Imagining Autism: Fiction and Stereotypes on the Spectrum

Imagining

AUTISM

Imagining

AUTISM

Fiction and Stereotypes

on the SPECTRUM

SONYA FREEMAN LOFTIS

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

© 2015 by Sonya Freeman Loftis

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

Chapter 2 first appeared as The Superman on the Spectrum: Shaw’s Autistic Characters and the Neurodiversity Movement in Dilemmas and Delusions: Bernard Shaw and Health, ed. Christopher Wixson, special issue, SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 34 (2014): 59–74. Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University. This article is used by permission of The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Loftis, Sonya Freeman, [date]

Imagining autism : fiction and stereotypes on the spectrum / Sonya Freeman Loftis.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-01800-7 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-01813-7 (ebook)

1. Autistic people in literature. 2. Identity (Psychology) in literature. 3. English fiction—History and criticism. 4. American fiction—History and criticism. 5. American drama—20th century—History and criticism. 6. English drama—20th century—History and criticism. 7. Stereotypes (Social psychology) I. Title.

PN3426.A87L64 2015

820.9'3561—dc23

2015011624

1  2  3  4  5    20  19  18  17  16  15

For Matt Loftis

My life started the day that I met you.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1The Autistic Detective:

Sherlock Holmes and His Legacy

2The Autistic Savant:

Pygmalion, Saint Joan, and the Neurodiversity Movement

3The Autistic Victim:

Of Mice and Men and Flowers for Algernon

4The Autistic Gothic:

To Kill a Mockingbird, The Glass Menagerie, and

The Sound and the Fury

5The Autistic Child Narrator:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

6The Autistic Label:

Diagnosing (and Undiagnosing) the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Afterword

Notes

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to those who commented on chapters in progress, including Bruce Henderson, Christopher Wixson, Linda Zatlin, Lisa Ulevich, Allison Lenhardt, and Stephanie Frankum. Special thanks to my mentor at Morehouse College, Linda Zatlin, who encouraged me to pursue disability studies in the first place. In addition to social coaching me all over campus, Linda uplifted my heart during one of the most challenging years of my life. Lisa Ulevich, wonderful friend, occasional coauthor, and brilliant thinker, has influenced my interpretation of the texts examined here more than she could possibly know. Thank you to those who provided the world’s most loving childcare while I was writing, including my wonderful in-laws, Jan Loftis and April Ledford, my sister Kristen Dill Fish, and, of course, my parents. Special thanks to Yolanda Gilmore Bivins of the Atlanta University Center Library: you go above and beyond the call of librarianly duty! Finally, thanks to my wonderful students at Morehouse College: you inspire and challenge me on a daily basis.

Imagining

AUTISM

Introduction

(Behavior is communication.)

(Not being able to talk is not the same as not having anything to say.)

—Julia Bascom, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking

Even though the stereotype of autistics is that we lack empathy, I could not sleep after I heard about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the winter of 2012. I read headlines online each morning, and, like many other people across the nation, I prayed for the families involved. Three days after the tragedy, I saw a headline connecting the killer at Sandy Hook with Asperger’s syndrome. After carefully insuring that the volume was turned down low (loud noises terrify me, even when they are coming from my own computer), I clicked on the video. I covered my mouth with my hand and rocked back and forth slowly while the news clip, now turned down to a safe level, blared bad news. The media said that the Autism Research Institute had released an official statement: Our thoughts and prayers are with the community of Newtown, Connecticut. . . . The eyes of the world are on this wrenching tragedy. . . . [M]isinformation could easily trigger increased prejudice and misunderstanding. Let us all come together and mourn for the families. Because the college where I work as an assistant professor was out for the holiday, I had all day to work on a new article. Instead, I opted for the uneasy comfort of pacing around my living room. Mingled with my sorrow for the tragedy was a new fear of how the actions of one individual might influence the public perception of people on the autism spectrum.

Later, people asked me about the tragedy at Sandy Hook. If someone who uses a wheelchair committed a crime, would you ask your neighbor who also happens to use a wheelchair for insight into the psychology of the killer? Such questions oversimplistically reduce neurological difference into a universal way of thinking, as though all people on the spectrum think alike, our thoughts and personalities reduced to a mythological, biological destiny. While autistics may think differently from neurotypicals (people who do not have autism) by definition, this does not mean that people with autism are a homogeneous group with a universal psychology—far from it. Autistics display a fantastic variety of personality types, skill sets, and interests. Furthermore, the media coverage following the tragedy forwarded a stereotype of people on the spectrum as violent. There is no scientific evidence linking autism with violent crime. In fact, studies have shown that people with autism are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators: social naïveté and physical signs of difference can make autistics the target of abuse and victimization.¹ The media frenzy in the winter of 2012 was a disturbing example of the dangers of stereotyping, and it had the potential to do real damage to the (already marginalized) autistic community. The media hype was only one more example of our culture’s simultaneous obsession with and yet prejudice against autism spectrum disorder.

This book examines the interrelationship of literary representations of autism, cultural stereotypes, autistic culture, and disability identity politics. Deconstructing cultural stereotypes of people on the spectrum and exploring autism’s incredibly flexible alterity as a signifier of social and cognitive difference, this book focuses on some of our culture’s most canonical responses to autism, examining the role of autism and autistic characters in modern literature. Beginning before the diagnosis in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Bernard Shaw and extending all the way to contemporary fiction by Mark Haddon and Stieg Larsson, this book examines literary characters clearly presented as being on the autism spectrum, as well as those widely suspected by readers to be autistic. From the standard classroom staples to the best sellers of the past decade, the surprisingly frequent presence of autistic characters in popular literary works testifies to our culture’s interest in cognitive difference and to the disruptive power of disabled figures in normative discourse. In a culture that has traditionally prioritized the written word, the place of literature in the cultural stories we tell about ourselves holds incredible myth-making power. And cultural stories—whether told by the news media, the literature taught in classrooms, or a television sitcom—matter. They influence the way we think about people with autism, the way we think about disabled people as a cultural minority group, and the way our society regards, values, or disvalues anyone who is different. Left critically unexamined, previously ignored from both a disability studies standpoint and in terms of autistic culture, these literary depictions of life on the spectrum are left to stand as representative of what autism is—such depictions remain unquestioned, unexplained, and unexplored. Illuminating the space between the stereotypes and the search for autistic identity (or perhaps sometimes the overlap between and the disturbing interdependence of the two), the chapters that follow examine the assumptions that underpin common literary stereotypes of people on the spectrum and explore the implications that these fictional depictions have on public perceptions of the condition. I hope that this book, as the first book on autism and literature, will contribute to increased attention to our society’s many fictional depictions of mental disorders, encourage an increased understanding and acceptance of neurological difference, and help to bring mental disorders into the field of disability studies.²

Disorder versus Diversity: Autism and Autistic Culture

Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, the disability rights movement and disability studies have had a growing presence in both popular culture and academia; however, people with autism have been largely excluded from that movement.³ Although mental disability is increasingly taking a place in the field of disability studies at large, it has frequently been excluded from disability scholarship. As David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder explain, From the segregation of special education classrooms to the systematic murder of people with cognitive disabilities in Nazi Germany, the fate of people with physical disabilities has often depended upon their ability to distance themselves from their cognitively disabled peers. This internalized oppression has resulted from institutionally enforced hierarchies of disability.⁴ Only recently have those with autism and other neurologically based mental disorders begun to take a larger role in disability activism. As pervasive developmental disorders, autism and Asperger’s syndrome (AS) are part of a wider condition known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a diagnosis that has as core characteristics difficulty with social skills and communication (communication skills range from nonverbal to garrulous but awkward), a limited range of interests (the special interests associated with the autism spectrum can range from train schedules to molecular structure), and sensory integration problems (hypersensitivity to light, sound, and touch).⁵ People on the spectrum often have poor physical coordination and demonstrate self-stimulating behaviors (such as rocking, pacing, or hand flapping). At least, these are the official diagnostic terms forwarded by the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), which is used by psychiatric professionals in diagnosing autism. While some autistic qualities can be disabling in everyday life, some autistic characteristics can confer strengths as well. Some people on the spectrum have unusual memory skills and heightened powers of concentration. While people with autism may inadvertently come across as cold or aloof in social situations, we are often praised for unusual honesty and directness, detail-oriented thinking, and a passionate dedication to our chosen careers. Some people on the spectrum have high IQs and are very gifted in their areas of special interest.⁶ As a physical condition with profound effects on consciousness and social life manifested at markedly different levels of severity, ‘autism’ is an extraordinarily unstable category.⁷ Indeed, it is this very instability, the tension between ability and disability, that has brought ASD into the realm of popular culture.

In the past twenty years, ASD has become a source of public fascination.⁸ Recent New York Times articles describe AS as one of the most intriguing labels in psychiatry and autism as the most puzzling of childhood disorders.⁹ Indeed, the media often present ASD as enigmatic: the association is common enough that a jigsaw piece is the international autism awareness symbol. Autism lies on the outskirts of scientific inquiry and medical data: the cause is unknown, there is no known cure, and there are no approved medications or treatments. In fact, this lack of medical consensus may contribute to public interest in the condition: Because it is seemingly beyond current scientific knowledge, and because it evades a popular idea of the rational, autism appears to be otherness in the extreme and, as a consequence, the source of endless fascination.¹⁰ Disability studies scholar Stuart Murray argues that the danger of such fascination, of regarding autism as exotic or spectacular, lies in popular representations of those on the spectrum as figures of difference and otherness who represent the alien within the human, the mystical within the rational, the ultimate enigma.¹¹ Unfortunately, this can lead to an autistic being treated as more a puzzle than a person.¹² There are other reasons ASD has become the medical condition of fascination for our particular historical moment.¹³ Diagnosis of ASD is on the rise: Between 1994 and 2004, the percentage of students in K–12 schools labeled as having autism rose 525 percent.¹⁴ Amid concern about a so-called autism epidemic, stereotypes abound. People on the spectrum are metaphorically represented as machines, aliens, or computers, and pop culture has perpetuated the erroneous stereotype that all people with autism are savants.¹⁵

Yet as people on the spectrum have begun to take a larger role in disability activism, an autistic community and subculture have emerged, and that community has begun to redefine the terms used to describe autism and to challenge and change public perceptions of what it means to be autistic. Traditionally, autism has been defined under a pathology paradigm: it is most commonly understood as a mental disorder requiring treatment or cure.¹⁶ Autistic self-advocates, however, point out that cognitive differences are not always deficits and argue that differences in neurology need not be pathologized. In opposition to the pathology paradigm (the language of the medical establishment, which perceives autism as a mental disorder), they advocate the neurodiversity paradigm, arguing that variety in neurology is a normal part of human diversity.¹⁷ Thus, autistic self-advocates maintain that autism is not a mental disorder but a different way of being. Perhaps the most extreme version of this argument is represented by groups in the UK arguing that people with AS should be protected not under disability laws but under laws that protect other minority groups (such as ethnic, cultural, and sexual minorities) from discrimination in the workplace. Proponents of neurodiversity align themselves with the larger trend in disability studies that regards disability as a social construct. Although disability has been traditionally thought of as an individual medical problem in need of a cure, disability studies scholars oppose this dominant discourse by pointing out that disability is one form of human diversity and that disability is only problematic in the context of a society that is not designed to accommodate difference.¹⁸

Clearly, a pathological approach to autism and a neurodiversity approach to autism each present a different set of philosophical and ethical problems. These very different approaches affect public perceptions and, ultimately, the way our society treats people on the spectrum. On the one hand, regarding autism as a form of diversity could minimize the disabling aspects of autism and turn attention away from the need for support (and consequently reduce research funding and public support for accommodations and treatment). Murray cautions that people should not seek to unambiguously ‘rescue’ an idea of autism that is uniformly positive, as that runs the risk of replacing one scheme of misrepresentation with another.¹⁹ On the other hand, regarding autism as a mental disorder rather than as a form of diversity could minimize the ways in which this condition is socially constructed. It could also overlook the fact that autistic traits can confer strengths along with impairments. The field of disability studies at large argues that all disabilities are socially constructed: distinguishing between impairments (the fact of physical difference) and disability (society’s lack of accommodation for difference or impairment), disability studies scholars argue that a person who uses a wheelchair is impaired in his or her inability to walk but will only find this mobility impairment disabling when faced with an environment that uses stairs instead of ramps.²⁰ In the case of ASD, the socially constructed nature of social impairments is perhaps even more readily apparent. If an autistic person and a neurotypical person have a conversation in which a misunderstanding occurs, who has caused the miscommunication? While some might blame the autistic person’s impaired communication skills, it is also possible that the neurotypical person, by listening more patiently or speaking more clearly, might help to alleviate the miscommunication. But while the autistic person may not understand what the neurotypical person is thinking, the neurotypical person may not understand what the autistic person is thinking either. Autistic people and neurotypical people sometimes think differently on very fundamental levels. The misunderstanding works in both directions and could be understood as being caused by differences in communication styles. Of course, it is possible to find some middle ground between the neurodiversity and pathology paradigms. As Mark Osteen argues, Disabilities are not either physical facts or discursive constructs, but both.²¹ One can recognize autism as simultaneously both a disability and a valuable form of human diversity.

As the autistic community struggles between these paradigms, the terminology surrounding ASD has become increasingly complex and politically charged (and to many people, simply confusing). Indeed, the politics of autism are so heated and complex that it may seem impossible to say anything about the subject without offending someone. First, there is general disagreement in the autism community regarding the question of person-first language.²² Generally, the parents of children with autism (particularly those who are labeled low functioning) have argued that the preferred terminology should be person with autism in keeping with the larger trend in the disability rights movement to put people first and to emphasize that autism is a medical condition and not who the person is. Proponents of the neurodiversity paradigm, however, argue that having autism implies that autism is a disease or defect; they promote the term autistic, which suggests autism as an essential part of personal identity. In this book, I have chosen to use the terms person with autism and autistic interchangeably. While some might associate terms such as mental illness and mental disorder with autism, these terms present their own issues. Technically, autism spectrum disorder is not a form of mental illness. Illness implies the corruption of originally healthy function, and many believe that people are born autistic.²³ Mental disorder is accurate from the perspective of the psychiatric community but is generally rejected by proponents of neurodiversity. The question becomes disordered compared to what standard? and one could argue that the term disorder prioritizes the neurotypical way of thinking as normal, natural, and neutral. I sometimes use the terms mental disability and cognitive difference to refer to autism. Although disabled people often find the term differently abled patronizing (it minimizes the challenges of navigating a world designed for the able-bodied), cognitive difference recognizes the concerns of the neurodiversity movement. Although some people use the terms intellectual disability and cognitive disability interchangeably, these two terms denote very different conditions. While cognitive disability can indicate a wide range of conditions, the term intellectual disability generally refers to people with IQs that are measured to be below average. However, IQ is a particularly problematic way of measuring the intelligence of autistic people who are nonverbal. What is true for the general public is especially true for those who do not communicate in traditional ways: in defining intellectual disability, the proviso, of course, is that intelligence has no clear definition, nor is there any way to measure it.²⁴ Finally, people with autism are sometimes described as being on the spectrum, because medical discourse refers to autism as a spectrum disorder. This term is also somewhat ambiguous, since autism is not the only spectrum disorder in psychology (for example, schizophrenia is also considered to be a spectrum), but in popular culture the term is generally used to refer to autism only. Some autistic self-advocates reject the idea of autism as a spectrum, arguing that the concept of a spectrum serves to separate autistic people into high-functioning and low-functioning groups.

Second, the difference between AS and autism has long been unclear in the mind of the general public. Originally identified as two separate conditions, they have often been considered related in the medical community, with autism being diagnosed when an individual has autistic traits and language delay in childhood and Asperger’s being diagnosed when an individual has autistic traits without language delay.²⁵ The artificial distinction between the two conditions (in adulthood, those diagnosed with AS and classic autism may be much alike) has long been recognized, and in the DSM-5, the diagnosis of Asperger’s was eliminated, and those with AS are now generally placed (along with those with classic autism) under the larger diagnostic heading of ASD. Even before this official diagnostic change, many people with an AS diagnosis self-identified as autistic. Because people who once received an Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis are now described as having autism spectrum disorder, I frequently use the terms Asperger’s and autism interchangeably and do not always distinguish between individuals who received one diagnosis or the other. Some would argue that it is important to use these terms interchangeably, because the division between those with AS and those with classic autism divides the autistic community, obscuring the connections between autistic people with divisive terminology that prioritizes some autistic people over others.

Generally, the autism community has objected both to terminology that divides autistics from each other and to terminology that suggests that autism is a deviation from an imagined normal person. The rise of online communities for autistics has led to the creation of a language of our own. Aspie is slang for Asperger’s, and Autie is slang for classic autism. Perhaps the most powerful term invented and embraced by the autistic community is the term neurotypical (NT). The term gives autistics a way to describe people who are not on the spectrum—a rhetorical position essential in the ongoing rewriting of the pathology paradigm. As autistic self-advocate Nick Walker points out, The most insidious sort of social inequality, the most difficult sort of privilege to challenge, occurs when a dominant group is so deeply established as the ‘normal’ or ‘default’ group that it has no specific name, no label.²⁶ The very existence of the term opens opportunities for individuals on the spectrum to discuss, examine, and challenge neurotypical privilege.²⁷ Disability studies scholar PhebeAnn M. Wolframe lists some of the privileges that people in our society who have never been diagnosed with a mental disorder can probably count on: I can criticize the mental health system . . . without being called a conspiracy theorist, or having my opinions dismissed as a sign of illness. . . . I am unlikely to be incarcerated without being charged with a crime, given a chance to defend myself, or being allowed to speak with a lawyer or other advocate. . . . I am unlikely to be forcibly subjected to treatment which, though carried out in the name of my health and well-being, might be considered torture in other contexts [restraint, unwanted medication, electroconvulsive therapy].²⁸ But most neurotypical privilege is more subtle than this: how autistics walk and speak, how we choose to dress, and even the foods we choose to eat can all be construed by psychiatrists as signs of mental disorder.²⁹ For example, interview practices that favor neurotypical body language and communication styles, as well as work environments that create sensory issues or encourage the social exclusion of autistics can make it more difficult for people on the spectrum to find and maintain jobs. Certainly, the community’s use of the word neurotypical is a part of what Snyder and Mitchell have termed the disability rights movement’s political act of renaming that designates disability as a site of resistance and a source of cultural agency previously suppressed—at least to the extent that groups can successfully rewrite their own definition in view of a damaging material and linguistic heritage.³⁰ Overall, a term such as neurotypical destabilizes common conceptions of what is considered normal.

Another set of divisive (and controversial) labels in the autism community are functioning labels, with those who can speak and/or live independently generally labeled as high functioning and those who need support in daily living and/or are nonverbal generally labeled as low functioning. Functioning labels can serve a practical purpose in helping to determine accommodations and therapies. However, functioning labels also present problems on multiple levels because the division between the groups is unclear: a high-functioning verbal autistic might live independently but be unable to cross the street by herself, while a low-functioning autistic who does not speak might have a high IQ and communicate brilliantly by writing. In any case, these ambiguous terms are clearly implicated in the pathology paradigm, since in many ways "‘high-functioning’