have learned from experience that responding to this kind of mail just encourages it. His teachers need to explain to him that making a proposal to someone you have just met is not acceptable. Like me, he has to be taught the rules of social interaction just as he is taught spelling. When I have to deal with family relationships, when people are responding to each other with emotion rather than intellect, I need to have long discussions with friends who can serve as translators. I need help in understanding social behavior that is driven by complex feelings rather than logic.

Hans Asperger stated that normal children acquire social skills without being consciously aware because they learn by instinct. In people with autism, «Social adaptation has to proceed via intellect.» Jim, the twenty-seven-year-old autistic graduate student I have mentioned in previous chapters, made a similar observation. He stated that people with autism lack the basic instincts that make communication a natural process. Autistic children have to learn social skills systematically, the same way they learn their school lessons. Jim Sinclair summed it up when he said, «Social interactions involve things that most people know without having to learn them.» He himself had to ask many detailed questions about experiences other people were having to figure out how to respond appropriately. He describes how he had to work out a «separate translation code» for every new person. Similarly,Tony W had an intellectual awareness of how other people felt, but he did not experience those feelings himself Donna Williams described how she copied emotions so that she acted normal, but it was a purely mechanical process, like retrieving files from a computer.

I do not read subtle emotional cues. I have had to learn by trial and error what certain gestures and facial expressions mean. When I started my career, I often made initial contacts on the telephone, which was easier because I did not have to deal with complex social signals. This helped me get my foot in the front door. After the initial call, I would send the client a project proposal and a brochure showing pictures of previous jobs. The call enabled me to show my qualifications without showing my nerdy self-until I was hired to design the project. I was also good at selling advertising for the Arizona Cattle Feeders' Association annual magazine on the telephone. I just called up a big company and asked for its advertising department. I had no fear of anyone's rank or social position. Other people with autism have also found that becoming friends with somebody on the phone is easier than building a face-to-face relationship, because there are fewer social cues to deal with.

Autistic people tend to have difficulty lying because of the complex emotions involved in deception. I become extremely anxious when I have to tell a little white lie on the spur of the moment. To be able to tell the smallest fib, I have to rehearse it many times in my mind. I run video simulations of all the different things the other person might ask. If the other person comes up with an unexpected question, I panic. Being deceptive while interacting with someone is extremely difficult unless I have fully rehearsed all possible responses. Lying is very anxiety-provoking because it requires rapid interpretations of subtle social cues to determine whether the other person is really being deceived.

Some researchers don't believe autistics are capable of deception. They subscribe to Uta Frith's conception of autism, wherein people with the syndrome lack a «theory of mind.» According to Frith, many people with autism are not able to figure out what another person may be thinking. It is true that autistics with severe cognitive deficits are unable to look at situations from the vantage point of another person. But I have always used visualization and logic to solve problems and work out how people will react, and I have always understood deception.

As a schoolchild, I played hide-and-seek. I learned how to trick the seeker into going the wrong way by stuffing my coat with leaves and putting it in a tree. I also had my entire boarding school believing that they had seen a flying saucer when I swung a cardboard saucer containing a flashlight in front of another girl's window. When she asked me about it, I told her she had probably seen a piece of insulation falling from the roof of our unfinished dormitory. I had rehearsed a whole bunch of explanations for the sighting, including the falling insulation, so she wouldn't connect my absence with the appearance of the saucer. My ploy was successful. Within two days, most of the students thought that a real flying saucer had been sighted. This deception was easy because I had gone over in my imagination all the stories I was going to tell.

I've always enjoyed these kinds of tricks, because they require a vivid imagination, which I have in abundance. I'm motivated by the same challenge that makes hackers break into computers. I really identify with clever hackers. If I were fourteen years old today, I'm sure I'd be hacking away just for the thrill of seeing whether I could do it. I would never engage in harmful deceptions, though. In some ways I guess these tricks are a substitute for deeper human connection. They enable me to penetrate the world of other people without having to interact with them.

Often people with autism are taken advantage of. Paul McDonnell wrote about the painful experience of being betrayed by somebody he thought was his friend, having his money stolen and his car damaged. He didn't recognize the social signals of trouble. It is easy for me to understand the concept of deception when it involves playing tricks with flying saucers or stuffing coats with leaves, but understanding the social cues that indicate an insincere person is much more difficult. In college I was betrayed by students who pretended to be my friends. I told them my innermost thoughts, and the next thing I knew they were laughing about them at a party.

Over time, I have built up a tremendous library of memories of past experiences, TV, movies, and newspapers to spare me the social embarrassments caused by my autism, and I use these to guide the decision process in a totally logical way. I have learned from experience that certain behaviors make people mad. Earlier in my life, my logical decisions were often wrong because they were based on insufficient data. Today they are much better, because my memory contains more information. Using my visualization ability, I observe myself from a distance. I call this my little scientist in the corner, as if I'm a little bird watching my own behavior from up high. This idea has also been reported by other people with autism. Dr. Asperger noted that autistic children observe themselves constantly. They see themselves as an object of interest. Sean Barron, in his book There's a Boy in There, describes having conversations with himself to figure out social mistakes. He divides himself into two people and acts out the conversation.

According to Antonio Damasio, people who suddenly lose emotions because of strokes often make disastrous financial and social decisions. These patients have completely normal thoughts, and they respond normally when asked about hypothetical social situations. But their performance plummets when they have to make rapid decisions without emotional cues. It must be like suddenly becoming autistic. I can handle situations where stroke patients may fail because I never relied on emotional cues in the first place. At age forty-seven, I have a vast databank, but it has taken me years to build up my library of experiences and learn how to behave in an appropriate manner. I did not know until very recently that most people rely heavily on emotional cues.

After many years I have learned — by rote — how to act in different situations. I can speed-search my CD-ROM memory of videotapes and make a decision quite quickly. Doing this visually may be easier than doing it with verbal thinking. And, as I have said, I try to avoid situations where I can get into trouble. As a child, I found picking up social cues impossible. When my parents were thinking about getting divorced, my sister felt the tension, but I felt nothing, because the signs were subtle. My parents never had big fights in front of us. The signs of emotional friction were stressful to my sister, but I didn't even see them. Since my parents were not showing obvious, overt anger toward each other, I just did not comprehend.

Social interaction is further complicated by the physiological problems of attention shifting. Since people with autism require much more time than others to shift their attention between auditory and visual stimuli, they find it more difficult to follow rapidly changing, complex social interaction. These problems may be a part of the reason that Jack, a man with autism, said, «If I relate to people too much, I become nervous and uncomfortable.» Learning social skills can be greatly helped with videotapes. I gradually learned to improve my public speaking by watching tapes and by becoming aware of easily quantifiable cues, such as rustling papers that indicate boredom. It is a slow process of continuous improvement. There are no sudden breakthroughs.

Figuring out how to interact socially was much more difficult than solving an engineering problem. I found it relatively easy to program my visual memory with the knowledge of cattle dipping vats or corral designs. Recently I attended a lecture where a social scientist said that humans do not think like computers. That night at a dinner party I told this scientist and her friends that my thought patterns resemble computing and that I am able to explain my thought processes step by step. I was kind of shocked when she told me that she is unable to describe how her thoughts and emotions are joined. She said that when she thinks about something, the factual information and the emotions are combined into a seamless whole. I finally understood why so many people allow emotions to distort the facts. My mind can always separate the two. Even when I am very upset, I keep reviewing the facts over and over until I can come to a logical conclusion.

Over the years, I have learned to be more tactful and diplomatic. I have learned never to go over the head of the person who hired me unless I have his or her permission. From past experiences I have learned to avoid situations in which I could be exploited and to stroke egos that may feel threatened. To master diplomacy, I read about business dealings and international negotiations in the Wall Street Journal and other publications. I then used them as models.

I know that things are missing in my life, but I have an exciting career that occupies my every waking hour. Keeping myself busy keeps my mind off what I may be missing. Sometimes parents and professionals worry too much about the social life of an adult with autism. I make social contacts via my work. If a person develops her talents, she will have contacts with people who share her interests.

During the past twenty years, for example, I've worked with Jim Uhl. He has constructed more than twenty of my projects, and he is one of my closest friends. Construction is his life. His business started in a tiny toolshed at the back of his home and has grown into a major company that does big jobs for the Arizona Department of Transportation and the mines. We just love to talk about contracting. Some of the best times of my life have been working on construction projects. I can relate to people who produce tangible results. Seeing my drawings turn into steel and concrete turns me on. Construction workers love to complain about stupid people in the front office, and I fit right in when they bitch about the «suits and ties» from the office who don't understand equipment or construction. Over the years I have worked with many crews and many different contractors. They all like to complain and tell construction war stories. I have no trouble being with them, and I become one of the guys. Another reason I fit in with construction workers and technical people is that we are mostly visual thinkers.

I am told by my nonautistic friends that relationships with other people are what most people live for, whereas I get very attached to my projects and to certain places. Last year Jim and I drove out to Scottsdale Feedyard, which is now closed and partially torn down. All that was left were a few posts, some tanks at the feed mill, and a deserted, wrecked office. The pens had been sold for scrap steel. It upset me very much and I didn't know if we should have come. The windows in the manager's office were broken, and the rain had warped the wood paneling. One of the few posts still standing was from the door in the fence where twenty years ago I had been blocked by the cowboy foreman.

Watching the Swift plant slowly self-destruct and knowing it was going to close was very upsetting for me. I guess my relationships with Tom Rohrer and Norb Goscowitz and the other people there were the closest I've had. The Swift plant was the place where I had had some of my deepest thoughts about the meaning of life. Memories of its closing are much more devastating than any other memory. I still can't write about it without crying.

My sense of identity was tied up with that plant, just as the things I had in my high school room were my identity. Then, when I went away for the summer, I did not want to pack any of my wall decorations away because I felt I would somehow lose myself. I had a special attic room in the dormitory where I went to think and meditate. Going to the special room, known as the Crow's Nest, was essential to my sense of well-being. When the construction of the dorm was finished, I no longer had free access to it; a locked door prohibited me from entering. I was so upset that the headmaster gave me a key.

I also remember becoming upset when my Aunt Breechan died, but I was even more distraught when I found out that her ranch was for sale. The idea of the loss of the place made me grief-stricken. Hans Asperger also observed a strong attachment to places in autistics, noting that autistic children take longer to get over homesickness than normal children. There is an emotional bonding to the routines and objects at home. Maybe this is because of the lack of strong emotional attachments to people. I think Mr. Spock would understand.

Update: Learning Social Skills

Over the last ten years I have gained additional insights into how people relate to each other. I learned that I am what I do instead of what I feel. In my life I have replaced emotional complexity with intellectual complexity. People on the spectrum who are happy have friends with their same interests. Computer programmers are happy when they are with other programmers and they can talk about programming. I talked to one lady on the spectrum who met her husband at a science fiction book club. She writes technical manuals and he works in the computer industry. They love fine food and their idea of a wonderful romantic evening is to go to a really nice restaurant and spend time talking about computer data storage systems. Normal people have a hard time understanding why this special interest is so absorbing.

Develop Shared Interests

Social interaction revolves around shared interests. When I was in high school being teased by the other kids, I was miserable. The only place I was not teased was during horseback riding and model rocket club. The students who were interested in these special interests were not the kids who did the teasing. These activities were a shared interest for us.

I strongly recommend hobbies and careers where common interests can be shared. Mentors who can nurture talent can help students become successful. Students on the spectrum should be encouraged to participate in activities such as robotics club, choir, poetry group, scouting, or chess club. My '50s upbringing helped me because turn taking and sharing was drilled into me. Today some Asperger's students have difficulty working as a team to build a robot. Working with another person should be part of the activity. Little kids need to be taught turn taking because this will make it easier to work with another person when they get older. Too many activities today are solitary. Special interest groups such as Star Trek conventions or historical societies are great places to network and find other people with similar interests. The people on the spectrum who are depressed and unhappy often have no interests they can share with another person.

There are some really smart Asperger's and high-functioning students who need to be removed from the social pressure cooker of high school. After all, socializing with teenagers is not an important life skill. I am a strong believer in mainstreaming elementary school students so they can socialize with normal children. Lower-functioning students often do fine in high school because it is obvious to the other students that they are handicapped and should not be teased. But for some high-functioning high school students, it might make sense for them to take classes online or at a community college.

Learning Manners and Social Survival

I think some of the high-functioning Asperger's people are having serious employment problems because today's society fails to teach social skills. A brilliant man with Asperger's was fired from a library job for making comments to fat patrons. Mother taught me that these kinds of comments are rude. Even though honesty is the best policy, my opinion about other people's appearance was usually not welcome. Through many specific examples, I developed a category of «rude honesty» when I needed to keep my mouth shut. All social skills were learned by being given many specific examples that I could put into categories such as «rude honesty,» «introduction routines with a new client,» «how to deal with coworker jealousy,» etc. As I gained more and more experience I placed each new social experience in the appropriate social file. Coworker jealousy was difficult to deal with. At one plant, a jealous engineer damaged some of my equipment. Today I have learned how to bring him into the project to make him feel a part of it. This will reduce jealousy. I have also learned to compliment the jealous person when they do good work. Today I just accept the fact that jealousy is a lousy human trait. To get a project done it has to be defused.

Social Skills Versus Social Relatedness

Learning social skills is like learning how to act in a play. Social skills can be taught but social emotional relatedness cannot be taught. Social skills and emotional relatedness are two different things. Often parents ask me, «Will my child have a true emotional relationship with me?» It is sometimes difficult for parents to accept that the brain of their child is wired differently. A social emotional relationship that is purely emotional may be of little interest to the child. Autism varies widely, and some individuals will be more emotionally related than others.

Modulating emotions is difficult for me. One time on a plane I laughed so hard at a movie that many people started staring at me. When I cry at a sad movie, I cry more than most people. My emotion is either turned on or all turned off. I have the four simple emotions of happy, sad, fearful, or angry. I never have mixtures of these emotions, but I can rapidly switch emotions.

After I was kicked out of a large girls' school for throwing a book at a girl who teased me, I learned to change anger to crying. I was unable to change the intensity of the emotion but I could switch to a different emotion. At my boarding school, horseback riding was taken away after I got into several fist fights due to teasing. Since I wanted to ride the horses, I immediately switched to crying. Switching to crying enabled me to not lose a job due to either hitting or throwing things. At the Swift Plant, I often retreated to the cattle yards to cry. Today any kind of violent behavior would not be tolerated in the workplace.

Subtle Emotional Cues

I was in my early '50s when I first learned about small eye signals. I did not understand why eye contact with so important. There was a whole secret world of eye movements that were unknown to me until I read Simon Baron-Cohen's book Mind Blindness. Tone of voice was the only subtle signal I picked up. Obviously I recognized strong emotion in other people when they expressed anger by yelling, sadness by crying, or happiness by laughing.

Mother has written about the difficulties with her marriage in her book A Thorn in My Pocket. When I was a child, I did not pick up on the emotional turmoil between my mother and father. I failed to recognize the signs of conflict because they were subtle. They seldom yelled at each other and they never hit each other or threw things.

What Does Research Show?

Hundreds of scientific papers have been written on abnormalities in face perception in autism. The bottom line is that in autistic people the amygdala (emotion center) is abnormal and people with autism use different brain circuits when they recognize faces. I still have embarrassing moments when I do not recognize the face of a person I met five minutes ago. I am able to recognize people I have been around for a long time. If a face has a really unique feature like a giant nose, I can remember that. The number of studies on face recognition and eye signals greatly outnumber papers on how people with autism think or perceive sensory input. Normal people are more interested in studying emotions rather than studying sensory problems or how savant skills work. I wish the scientists would spend more time on sensory problems. Severe problems with sensory oversensitivity wrecks the lives of many people on the spectrum. The most miserable individuals are the ones with such severe sensory problems that they cannot tolerate a restaurant or office. Socializing is impossible if your ears hurt from normal noise in movie theaters, sporting events, or busy streets.