Sherlock, and how he doesn't have Asperger's, even if Cumberbatch said he did.

[laurajv]

movies_michelle was talking about Sherlock (check out the post, there are some awesome fic recs in it!!), and reminded me of something beatrice_otter said about Sherlock not having an autism spectrum disorder, so I went to look up that post while my kid was napping and it was about something else, really, but it did remind me of a book I got on beatrice_otter's recommendation -- So Odd A Mixture-- which contains a really good overview of autism spectrum disorders for laypersons. So I looked that up, too. And then my response got really long and obnoxious, so I moved it over here.

Sherlock certainly has things that could be superficially viewed as Asperger's, but what strikes me about the portrayal (and about the character in general, from Doyle onwards) is that -- ok, so I think, when most people think about the Sherlock portrayal as one of Asperger's, they are thinking of what movies_michelle talks about: "social isolation, acute focus on specific things at a time, and inability to socialize on what is generally considered a normal level". While those certainly exist (in all versions of the character, I think), they exist in plenty of people who don't have Asperger's, too, but have completely different issues, or no diagnosable issues at all. It's *how* those things fit into something that makes them an autism spectrum disorder.

Anyway, "So Odd a Mixture" has a handy-dandy list of 9 areas of difficulty that you tend to see, to one degree or another, in people on the autism spectrum: theory of mind (understanding that others think differently from oneself, understanding motives of others, etc), central coherence (understanding what details are important and how they impact the whole), executive function (complex planning), cognitive shifting (ability to shift focus), language processing, dyspraxia (motor impairments), awareness of the unwritten rules of conversation, interpretaton of non-verbal cues from facial expression and gestures, and sensory sensitivities.

Of those, I can only really see Sherlock (in any incarnation, not just this one) of having issues with cognitive shifting (he tends to focus intently and may not pay attention to peripheral information, though "The Great Game" in BBC Sherlock might argue against difficulty in this area for that particular version of Sherlock Holmes) and sensory sensitivities (it's certainly one plausible explanation for the character's ongoing physical disdain for women, though of course homosexuality or asexuality are alternate explanations).

Of the others -- if he had serious difficulties in any of them, he couldn't do what he does. What he does displays a deep, well-managed, coherent understanding of human motivations and of how details impact the whole.

He's bad with certain emotions (not understanding how someone could still be upset about a death that occurred years ago), but he does understand emotions in general. Even if he doesn't experience certain emotions himself, which he might not, he is clearly aware that other people have them and what effects different emotions might be expected to have upon those people's behavior.

Mostly, how he reads to me is as a bright, callous individual who really doesn't care much about other people. He does not read to me as a sociopath, though sociopathy I'm more willing to buy for the length of a story than I am an autism spectrum disorder.

Comments

[laurajv]

While it's true that many gifted individuals have common problems fitting their way of thinking to the more average way of thinking, many of us do not run into those problems -- and many of us do not have anything like the social issues Sherlock has. In fact, none of the people I know who are extremely gifted (say, IQ more than 150 -- and I know a lot more of these than most people do, for various reasons) have Sherlock's social problems, at least not into adulthood. (For these purposes, let us define adulthood as age 25. This is somewhat later than the common definition but allows for full neural maturation.)

So yes, I agree that Sherlock doesn't accommodate. I think most gifted people choose in which areas they will and won't accommodate; it is quite rare, in my experience, that they choose "none" (which seems to be what Sherlock has chosen).