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  Both groups had social problems and difficulty with relationships, but, unlike Kanner’s autistic children in America, Asperger’s boys had no learning difficulties. They were bright sparks, intensely absorbed in their own areas of interest. Asperger called them ‘little professors’ because they could talk in detail about particular subjects in which they took great interest.

  But, though they had large vocabularies, these children were aloof, their conversational style being ‘transmit only’, and they did not seem to grasp the unwritten rules that govern two-way social behaviour. Being brainy is not enough. For success in life you must be able to get on with other people, and the children Asperger had identified had trouble with this.

  People with Asperger’s syndrome find it difficult to establish friendships despite making gauche attempts to do so. They may have no savoir-faire, and chatting can be a mystery to them. Their social approaches are often made in such a naive, forlornly inappropriate way that communication founders, and this is not a trivial matter; even in adulthood they can find themselves victims of teasing and occasionally physical attack. It is hardly a surprise that a large number of Aspergers suffer clinical depression, as well as anxiety.

  Aspergers are also more likely to be dyspraxic, which is a nicer word for ‘clumsy’, and might struggle to tell left from right. Sometimes they will have a lazy eye or bowel problems. Their gestures can be few or peculiar, and they might move in a quirky way, for example, by walking on their toes with a loping gait. There is frequently a lack or unusualness of facial expression and eye contact. They may speak in a strange unmusical monotone and use language in an odd way. They might interrupt others, and can be pedantic, stilted, or inappropriately formal. They also frequently speak too loudly, and have to be told to shush in restaurants and museums. Despite their odd speech, Aspergers are frequently good with the formalities of language, often establishing large vocabularies and sophisticated syntax, though — paradoxically — they are also more likely than the general population to have dyslexia.

  They can be highly accomplished and creative artists, scientists, actors, musicians, and writers, but their abilities often conceal problems with organisation and planning. Dylan Taylor, a handsome young autistic man, describes himself as ‘never a school person’, but at the time of writing he holds the record for the highest cumulative score in the history of Countdown, a British television word-game. His knowledge of the darkest corners of the Oxford English Dictionary is astonishing. From a random selection of nine letters he managed to produce septarium, which is the word for a certain sedimentary nodule, and in another round elasipod, a deep-water sea cucumber. Though impressive, this is not a vocabulary suitable for striking up new friendships at a cocktail party or smoothing the way in a job interview.

  Unlike diabetes, there is no blood test for Asperger’s syndrome. The question ‘Has X got Asperger’s?’ is like the question ‘Is X in love?’ Forensic science will not help you. Deciding whether someone has got Asperger’s depends to a degree on detective work, long experience, and a certain amount of circumstantial evidence. But, as Sherlock Holmes remarks, ‘Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.’

  When I was young, the circumstantial evidence of my ‘oversensitive’ personality and unusual behaviour did seem to some people to point in another direction. My offhandedness and pernickety grammar, my insistence on wearing the same old-fashioned clothes till they were mere rags, and my anxious solitariness, led my mother and some of my teachers to describe me in the then fashionable vocabulary of psychoanalysis. Mercifully I was never accused of having a ‘castration complex’ or of being an ‘anal-sadist’; the term that kept cropping up was ‘sensitive’.

  Anybody with Asperger’s will also have a personality independent of the autism, but the two will be tangled together. Much later, when I was grimly struggling to find out why I’d always felt so bewildered, I took a well-known personality test. The results described me as a rare type known informally and rather grandly as ‘the Mastermind’. Masterminds are said to be concrete thinkers, introspective, logical, rational, and clear-headed. Though open-minded, they are strong-willed and decisive. They aim for the highest quality in what they do and insist on the best from others. They can be effective leaders but tend to step into the breach unenthusiastically. Their single-minded concentration on their own ideas can cause them to ignore people’s wishes and feelings. It certainly sounded like me.

  I had spotted Isaac Newton’s name on a list of famous people of this Mastermind personality type, though he was identified elsewhere as having many of the classic characteristics of Asperger’s syndrome. It was all very mysterious. There seemed to be as many questions as answers.

  Some of the other traits of Asperger’s syndrome are listed in the superb ‘Autism Toolbox’ designed for schools, and first published in 2009 by the Scottish government:

  Difficulty in grasping people’s meaning and intentions

  Perceptual differences

  Concrete thinking focused on facts, physical objects, and the here and now

  Organisational difficulties, such as trouble getting started

  Indifference to incentives or praise

  Distractibility

  Poor awareness of relative importance

  A literal understanding of language

  Whether these oddities have been naturally selected or are just by-products of something else, is not clear. In the world of autism research, little is clear and nothing is static for long.

  Like classic autism, Asperger’s syndrome is a complex and deeply puzzling lifelong neurodevelopmental condition that affects the way the brain processes information and experiences the world. It is seen as part of the wider autism spectrum, sometimes cropping up in families where classic autism is also present. But the question is how the learning difficulties and below average IQ that often go along with classic autism can be part of the same picture as the high-functioning, articulate, and self-aware presentation that one sees in Asperger’s.

  Is it the genes? There are many leads but few answers, and this situation is frustrating for researchers. If both classic autism and Asperger’s are due to the same genetic liability, why do some people have the full picture and others only the so-called ‘milder’ problems?

  Asperger’s syndrome is, indeed, occasionally referred to as ‘mild autism’, but for many whose lives are a daily social or sensory obstacle course, or who have been made profoundly unhappy by the condition, ‘mild’ is not the right word.

  Despite their undoubted intellectual capabilities, many Aspergers struggle to find work. In 2018, the National Autistic Society reported that in the UK only sixteen per cent of autistic adults were in full time employment. It is at the interview stage, where social poise is tested as much as skill and experience, that Aspergers often fail. The three magic questions in an interviewer’s mind are: 1) Can you do the job? 2) Will you do the job? and 3) Will you fit in? It is the last question that usually does for the shortlisted Asperger. Even if he does get the job he can find collaboration hard. Expecting such a person to obey the incomprehensible plexus of social rules, which have been written by non-autistic people and which prescribe ‘proper’ behaviour, is just forcing an day upon an owl.

  *

  The term ‘Asperger’s syndrome’ only gained widespread popularity after it was used, in 1981, by English psychiatrist and autism pioneer Lorna Wing (1928–2014), who was also the mother of a classically autistic daughter and had already spent two decades as one of the founder members of Britain’s National Autistic Society. She was to become an inspiring worldwide influence on the evolution of new ideas about autism.

  Wing’s hugely influential paper ‘Asperger’s syndrome: a clinical acc
ount’ introduced the idea of an identifiably different presentation of autism, challenging Leo Kanner’s long accepted model of a rare condition with a narrow range of traits. She and her colleague Dr Judith Gould proposed instead the highly influential insight that the features of autism are spread across a spectrum, not just of severity but also of variety, and that every autistic person appears somewhere on this ‘spectrum’. At its most subtle end, says Wing, ‘the spectrum shades imperceptibly into eccentric normality’. Steve Silberman suggests that this is the most ‘subversive’ idea embedded in the concept.

  The core deficit across this spectrum is the social one; it is a lack of ‘social imagination’ — the ability to use the imagination in social contexts. But despite the blurring along the line, there is a difference between the epileptic autistic with a low IQ, who does not speak, cannot dress himself, and who will climb out of high windows if left to his own devices, and the research scientist who is obsessed by soap bubbles, wears strange hats, and finds shopping centres intolerable.

  A recent idea is that the autism spectrum should be looked at as an example of ‘neurodiversity’. The concept is that not all brains are wired the same, that everybody in the general population has his or her own strengths and weaknesses, that brains develop in different ways, and that people’s differences should be much more readily accepted at school, at work, and in everyday life.

  Neurological differences in the general population have not evolved out, and many people with Asperger’s continue to attract mates and breed successfully. So the traits of autism may be just another example of general diversity in the environment.

  Human beings resemble other animals in this respect. Look at a pack of dogs, each with its own skills and foibles. One will be an aggressive leader, another a cheerful rounder-upper, another, more alert and anxious than the rest, will wake from a doze quicker and scent danger before the others. It is the same with people. One will be a great organiser, another a good morale booster, a third will be rather aloof, a bad diplomat, the unseen watcher, not joining in around the camp fire but sitting alone and alert against a tree, waiting. Perhaps it will be this person, the one with the autistic traits, who smells the forest fire sooner, who hears first the warning snap as the creeping enemy breaks a twig underfoot. Perhaps.

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  Having given Asperger’s syndrome a name and brought it into the autism fold, Lorna Wing didn’t have to wait long for the authorities to start raising objections. The Asperger’s syndrome jack was hardly out of the box before people were trying to force it back in again, and by 2015 the World Health Organisation was calling it ‘a disorder of uncertain nosological validity’. The American Psychiatric Association took the condition out of the 2013 edition of its bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, nineteen years after having first put it in, introducing a new term, ‘autism spectrum disorder’, which now covered everything. Wing, who died in 2014, had few complaints about this. She believed that the drawing together of everything under one ‘autism spectrum disorder’ umbrella would lead to better understanding.

  But many single-minded people with Asperger’s syndrome turned up their noses at its replacement in the DSM, instead clasping ‘Asperger’s’ to their bosom, careless of whether it was recognised by the American Psychiatric Association or not. They did this on the grounds, possibly, that it was already theirs and, unlike ‘nosological validity’, did not sound like a pompous sock of mud.

  Some, no doubt, also saw ‘disorder’ as rather a rude word to use. Once upon a time, homosexuality was described as a disorder, but the medical and psychiatric establishments finally thought better of it. One of the most influential authorities on autism and Asperger’s syndrome is Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at Cambridge University and Director of the University’s Autism Research Centre (ARC). Baron-Cohen has pointed out that ‘disorder’ is such a prevalent word these days that people who sometimes lose their temper are now being diagnosed with ‘intermittent explosive disorder’. On the other hand, maybe there is sense in calling a spade a spade. Anyone who thinks that Asperger’s is not a disorder might like to have a conversation with someone who is living with it. In any case, the Autism Research Centre has made the decision to use the more neutral term ‘condition’.

  Though many people do find Asperger’s a great burden in their lives, some also find its intellectual, creative, and focus-concentrating blessings a compensation, preferring to see it as a ‘difference’. There are always arguments about terminology, and some people complain that a formal identification of Asperger’s syndrome does little more than hang an unhelpful label around people’s throats. Many who meet the diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s say they get on fine in their everyday lives without a formal diagnosis. As Tennyson put it, ‘That which we are, we are’, and some are perfectly happy to be that which they are, without having a tag clipped to their ear. As usual, Lorna Wing put her finger on it: ‘The diagnostic labels don’t mean a damned thing — just use them to get the person the services they need.’

  One of the most intriguing features of Asperger’s syndrome is the drive to dig deep into uncommonly intense and narrow subjects of interest. These peculiar fixations or obsessions are known to professionals as ‘special interests’, though many have adopted other less clinical words, such as ‘enthusiasm’ or ‘passion’. The ‘obsessive’ drive to look deeply into particular subjects is a trait that blends into the ordinary enthusiasm for certain hobbies which is common in many people, most especially boys and men. Perhaps the archetypal autistic enthusiasm is train spotting: the solitary figure in his anorak, doggedly logging and systemising, as all around him people go about their business.

  Aspergers tend to be notably independent thinkers, and the array of ‘special interests’ is astonishing in its variety. Such enthusiasms are often for mechanical, quirky, or systemisable subjects — it might be tornados, baseball or cricket scores, ice-skating, steam trains, antique mousetraps, moths, etymology, dams, the stock market, dinosaurs, astronomy, television comedy shows, bus timetables, US presidents, deep fat fryers, Star Trek, or, as in my case, British road signs. The list is full of crazy variety. Sometimes it will be a fascination for collecting a particular category of objects, such as fossils, automata, or thimbles. Some interests are so specialised that few can match the knowledge of the Asperger’s expert. I met one chap who knows more about lifts than perhaps anyone in the world.

  Occasionally an Asperger’s enthusiasm can be for another person. When this person is Abraham Lincoln nobody minds, but new friends on the receiving end of such oppressive attention can find it unnerving.

  One of my own special interests is Sherlock Holmes. In her 1989 book, Autism: explaining the enigma, Uta Frith says that Sherlock Holmes has something that looks very much like Asperger’s syndrome. He is, she says, not merely eccentric: his absent-mindedness in relation to other people and his single-mindedness in relation to special ideas are classically autistic traits. She mentions his detachment and his circumscribed interests, giving as an example his monograph, ‘Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos’, in which he enumerates one hundred and forty ashes, from cigar, cigarette, and pipe tobaccos.

  Holmes has a number of these special interests. He is an accomplished violinist and an obsessive expert in practical chemistry, as well as an authority on newspaper typography, secret writing, and all the different kinds of London mud. Dr Watson is put off by the foul chemical smells with which his flatmate fills their Baker Street home, but takes particular exception to his most antisocial interest, indoor marksmanship:

  I have always held that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humours, would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosp
here nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.

  Since childhood, I have felt an affinity to Sherlock Holmes, his solitariness, his specialised enthusiasms, and his strange quirks and habits, such as smoking the dottles of the previous day’s pipes in his first pipe of the day, his musical ability, his seriousness, his silliness, his emotional chill, his disdain for mere convention and the supernatural, the huge gaps in his general knowledge, his fastidious cleanliness, his weird sense of humour, and his firing revolvers indoors for fun. Apart from the gun business, he reminds me of me.

  In fact, the Sherlock Holmes stories are generously sprinkled with Asperger types. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, for instance, we have Dr Mortimer, an untidy, absent-minded physician and amateur archaeologist who scribbles notes on his cuff and has a special interest in skull anatomy. Then there is Stapleton, a butterfly-mad naturalist who obsessively classifies his catches, pinning them to cards. And Mr Frankland, a pedantic eccentric with that key Asperger trait, a rigid and quirky personal sense of justice, whose preoccupation with the technicalities of the law causes him to fight cases for the mere pleasure of fighting.

  But it is Sherlock Holmes’ solitary brother Mycroft who takes the Asperger biscuit. He has a mania for detail, an unbendingly constrained routine, a phenomenal memory for facts, and a horror of company so great that he is joint founder of a club that forbids any member to speak to any other. Holmes describes him to Dr Watson:

  He has the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living … his specialism is omniscience … Mycroft has his rails and he runs on them. His Pall Mall lodgings, the Diogenes Club, Whitehall — that is his cycle.

  In Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle has given us an illuminating portrait of two Asperger types, each with his own unique palette of idiosyncrasies.