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Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2009) 364, 1467–1473

doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0329

Autistic autobiography
Ian Hacking*
Collège de France, 11, place Marcelin Berthelot, 75231 Paris Cedex 5, France
Autism narratives are not just stories or histories, describing a given reality. They are creating
the language in which to describe the experience of autism, and hence helping to forge the concepts
in which to think autism. This paper focuses on a series of autobiographies that began
with Grandin’s Emergence. These are often said to show us autism from the ‘inside’. The paper
proposes that instead they are developing ways to describe experience for which there is little pre-
existing language. Wittgenstein has many well-known aphorisms about how we understand other
people directly, without inference. They condense what he had found in Wolfgang Köhler’s Gestalt
Psychology. These phenomena of direct understanding what other people are doing are, Köhler
wrote, ‘the common property and practice of mankind’. They are not the common property and
practice of people with autism. Ordinary language is rich in age-old ways to describe what others
are thinking, feeling and so forth. Köhler’s phenomena are the bedrock on which such language
rests. There is no such discourse for autism, because Köhler’s phenomena are absent. But a new
discourse is being made up right now, i.e. ways of talking for which the autobiographies serve as
working prototypes.
Keywords: Köhler; Wittgenstein; Grandin; Donna Williams; Mukhopadhyay; Tammet

1. INTRODUCTION 2. SOME QUESTIONS

We now watch, hear and read a great deal about what it Our instinct is to treat the words of the autobiogra-
is like to be autistic—in autobiography, biography and phies as literal descriptions, albeit tinged with
fiction. Autism narrative is a new genre: not expert metaphor and coloured by art. That is to that
reports by clinicians or reflections by theorists, but they are true (or false) according to some pre-existing
stories about people with autism, told by the people criteria for describing experiences and sensibilities.
themselves, or their families, or by novelists, or by I wonder whether they are not instead helping to
writers of stories for children. create a language for talking about what was hitherto
Since this is a new genre, it is multimedia. Its richest unknown. Yet even that is not right, for it implies
habitat is the blogosphere. Chat rooms are awash with that there was a continent there to know, but not
autists chatting. I shall unfashionably stick to print, and yet explored.
will mainly refer to four well-known autobiographies,
those by Grandin (1986, 1995, 2005), Williams (1992, (i) Are the autobiographies and other stories less
telling what it is like to be autistic than
1994), Mukhopadhyay (2000, 2008) and Tammet
constituting it, both for those who inhabit the
(2006). The authors are more than ‘talented’, as
autistic spectrum, and for those who do not?
are for example Nazeer (2006) and Mór (2007).
As might be expected, they are not all uniformly Despite my few examples, we are concerned with the
‘high-functioning’; Mukhopadhyay is brilliant in the entire multimedia genre. Different kinds of item
use of words, but needs help in many other aspects of influence each other in complex ways. Novelists
life. I use these four to explore how talented autistic study autobiographies, whose authors learn from
individuals are affecting our understanding of autism. theorists. Parents pick up ideas from novels when
I shall not use this occasion to quote much of what they are thinking about their children. We all
they say. Let them speak for themselves. I offer instead watch movies and documentaries. A ‘thick’ kind of
a suggestion about their role in the ongoing social and human being is coming into being, where once
cultural evolution of the autistic spectrum. I take for there was only a ‘thin’ one. The autistic thin man of
granted that underneath the spectrum is a family of yore, or rather the thin child, when not having a
definite biological conditions, be they neurological or tantrum, was a silent self-absorbed creature, alone
genetic or whatever, but that in an important sense the with bizarre habits.
spectrum itself is a ‘moving target’ that has evolved Our four autobiographers clearly have persona-
dramatically (Hacking 2007). lities that are thick, dense or rich, whatever adjectives
you please. Can they teach anything about other
people with autism, and, in particular, more severely
* Author and address for correspondence: 391 Markham Street, Toronto, impaired people?
Ontario, Canada M6G 2K8 (ian.hacking@college-de-france.fr).
One contribution of 18 to a Discussion Meeting Issue ‘Autism and (ii) Do the autobiographies provide prototypes for
talent’. describing and thinking of all autistic people?

1467 This journal is q 2009 The Royal Society

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1468 I. Hacking Autistic autobiography

Or is that exactly the wrong way to go, because it quite different and far less fundamental. I am concerned
suits only the ‘high functioning’, and creates too with what these words are doing to the public under-
many false expectations about others? standing of autism.

Oliver Sacks wrote his own engaging account of

Grandin, under the title, ‘An anthropologist on Mars’. 4. THE TENSION BETWEEN HIGH FUNCTIONING
Grandin had said to him after dinner, ‘Much of the AND SEVERE
time I feel like an anthropologist on Mars’. (Sacks Alison Singer, vice-president of Autism Speaks,
1993, p. 259; 1995.) That phrase invites the all too expresses one side of a tension that has bedevilled
suggestive trope of the alien, which some in the autistic relationships between parents of autistic children. She
communities favour and some resent. Wittgenstein contrasts her daughter Jodie, who ‘has classic autism,
(2001, p. 190e) thought that: ‘If a lion could talk, we which falls on the other end of the autism spectrum
could not understand him’. If a Martian spoke, would from Asperger syndrome’, and another girl and friend
we understand it? Only if we shared or came to share of the family, Haley.
some ‘forms of life’, some ways of living together with Many days it is hard to believe that the challenges Haley
lions. That is precisely a problem for a person with faces with regard to her Asperger syndrome and those
severe autism. But the evocative phrase, form of life, is Jodie struggles with are related under the same DSM-
never more than a pointer; we shall need to be more IV diagnosis.
specific about what is missing. Some observations by At one end of the autism spectrum, we often find lower
Wittgenstein and by Wolfgang Köhler, the best- functioning persons like my daughter who cannot
remembered pioneer of Gestalt psychology, are speak, have violent tantrums and can be self injurious,
unexpectedly helpful in this respect. while at the other end we have persons who struggle
with very significant, but very different, predominantly
social issues.
3. TEXTS NOT PEOPLE (Singer, no date)
The people who write autobiographies will not Singer is one of the two major participants in the video
concern us here, only their texts. This has several Autism Every Day.1 She went so far as to say, on screen,
corollaries. First, it does not matter that in some that sometimes she wanted to end it all by driving her
cases the autist is not the sole author of the final words car, with herself and her daughter in it, over the
of the text. Not only have editors had their roles, but Brooklyn Bridge. For this, she has been much vilified,
also for example Grandin’s first volume of autobio- even to the extent of some critics saying that her child
graphy, Emergence, was written ‘with’ a professional should be taken away from her.
co-writer. Mukhopadhyay’s recent title, How Can I Singer is, then, an activist who speaks for the family-
Talk if My Lips Don’t Move? Inside my Autistic Mind shattering impact of severe autism, and wants to insist that
(2008), was made up by someone in Arcade Publishing this is a problem quite distinct from that at the other end of
Inc. That is irrelevant. It does not matter for present the spectrum. I presume she would say that our four
purposes who contributed what to the final print form autobiographers speak for high-functioning autists, but
of the text. not for her daughter. I fully respect her point of view,
Second, in my lowbrow sense of the word ‘text’, the which is shared by myriad mothers on the front lines. I am
outside of a book is part of the book. The cover with its exploring the alternative possibility, that the spectrum
puffs and blurbs will be more impressed on most people may evolve in such a way that there is thought to be more of
who read the book than the middle 100 pages. a continuum in the descriptions of experience, than there
Third, we are not concerned with diagnosis. I use has been. It is not a question, in my opinion, of finding out
the label ‘autism’ in a deliberately ill-informed way, to that there is a continuum, so much as trying to smooth
refer to individuals with some sort of autistic spectrum over the contrasts urged on us, and experienced by Alison
disorder. Mukhopadhyay is the only one out of our four Singer. Note also that a few children begin as extremely
authors diagnosed as autistic at an early age, a diagnosis impaired, and somehow grow out of it, to function well, so
confirmed by a thorough examination in childhood by that a continuum can appear in a single life.
British experts. Although sometimes these four indi- Singer’s assertions are of grave practical importance.
viduals are often taken to be aspergic as opposed to There is a growing wing of the autistic community that
autistic, they themselves regularly use the word autism rejects the idea of looking for a cure. That makes sense,
and are heard by the non-discriminating public as Singer implies, for Asperger’s people who have a thick if
speaking about autism. The UK title of Tammet (2006) unusual life. It is not fine for her daughter. Likewise
uses ‘Asperger’s’ where the USA one has ‘autistic’. Moore, author of George and Sam (2004), the
Suppose, however, that we were to answer question remarkable book about her two severely autistic sons,
(ii) in the negative, and hold that the autobiographers is very much against integrating her children in regular
are speaking only for the high-functioning end of schools, with the assistance of aides qualified in special
the spectrum. Then it would be essential to attend to education. That may be excellent for children further
the distinctions along the spectrum that I am along the spectrum, but not for her older sons.
deliberately ignoring.
Fourth, our concern is not that of neurologists who
may hope to decipher from the words of the autobio- 5. AUTISM NARRATIVE
graphers’ clues to what is going on their brains, or the Autism stories thrive on stage, radio, TV, cinema and
biological causes of their condition. My preoccupation is above all on the Internet. Texting is an ideal mode of

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Autistic autobiography I. Hacking 1469

communication for many autists. Even when we stick horror and Harlequin romances all help to reinforce a
to print, there is a vast publishing world of autism way of talking about autism.
narrative beyond autobiography. Moreover, there are The story-tellers learn from autobiographies how to
many more than a handful of autobiographies. Williams tell their tales. But that is a two-way street. Temple
herself has published two more such volumes as well Grandin’s Emergence was written before the genre got
as other books. There is a host of parental biographies. underway, so her self-descriptions are unaffected.
The most copious domain of printed autism Today’s autistic child, brought up on children’s stories
narrative is fiction. Haddon’s (2003) The curious about autistic children, and who in later years goes on
incident of the dog in the night-time is only the tip of a to write an autobiography, will give accounts that are
book mountain. Reviewing the book, Charlotte Moore textured by the early exposure to role models.
wrote that ‘Autistic people are not easy subjects for
novelists. Their interests are prescribed, their experi-
ences static, their interaction with others limited.’ 6. ‘INSIDE’ AUTISM
(Moore 2003.) In my loaded terminology, these In his foreword to Grandin (2005), Oliver Sacks wrote
words imply that George and Sam were thin boys, that her previous book, Emergence, was
destined to grow up into thin men. This is in no way
Unprecedented because there had never before been an
intended as a criticism of her parenting; instead, it
‘inside narrative’ of autism; unthinkable because it
should serve as a reality check. had been medical dogma for forty years or more that
In an interview a year after Moore’s review, Haddon there was no ‘inside’, no inner life, in the autistic.
(2004) implied complete agreement, but ironically (Sacks, foreword in Grandin 2005, p. 11)
reversed its connotations. The lives of autistic people
are so boring on the face of it, he said, that he modelled Even before we dip into these books, we find that
himself on Jane Austen, describing the lives of equally word ‘inside’ over and over again—on their covers. On
boring people, and making them fascinating. He the back cover of a current paperback of Grandin’s
thereby turns some preconceptions upside down. Little (2005) Emergence:
could he have known about the amazing subgenre of A remarkable story . uniquely valuable in helping us
retroactive autism narrative that was waiting in the to see autism from the ‘inside’.
wings. No fewer than eight characters of Pride and
Prejudice have now been diagnosed, with proud Darcy A quotation from People magazine on a paperback of
the prime person with Asperger’s or high-functioning Williams’ Nobody Nowhere:
autism (Bottomer 2007). By turns fascinating and harrowing.a riveting auto-
Jane Austen’s personages are truly thick, yet, as biography that describes how autism feels like from
Haddon playfully insists, most of us would be bored the inside.
stiff in their socially assigned roles. There is a tension
here, for his character Chris is much more high- The subtitle of Mukhopadhyay’s (2008) is:
functioning than George and Sam were said to be. This Inside my Autistic Mind.
leads back to question (ii): Should we conceive of
George and Sam as living far more complex and indeed The subtitle of the American edition of Tammet
more ‘interesting’ lives than we get on first impression (2006) is:
after reading Moore’s book? I am deliberately using Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant.
that book here, because it is the parental biography
that I, personally, most admire and am most affected by. These examples can be repeated many times without
Thus I am posing here a question that I find both hard even opening books.
and uncomfortable.
Haddon’s tale has become a staple textbook in
teacher-training courses, in the unit dedicated to 7. UNEXCEPTIONABLE USES OF THE
working with children with special needs. Thus the INSIDE METAPHOR
well-informed model furnished by an established writer Sacks put quotation marks—which I take to be ‘scare
of young adult fiction is transmitted to a generation of quotes’—around ‘inside narrative’, and, a line later on,
teachers and in turn to their charges. The children may around ‘inside’. His point was that Grandin’s first book
then learn that that is how it is to be autistic. Draaisma was astonishing, because no one familiar with autistic
(2008) has an important analysis of related phenomena, people expected such a text. It is an ‘inside story’ in the
using Haddon’s The curious incident of the dog in the simple sense that it is an autistic person telling her own
night-time among others as a key example. story, and not a clinician or parent writing about her.
My own list of autistic fictions has approximately Sacks also meant that before Grandin, someone who
200 books, and counting. Especially important are the had come across autism in only a casual way might have
stories for children, some for autistic children, some for thought that autistic people had nothing like we would
non-autistic children and some for all children. They countenance as a thick mental life.
take great pains to describe behaviour and thereby In a puff for Mukhopadhyay’s (2003) Sacks said that
serve as role models. The young adult category is also the book,
influential in determining what autism is like and in is indeed amazing, shocking too, for it has usually been
some sense should be like. They illustrate ‘the norm’ assumed that deeply autistic people are scarcely
and thereby help stabilize what the norm should be. capable of introspection or deep thought, let alone of
Detective stories, spy thrillers, science fiction, gothic poetic or metaphoric leaps of the imagination [.].

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1470 I. Hacking Autistic autobiography

To use a phrase of Sacks in the same blurb, Of course sometimes we do have to infer what
Mukhopadhyay ‘gives the lie’ to the doctrine that another person must feel, hope, want, detest, or
autistic thinking is necessarily literal, and that it resists whatever, from their actions. There are innumerable
metaphor. Moreover, at an early age, he seems to have occasions when we are completely baffled as to what
had a great aptitude for storytelling and imaginative someone else is doing. We have to figure out their
play. A primary item in Lorna Wing’s ‘triad’ is intentions and their hidden worries. There are also
impairment of imagination. At the age of 5, he is situations where inference is required, for example the
making up stories, starting with one about a lost goat famous false belief tests of Wimmer & Perner (1983).
(2003, p. 36). By the age of 8, he well conceptualizes There can always arise particular difficulties in
imagination and fantasy. Referring to a time after his understanding another person. But the puff writers
grandfather died when he was 4 years old, he wrote: who talk of getting into the mind of an autistic person
‘Imagination took shape to lead his mind to a world of do not, for a moment, think that there is the same
fantasies’ (2003, p. 19). general question for most people, as there is for autists.
I cannot recall an ‘inside the mind’ (or variant thereof )
being written on the cover of any non-autistic
autobiography that I have examined lately. It could
8. ‘INSIDE THE MIND’ certainly occur, of course, in connection with a
When ‘inside’ connotes written or spoken by a person biography. ‘Finally we have got inside the inscrutable
with autism, and ‘outside’ connotes written or spoken mind of Vladimir Putin.’ But that is not the norm.
by an observer, parent, clinician or friend, then the The ‘Theory of Mind’ approach to the ability to
metaphor is benign. But it is also, once the point has understand what other people believe, hope for and are
been made, rather banal, and hardly worth the constant doing has the great advantage, over philosophers’
repetition we have encountered. theories of ‘Other Minds’, that it does not imagine
Aside from such benign uses, I am cautious about that we infer, for example, by analogy, that other people
‘inside the mind’, for reasons presented in Wittgen- have minds. But it is still preoccupied by inference,
stein’s Philosophical Investigations. This is not the thanks to ties with the false belief tests. I cannot ‘see’
occasion to argue the case or even sketch what is at that Sally will think the box has Smarties in it, not
issue, but it does motivate my approach. It is certainly pencils; I have to infer it from knowledge about what she
not a hankering after behaviourism. knows and does not know. That is not a core case of
A first danger of the ‘inside’ metaphor needs only to interpersonal relationships. Theory of Mind approaches
be stated to be scotched. It is the idea of ‘a unique to autism, driven by false belief tests, focus on complex
insight into the autistic mind’: as if ‘the autistic mind’ situations that are parasitic on the bedrock cases of
were a species of mind. Our four autists have very simply knowing what someone else is doing (which
different minds! Grandin describes herself as thinking may include thinking, feeling, plotting and so forth).
in pictures. Mukhopadhyay is dominated by sounds. The very label ‘Theory’ has the unfortunate
Tammet sees abstract objects in colour. Hence connotation of always getting to the destination by
Williams’ (2005) metaphor of autistic spectrum ‘fruit reasoning. More importantly, it does not easily
salads’. To quote a common adage: ‘If you know one distinguish between, on the one hand, seeing
autistic person, you know one autistic person’. what someone is doing right off and, on the other,
Talk of getting inside the mind of another is apt in its inferring or working it out from clues. To say that there
place, but unreflective use out of context often suggests is a distinction is not to quarrel with someone
a misleading picture of mental life. It suggests that who insists that there is always a ‘computation’ leading
looking inside is much like looking outside, in the way up to knowledge; it is only to conjecture that, within
that looking inside a cardboard box after opening it is that paradigm, different types of computation must
no different from looking at it from the outside, except be involved. Two earlier writers thought that such
for a change in point of view. This goes along with the a distinction was profoundly important.
sense that our own minds are transparent to us (subject
to Freudian reservations). We look inside them all the
time. That generates the question of how we ever know
what is going on in the mind of another person. 9. WITTGENSTEIN AND GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY2
This ‘Problem of Other Minds’ has been a topic in Wittgenstein’s aphorism (2001, p. 152e) captures an
English-language philosophy for well over a century. It important fact about other minds:
is proposed that we know what other people are feeling The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
and thinking (etc.) by analogy with our own case. Or we
postulate a mind similar to ours as the best possible This and related remarks were foreshadowed in the first
explanation of the actions of another person. In any edition of Köhler’s Gestalt Psychology (1929). Wittgen-
event, we must always infer what someone else is stein devoted some of his classes to matters arising from
thinking (etc.) from their behaviour. That is nonsense. that book. They bore fruit in Part II of the Philosophical
We often know what someone thinks via, or thanks to, Investigations. For example, one of Köhler’s obser-
their behaviour, but without any need to go through vations (p. 250) anticipates the aphorism just quoted. It
some process of inference. In fact, the emphasis on explicitly takes us back to the inner:
thinking is misleading; we should think first of knowing [.] not only the so-called expressive movements but
what another person is doing, i.e. of immediate also the practical behavior of human beings is a good
recognition of intentions. picture of their inner life, in a great many cases.

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Autistic autobiography I. Hacking 1471

Both the philosopher and the psychologist use the Curiously, both Köhler’s approach to these phenom-
metaphor of a picture. We usually see what a picture is ena, and Theory of Mind, originated in studies of the
of, and do not infer it. I look (for example) at Goya’s great apes.4
etching, titled The pitcher’s broken. I see a child howling;
he is close to a broken jug, and he is being ruthlessly
spanked with a slipper by a woman who had been 10. KÖHLER’S PHENOMENA, AND
hanging out her laundry.3 I infer from the ironic caption THEIR ABSENCE
that the child broke the pitcher and that this is Goya’s Köhler pointed to a wide range of phenomena in which
protest against routine cruelty to children, under the we see and do not infer what a person is doing. Among
guise of fair punishment. But I do not infer what the these are the examples cited: seeing that the child wants
etching is a picture of. to touch the dog, but does not dare; seeing that the
Likewise I usually just see that a man is in bad friend is startled by something; seeing where that
humour ( Wittgenstein 2001, p. 153e). I note it, and do something must be; and seeing that a man is upset by a
not infer it. (Of course there are cases when I do have disagreeable task. Let us call these Köhler’s phenomena.
to infer it! But those are parasitic upon cases where I You can think of innumerable examples.
do not.) A kindly boss is upset because he has to Perhaps the future work, for which Köhler hoped,
reprimand an employee: ‘Viewed from without the explaining his phenomena, will prove to be research on
official’s activity is a picture of his inner perturbation’ mirror neurons. They certainly do provide an expla-
(Köhler, p. 254). We see that he is upset. We do not nation sketch of how his phenomena might be possible.
infer it, in the common case, from the way he looks and And yet it is somehow too tidy. A sceptic could suggest
acts. (Which is not to deny that sometimes we have to that causation runs the opposite way. Electrical
infer, guess or divine that he is upset.) Köhler has many impulses reach the mirror neurons precisely because
more illustrations. They include that of following a the person has seen that a man is upset, rather than the
person’s gaze (p. 250f ): person seeing that the man is upset because a mirror
neuron has been activated.
If my attention is attracted by a strange object, a snake
I shall stick to the phenomena. They are familiar to
for instance, I feel directed toward it and at the same
most people, but are precisely what are not familiar,
time a feeling of tension is experienced. A friend, even if
‘automatic’, ‘immediate’ or ‘instinctive’ for most
he has not recognized the snake, will see me and
especially my face and eyes directed toward it; in the
autistic people. They are not ‘the common property
tension of my face he will have a visual picture of my and practice’ of that part of mankind that is autistic.
inner tension, as in its direction he has a direct picture Expert observers report that autistic children do not see
of the direction which I experience. that someone is in a bad humour; they do not follow the
direction of a startled person’s gaze; they do not readily
Wittgenstein was also much interested in pointing and understand what another person is doing, i.e. they do
less explicit ways of directing attention. not easily recognize intentions.
Another example from both Köhler (p. 252) and Conversely, most people cannot see, via the behaviour
Wittgenstein (1980, § 1066) is that of a child, reaching of severely autistic people, what they feel, want or are
out to touch an animal, but not daring to do so. We see thinking. Even more disturbing is an inability to see what
what the child wants to do, and also see that that’s a they are doing: their intentions make no sense. With the
bit too scary. The example originates with Watson’s severely autistic, it may seem as if they do not even have
(1926, p. 52) experiment with a child and a white many intentions. They are taken to be, to repeat my
rat, to show something about the transfer of fear metaphor, thin children who grow up to be thin men and
reactions. The child becomes scared of anything women, lacking a thick emotional life. Or so it has seemed
woolly. Köhler cites but refers only to an ‘animal’, to most people, including many parents and many
not saying what kind. That made Wittgenstein think of clinicians. Since Köhler’s phenomena do not take place,
a child and a dog. when most people are in the company of a severely
Köhler admitted at once, in 1929, that his account autistic person, we have to compensate for their absence.
‘gives us neither an altogether new nor an altogether This is what autism narrative helps to do.
perfect key to another person’s inner life; it tries only There is a partial symmetry between the autistic and
to describe so far as it can that kind of understanding the non-autistic. Neither can see what the other is
which is the common property and practice of mankind’ doing. The symmetry is only partial because we have an
(p. 266, italics added). He hoped for future work age-old language for describing what the non-autistic
‘when the simpler facts described in this chapter will are feeling, thinking and so on, but are only creating
have found more general acknowledgement’ (p. 267). one for the autistic.
Enthusiasts for Theory of Mind may be inclined to say Precisely because autistic children do not share in
that Köhler was describing, in naive terms, just what it Köhler’s phenomena, it is now common practice to try to
is to have a Theory of Mind. In fact, ‘naive’ is a word teach them how to infer the feelings and intentions of
that Köhler often uses himself with cautious approval, other children and adults from their behaviour, from their
as something more true to experience than what gestures, from their tone of voice. There are indeed a
psychologists of his day were saying. Whether or not number of books, posters and videos intended to teach
one should repeat that comparison with today’s what many people look like when they are happy or sad.
psychologists, I find it a virtue that his descriptions Conversely, ordinary people cannot see what an
are not at the level of propositional knowledge that autistic boy is doing when, to take a banal example,
so often comes to the fore in cognitive science. he is furiously flapping his hands. What on Earth is

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1472 I. Hacking Autistic autobiography

hand flapping? The parent or other outsider knows the other. That is, they suggest what to infer from
vaguely that there must be some kind of agitation, yet autistic behaviour which on the face of it means nothing
the child seems so tranquil when hand flapping. to us.
Autobiographies tell us how calming it is. So we are I suggested at the outset, in connection with
now able to infer a bit of what’s going on. question (i), that the autobiographies do not so much
Autistic narrative thus comes to our aid. It is striking describe the mental life of their autistic authors, as
that although we are told that it takes us into the mind constitute it by choosing words from ordinary language
of the autist, in fact autobiographers usually begin with to be applied in connection with their behaviour. This
their behaviour, reaching back to childhood. Grandin is important for question (ii). If the autobiographies are
begins with herself as a 3-year old, having a tantrum straight descriptions, true or false according to the
and thereby causing her mother to total the car in existing criteria, then it is a plain matter of fact whether
which they were driving. Then we are told that Temple those descriptions apply to less high-functioning
hated the horrid hat she was required to wear. Thus people. But if we think of the descriptions as
actions and behaviour are put together not only with constituting autistic experience, it is less a question of
common words for emotions, often of fear, shock, fact than of the ways in which we will come to
assault by the senses, but also with a feeling of peace, understand the less able.
of getting to a quiet place. All this works by using
ordinary language. Yet at the same time, the auto-
biographers have to retool linguistic materials made in
an age-long community. Köhler’s phenomena are the 13. CONCLUDING QUERY ON LANGUAGE
bedrock upon which rests the common understanding There is no space here to do the real job, to look in
of those words. But the phenomena are lacking when detail at the ways in which our authors recall and
we try to empathize with the autistic author. So describe their past and present. I invite you to read
Grandin and her successors tell stories to help us these texts not as describing well-defined experience,
infer from autistic behaviour the words she would now but as creating ways in which to express experiences.
use to say what is going on. I shall end with a puzzle taken from one set of texts.
It bears on another question, namely how human
speech can be acquired by individuals who have little
11. HYPERSENSITIVITY grasp of the ordinary community of speakers, and then
Our autobiographers insist that certain sensations be later used by them to describe their condition before
cause huge distress to the author. They give examples they entered the community.
to demonstrate they are sensitive to the point of anguish Our autobiographers imply and sometimes state that
by too bright a light, too loud a sound, too scratchy a they understood what was said around them, long
surface or other touch; when sensations become before they could speak. Grandin writes of herself at
overwhelming, this leads to virtual collapse, screams, the age of 3,
etc. The too much is ‘painful’. These accounts are
strikingly consistent and backed by parental obser- Although I could understand everything people said,
vation. Possibly they are connected to remarkable my responses were limited.
sensory acuity, such as ‘eagle-eyed’ vision and the like (Grandin 2005, p. 22)
now being studied in the laboratory as reported by Mukhopadhyay communicates in the way developed by
Baron-Cohen et al. (2009). his mother and himself. He does not speak. Yet he too
‘Acuity’ sounds neutral, but too much sensation is, reports detailed understanding of what was said around
for many autists, unbearable, and seems to fit into the him when he was only 3 years old. He was being
category of pain. But the fit is loose; we do not know interviewed by a psychologist in the presence of his
quite what the words should be. We should listen mother. He was diagnosed as autistic. The expert
carefully to the ordinary language of pain, and explained that the child was so withdrawn he could not
then note how people with autism try to adapt understand what is going on around him. The boy was
it to their own experience. In this respect, it may be listening, and a few years later he reported:
useful to take seriously Wittgenstein’s remarks on the
public language of pain in order to cast away the ‘I understand very well’, said the spirit in the boy.
stereotypical—I want to say mechanical—conceptions (Mukhopadhyay 2003, p. 23)
of pain that so often blind theory to experience. We want This does not sound at all like the reading of Frith
something subtler than thresholds, acuity and so forth. and Happé in their paper, ‘What is it like to be autistic?’
Their central thesis is that articulate autists ‘appear to
12. A ROLE FOR AUTISM NARRATIVE arrive at an explicit theory of mind by a slow and
Autism autobiography, and autism narrative more painstaking learning process, just as they appear to
generally, is thus playing a remarkable role in the arrive at self-consciousness by a long and tortuous
evolution of the autistic spectrum. It is enabling us to route’. (1999, p. 2).
try to compensate for the lack of Köhler’s phenomena in If we take the words of Mukhopadhyay and Grandin
our interaction with autistic people. The various regimes as straight descriptions of matters of fact, we have to ask
that help autistic people learn to understand most other whether the memories were reliable. We might then
people compensate in one direction. They enable suppose something like them is true, but only at a later
the autist to infer from neurotypical behaviour. The age. We would still have to ask how it is possible for
narratives teach many of us how to compensate in these children to acquire a remarkable understanding

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Autistic autobiography I. Hacking 1473

of language without yet having participated in dialogue, Haddon, M. 2003 The curious incident of the dog in the night-
in babble, and in trial and error. time. London, UK: Jonathan Cape.
But suppose we are less concerned with whether as a Haddon, M. 2004 B is for Bestseller. The Observer, 11 April.
matter of fact the child did understand, than with Köhler, W. 1921 Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen, 2nd
revised edn. Berlin, Germany: Springer. (The mentality of
a form of words that represents how the autist felt, or
apes, London, UK: Paul, Trench and Trübner, 1924, first
seems to remember feeling. If we took this point of English edition.)
view, we might come to judge that less gifted autistic Köhler, W. 1929 Gestalt psychology. New York, NY: Horace
children and adults, who communicate very little, Liveright.
also understand, in a quite specific way, far more Moore, C. 2003 Just the facts, ma’am, Review of Haddon
than is evident to the outsider. If we were to take 2003. The Guardian, 24 May.
this route, it would be a shift, perhaps a radical one, in Moore, C. 2004 George and Sam: two boys, one family, and
our conceptions of and relationships to individuals autism. London, UK: Viking.
on the spectrum. Mór, C. 2007 A blessing and curse: autism and me. London,
UK: Jessica Kingsley.
Mukhopadhyay, T. R. 2000 Beyond the silence: my life, the
ENDNOTES world and autism. London, UK: National Autistic Society.
1
Autism Every Day, produced by Lauren Thierry of October Mukhopadhyay, T. R. 2003 The mind tree: an extraordinary
Group and Eric Solomon of Milestone Video. There is a 13 min child breaks the silence of autism. New York, NY: Arcade.
version, http://www.autismspeaks.org/sponsoredevents/autism_every_ (Extended U.S. v. of Mukhopadhyay 2000.)
day.php, and a 44 min one that was shown at the Sundance Mukhopadhyay, T. R. 2008 How Can I Talk If My Lips Don’t
Festival, 2006. Move? Inside My Autistic Mind. New York, NY: Arcade.
2
I owe these reflections on Köhler and Wittgenstein entirely to a Nazeer, K. 2006 Send in the Idiots: or how we grew to understand
recent PhD dissertation (Dinishak 2008). the world. London, UK: Bloomsbury.
3
Francisco Goya, Si quebró el Canatano, Capricho 25. Premack, D. G. & Woodruff, G. 1978 Does the chimpanzee
4
Köhler traces his approach back to ‘a great many instance of this have a theory of mind? Behav. Brain Sci. 1, 515–526.
type’ to be found in his book, The Mentality of Apes (original Köhler Sacks, O. 1993 An anthropologist on Mars. The New Yorker,
1921); see Köhler 1929 p. 252. Theory of Mind is usually traced back
27 December.
to the classic paper on chimpanzees, Premack & Woodruff (1978).
Sacks, O. 1995 An anthropologist on Mars: seven paradoxical
tales. New York, NY: Knopf.
Singer, A. No date. ‘Cure’ is not a four letter word. See http://
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Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2009)