Thanks for a great piece on autism and the Master. I have often wondered
about Autism having been brought to the topic by the movie "Rainman"
whose central character is an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman.

I guess autistic individuals are all around us. Perhaps we meet them in
work, among friends, without noticing the autistic features. This is a fantastic
topic of discussion.

Can you post the original link please ?

Thanks

--Anand


On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 6:35 AM, pinaki roy <monkaroy@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Sherlockians,
>
> I am sure Tim has given us an even more interesting bit of information about
the Brazilians. What strange whims the litterateurs have!
>
>
> Pinaki Roy
>
> Tim Symonds <tim.symonds@...> wrote:
> Interesting stuff! Although not in any way a parallel, there was a
curious
> period in Brazilian literary history, in the 19th Century, when would-be
> Brazilian authors decided that because some of the brilliant European
> writers had suffered from tuberculosis, therefore tuberculosis was a way to
> enhance the mind's imaginative powers, so quite a number of young Brazilians
> deliberately contracted tuberculosis in the hope the affliction would
> release their literary power.
>
> _____
>
> From: SherlockHolmesSocietyofIndia@...
> [mailto:SherlockHolmesSocietyofIndia@...] On Behalf Of pinaki
> roy
> Sent: 02 April 2008 16:49
> To: sherlockholmessocietyofindia@...
> Subject: [sherlock holmes society of india] Was Holmes Autistic?
>
> Dear Sherlockians,
>
> Let me, in response to Tim Symond's point regarding Sherlock Holmes's
> supposed autism, paste below an interesting 1994 essay by Michael Maher.
>
> Pinaki Roy
>
> Was Sherlock Holmes Autistic?
> by A. Michael Maher
> 23 June 1994
> Oliver Sacks, Temple Grandin and Sherlock Holmes -- an unlikely mixture.
> Oliver Sacks is the neurologist with a national, no, international
> reputation. Sacks is an intense, scholarly, medical man who specializes in
> the mysterious workings of the mind. You may remember his book Awakenings,
> which was made into a popular movie. Temple Grandin, holder of a Ph.D. in
> animal sciences, entrepreneur, university professor, author and inventor is
> one of the most remarkable of that class of individuals who "suffer" from
> autism. And finally, to complete this unlikely trio, we have Sherlock
> Holmes, truly brilliant, the greatest detective of all time, a pathfinder
> and certainly different from his fellow man.
>
> Sacks recently published an article about Temple Grandin and autistic people
> in New Yorker magazine (December 27, 1993). He mentioned that, although
> autism has clearly been a condition that has always existed, it was only
> identified in 1940. Autism was defined in terms of the characteristic
> displayed by autistic children. When we think of these attributes, we most
> often picture a non-verbal, self destructive child sitting silently in
> isolation, head ceaselessly banging against a wall. Less envisioned by the
> layman, but also characteristic, is a mental aloneness, a certain lack of
> emotion, an ability to visualize to an extraordinary degree and the
> appearance of strange, narrow preoccupations -- highly focused, intense
> fascinations and fixations.
>
> Notice, when autism is spoken of, we automatically think of children, often
> dysfunctional children. But where do autistics go when they grow towards
> adulthood. Do they disappear? Perhaps evaporate! No one seems to be aware of
> functioning adult autistics. Since the mental range of autistics ranges from
> retarded to exceptional, and further that the condition is congenital and
> with one until death, it is clear that many of these autistic adults have
> learned to adapt, to function in the normal world. Focus on this truism was
> recently brought about by the autobiography Emergence: Labeled Autistic by
> Temple Grandin.
> Sacks writes of Temple's description of her childhood and how far she was
> removed from normal. He describes her world as one of sensations heightened,
> sometimes, to an excruciating degree. In her book she speaks of her ears, at
> the age of two or three, as helpless microphones, receiving everything,
> irrespective of relevance, at full, overwhelming volume ... she showed an
> intense interest in odors and a remarkable sense of smell ... she soon
> developed an immense power of concentration, a selectivity of attention so
> intense that it could create a world of its own. She wrote, "People around
> me were transparent ... Even a sudden loud noise would not startle me from
> my world." Of course, Sherlock Holmes' ability to concentrate is well known
> and was described by Watson as extraordinary (The Sign of Four), complete
> (The Valley of Fear), composed (The Adventure of the Lion's Mane), greatest
> (A Case of Identity) and several times as intense (The Adventure of the
> Sussex Vampire,
> The Reigate Squires, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Adventure of
> Black Peter).
> Uta Frith, an investigator of autism, writes of "Sherlock Holmes with his
> oddness, his peculiar fixations -- his little monograph on the ashes of 140
> different varieties of pipe, cigar and cigarette tobacco (The Boscombe
> Valley Mystery, The Sign of Four and A Study in Scarlet). ... his clear
> powers of observation and deduction, unclouded by the emotions of everyday
> people, and the extreme unconventionality that often allows him to solve a
> case that police, with their more conventional minds, are unable to solve."
> Of course, The Cardboard Box outlines another odd Sherlockian study, that of
> human ears. Holmes' obsession with the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus is
> mentioned in The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans. And I'm sure that
> you can think of many more examples of rather odd Sherlockian fixations on
> obscure subjects. [Additional monographs include those on Manuscript Dating
> (The Hound of the Baskervilles), on 160 Different Ciphers (The Adventure of
> the Dancing Men),
> on Seventy Five Perfumes (The Hound of the Baskervilles) and Tracing of
> Footsteps (The Sign of Four) -- Future monographs contemplated by Holmes
> include Typewriters and their Relationship to Crime (A Case of Identity), on
> Dogs Use in Detective Work (The Adventure of the Creeping Man), and on
> Malingering (The Adventure of the Dying Detective)].
> Temple Grandin, according to Sacks, constantly runs 'simulations' as she
> calls them, in her head. Temple, in her business, works to improve and make
> more humane, packing house procedures. She visualizes the animal entering
> the chute, and can envision the animal from all angles, from above, from the
> sides, she can even become the animal and feel what it is like to enter the
> chute.
>
> Can anyone doubt that during the preliminaries to The Cardboard Box Sherlock
> became Dr. Watson, actually entering his mind and discerning his every
> thought? All autistics, according to Temple, are intensely visual thinkers.
> They are non-emotional, that is, if they see a beautiful mountain scene they
> recognize it as beautiful, but the emotional "lift" is missing. Ever get a
> chill or strong patriotic feeling as The Star Spangled Banner is played?
> Yes? You're not autistic. If Sherlock were autistic, the mystery of his
> non-involvement in sexual activities is explained. An autistic person can
> appreciate, admire and respect someone -- but true love is out of the
> question. A so called lonely bachelor's life becomes not only easy, but
> preferred.
> Holmes loves music and lays the violin to help concentrate.
>
> The canon mentions his violin in no less than thirteen of Watson's accounts.
> The violin is certainly the autistic's instrument -- look at the bow, back
> and forth, back and forth. Even with a Stradivarius at his disposal,
> Sherlock was not a great or even memorable musician. He would have been
> mechanically flawless with perfect pitch, but with little or no "touch."
> Perhaps the combination of perfect pitch and drive for rhyme and repetition
> explain the typical autistic's fascination with music. It is said that the
> great ground breaking Hungarian composer, Bartok, was autistic. Creativity,
> the ability to proceed with ordinary events in a truly innovative manner is
> the autistic's long suit.
> Every true Sherlockian is a bit troubled and more than a little disturbed by
> the master's well noted cocaine use [The Five Orange Pips, The Man with the
> Twisted Lip, The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter, A Scandal in
> Bohemia, The Sign of Four and The Yellow Face]. Relax! Autism can and must
> be treated with drugs. These standard drugs were not available in the
> Victorian 1890s, but cocaine and opium were. Temple Grandin outlines, in her
> autobiography, how easy it would have been for her to have become "hooked"
> on downers. And only the intervention of her prescribed medication (50 mg
> Tofranil daily) may have saved her from a turn to illicit drugs. Curiously,
> Temple points out that her mental abilities were more acute before she began
> her medication regime. She describes her medication as "...adjusting the
> idle screw on a car's carburetor. Before taking the drug, the engine was
> racing all the time. Now the engine runs at normal speed." Is there any
> doubt that Sherlock
> used drugs to rest his ever racing mind? And remember, with the Victorian
> age's lack of today's regulated prescription drugs, cocaine and opium were
> legal, used in many patent medicines, and even prescribed by the medical
> profession of the day.
>
> Let us examine Sherlock's early life. According to Baring-Gould's account of
> Sherlock's childhood, Sherlock's parents removed him from his home and
> neighbors when he was about one year old and the family lived in Pau, France
> until he was five. Was this early escape to France necessary because
> Sherlock was nearly dysfunctional and the family was too ashamed to permit
> their friends and neighbors to learn of their secret? Then, after a brief
> stay of two years back in England, the family returned to the continent to
> tour Europe. The start of this extended four year trip coincided with the
> time Sherlock would have entered into formal schooling. As the family
> flitted from city to city, conventional schooling would have been out of the
> question and a tutor would have been employed. Did the family sense that
> Sherlock was not ready for school and were they putting off the day when
> this painful fact would have to be faced?
> Baring-Gould holds that when Sherlock finally did enter a formal school, he
> did not distinguish himself, and in fact, did not fit in and was removed
> from school to be again tutored on an individual basis. S. C. Roberts, who
> authored The Personality of Sherlock Holmes, agrees that young Holmes "...
> being temperamentally unfitted for the normal activities of public school
> life ..." was tutored at home. Bernard Davis in, Was Holmes a Londoner?,
> points out that Holmes' boxing and fencing vocations are consistent with
> private tutoring rather than the team sports normally associated with
> English public schools. An additional indication of his possible autism. And
> then there is college. Still referring to Baring-Gould, Sherlock went to
> college, probably Oxford, for two years, not making friends, except for
> Victor Trevor (The Gloria Scott), and staying close within himself. A degree
> took three years under normal circumstances in the 1870s. Sherlock quit
> Oxford, and entered a
> University (The Musgrave Ritual), probably Cambridge, for three years. He
> was a loner, always in the chemistry laboratory, regarded as highly
> intelligent by his fellow students. In Sherlock's own words (The Gloria
> Scott) he tells Watson, "I was never a very sociable fellow ... always
> rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of
> thought, so that I never mixed with men of my year." And he took a total of
> five years to finish a three year degree. In fact, there is disagreement
> over whether he received a degree at all. This apparent failure in school
> was not because he was incapable, but because he was different,
> significantly different. Certainly this chain of events is consistent with
> autism.
> Sacks describes his initial visit with Temple Grandin. "She sat down with
> little ceremony, no preliminaries, no social niceties, no small talk ... She
> spoke well and clearly, but with a certain unstoppable impetus and fixity. A
> sentence, a paragraph, once started, had to be completed, nothing was left
> implicit, hanging in the air." Grandin is quoted as saying "My work is my
> life. There is not much else." Does all this remind you of anyone? Of
> course, none other than the Master.
> As autism varies in the depth of its effect on a person, and as its
> incidence rate may well be hereditary, we should expect Mycroft, Sherlock's
> brother, to share a number of the master's autistic-like characteristics. We
> should not be surprised when Holmes says of his elder brother, "Mycroft has
> his rails and he runs on them. His Pall Mall lodgings, the Diogenes Club,
> Whitehall -- that is his cycle." (The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington
> Plans). And, of course, Mycroft is a bachelor.
> Autistics are notoriously humorless. Sherlockians have written regarding
> Sherlock's humor, or lack thereof. After a scholar called Holmes humorless,
> one Sherlockian counted over one hundred times in which the canon records a
> chuckle or laugh by the master. But examine a sample of what caused the
> Sherlockian chuckle. Typically, Sherlock was laughing at Lestrade's
> ineptness or Watson's lack of understanding. We have Watson's personal
> opinion of the Sherlockian humor expressed in The Adventure of the Mazarin
> Stone. Watson reports "...Holmes seldom laughs ... but he got as near it as
> his old friend Watson could remember." Try to think of a single witty saying
> by Sherlock Holmes or a play on words.
>
> Even without looking you feel uncomfortable with Sherlock as a standup
> comedian, don't you.
> Holmes could feel for his fellow human, but in a logical non-emotional way.
> He sets free the criminal who seems justified and who, in Sherlock's
> opinion, has acted in a logical manner. And apparently feels no guilt.
> Sherlock often is judge, jury and executioner. Again, Temple sees that world
> and finds it lacking, in her estimation. She has singlehandedly changed the
> treatment of animals prior to slaughter. Holmes undoubtedly changed the face
> of detective work for all time. Curiously, he was not able to influence an
> inflexible legal system, so he refashioned the rules in his own private way.
> This inability to conform to what may be considered non-logical rules is
> still another characteristic of the autistic personality.
> Now, let us have a little quiz. The following was said of or by whom, Temple
> Grandin or Sherlock Holmes?:
> 1. "This quality of memory seemed prodigious ... in its detail."
> (Sacks, The New Yorker, Dec. 27, 1993; Jan. 3, 1994)
> 2. "He/She has absolute pitch ... a precise and tenacious musical memory."
> (Sacks, The New Yorker, Dec. 27, 1993; Jan. 3, 1994)
> 3. "the visual parts of his/her brain and those concerned with processing a
> great mass of data simultaneously are highly developed."
> (Sacks, The New Yorker, Dec. 27, 1993; Jan. 3, 1994)
> 4. "I am the only one in the world" (in my professional area).
> (The Sign of Four; Emergence: Labeled Autism)
> 5. "(My profession) "... is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be
> treated in the same cold unemotional manner."
> (The Sign of Four)
> 6. "... his/her face had regained that ... composure which made so many
> regard him/her as a machine rather than a man/woman."
> (The Crooked Man)
> 7. "... he/she had built up a vast library of experiences over the years."
> (Sacks, The New Yorker, Dec. 27, 1993; Jan. 3, 1994)
> Perhaps I can ask you, members of the Six Napoleons, to answer for
> yourselves the question as to Sherlock's possible autistic core. Tell me, if
> you had to name the most "Sherlock like" member of the original Star Trek
> cast and then you named the most "Sherlock like" Star Trek, The Next
> Generation cast member -- who would you think of? How may of you immediately
> thought of Spock and Data. Certainly you are not surprised to learn that
> surveys of autistic people show they overwhelmingly identify with Spock and
> Data -- and yes, most "high level" autistics are Trekkies.
> The focus of this paper is not to "prove" that Sherlock Holmes was autistic,
> but to hold out the strong possibility. Sherlock certainly operated on a
> different and higher plane than his contemporaries, his powers of
> concentration were immense, his detachment legendary, his facility to
> visualize astounding. The fact that these adjectives are a perfect fit for
> Temple Grandin does not prove Sherlock's autism. However, less powerful
> observations are made to "prove" less likely features of the master's life.
>
> ---------------------------------
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--
-Anand