Book review and social phobias.

[cybermule]

I just finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which I got for my birthday, and I really enjoyed it. I'm not going to worry about spoilers, because the main spoiler is in the Amazon review, and in my opinion, it doesn't spoil a thing. The story is written "by" a young autistic boy, and describes his adventures during family upheaval entirely in his own words and from his own point of view. This was a premise that I thought was likely to piss me off; having worked with autistic people, I was prepared for it to be in some way trite, but it actually works really well. I wasn't sure if it was aimed at children or adults, but apparently there are two versions. The liberal use of pictures makes it seem childlike, but I didn't get bothered by this, and it was quick and engrossing to read.

On a personal level, I was hooked into the story by three things. The first two are fairly simple - mathematics and Sherlock Holmes. The kid is a mathematical genius, and uses lots of mathematical and scientific thoughts to reassure himself. Being a bit of a maths geek myself, I really enjoyed this. He's also a Sherlock Holmes fan, and tries to emulate his hero by "deducing" things - not only the mystery of the dead dog, but also how to find his way around an alien world. He's hyper-logical. And that's why I like Sherlock Holmes. On an autobiographical note, he was probably my first crush... but don't psychoanalyse that one too much... it's just an emotional availability issue I have ;D

The third thing I liked was the outlook presented by the hero, Christopher. Being autistic, he has no concept of social interaction rules, yet looks at the world in an incredibly fresh and detailed way. This was my favourite quote:

"...And people who believe in god think god has put human beings on the earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings in a zoo."

I'm also pretty bad at social interaction. I'm not in any way likening that to the severity of autism, just bad developmental psychology. I liked the way he illustrated the text with explanatory diagrams, so I decided to copy that idea with this:



I literally drew that concept in the sand about a month ago when trying to explain depression to a friend. I'm quite visual and logic orientated when I try to explain my feelings to other people. Part of the fault is mine - someone who's known me for a decade still describes me as secretive and complex. But part of it is just a fatal flaw in the whole concept of explaining feelings - if you're having to do that, you're already in that rational vs. emotional thinking clinch. Hence the logic and the pictures. I'm training myself to steer the middle path.


Anyway, I was thinking of getting it put on a t-shirt, and having a little pointer to show general mood ;P
More seriously, I was obviously thinking how to steer myself to good areas of the graph.
And whether I should compile a reference guide to all my thoughts and just hand people little numbered cards whenever the conversation gets tricky. They can then go and read it somewhere where it'll be much better expressed than I could ever do it verbally, then they could get back to me if they had any further questions. Of course that's a ridiculously egotistical plan, I know, but it wouldn't half save a lot of angst.

Comments

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

Your diagram reminds me of two things I've been looking at for this term paper

Thanks for noting those down - much appreciated. I don't think I've seen them before, but it's possible that I did, and my diagram is just sub-consciously based on them. I'm going to go research them a bit more...