Darwin, Einstein, Turing and Posthumous Diagnosis

Headline: "Charles Darwin was autistic, claims leading psychiatrist." This will apparently be proclaimed, not just to the world via the Internet, but to the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual meeting, by Professor Michael Fitzgerald, of Dublin's Trinity College. (loved the title on the first link, but a slightly better version of the story is here)

OK, it's Darwin's 200th birthday, and autism is hot in the news. Posthumous diagnosis is kind of fun too, with one of the more famous posthumous diagnoses of course being Albert Einstein. Less famous, but my own personal Hero and co-founder of my field of study Alan Turing has also been given a posthumous diagnosis. And not just scientists may get the post-h Dx treatment: wikipedia has an entire entry that is nothing but a list of posthumously diagnosed famous people. It's of course always nice to get some positive press.

But it's a little troubling to me as well, because these extremely important figures from history 1) are, like other extremely important figures from history, exceptional, and 2) dead, and whether or not they are diagnosable based on history books is perhaps debatable.

Some people simply are exceptional. Most famous people, whether or not they are "neurologically typical" have exceptional skill, talent, and luck. While someone's neurological make-up will contribute to their talents, skills, focus, and sense of identity, I worry when a parent comes to me and says something to the effect of, "my kid isn't at all like Einstein how do I figure out how to access his super powers?" (That's not a joke--it's happened to me, more than once, and makes me sad.) Not all non-autistic people have exceptional skills. And neither do all autistic people. The chance of an autistic person changing world paradigms is, I would guess, just as slim as the chance of a non-autistic person changing world paradigms. That doesn't mean we can't all dream of being Einstein (or in my case, Turing), but it's not going to happen just by virtue of having an autistic brain.

Perhaps Darwin was autistic. Perhaps he was not. Either way, and for whatever reason, he did something exceptional. Which is more than I, or most people, ever will. And that's pretty groovy as long as care is taken not to read more into the situation than is actually there.