Autism: part of the natural human spectrum of personality
The term autism, and even all the terms in the mental health realm are reality new historically speaking and ever-changing. Society as a whole is moving towards better understanding the mind and what motivates us. It is in that context of gaining understanding that I would like to present the results of my research, both from interviews and surveys. My research suggests that the hallmark trait of Autism, monotropism(focusing on one thing at a time), is more of a personality trait than a neurodevelopmental disorder.
An interesting part of my research was that I was not only analyzing personality by traits I saw in each person, and their self-reported preferences, but also their early memory themes. This gave deeper confirmation to the correlation between personality and Autism, because the themes that correlated with Autism had nothing to do with the traits of Autism.
The personality theory being used is Called Anatomy of Mind and Emotion which outlines 7 general approaches to life which correlate with our emotions. These 7 approaches are essentially the tools in our toolkit, and our emotions are what suggest what tool to use. Personality develops due to relative proficiency with some approaches and reluctancy towards employing other approaches. A good analogy of these difference approaches are to imagine them as vehicles.
Imagine you own 7 vehicles: A sports car, a tractor(excavator), an RV, a minivan/bus, a truck, an armored car/ambulance, and a limousine.
Each vehicle is optimized for a different task. It may not be clear-cut which vehicle matches which task in all cases, but pulling a heavy trailer with a sports car or using a limousine to move dirt, for example, wouldn't be using the right vehicle for the task. Vehicle preference is a good illustration of how personality works. Preferences form due to what seems to work well and what doesn’t.
What “well” or “winning” looks like is defined by experience. Of the seven metaphorical vehicles, we typically have one that our experience has shown, more often than others, makes us proud of ourselves, one that typically leads to other people being proud of us, and one that we use if our favorite two don’t work. Similarly, of the seven vehicles we have a preference towards using, there are probably at least a couple that we avoid.
These preferences for which vehicle we prefer to drive can have such a profound influence that even how our attention, imagination and memory work can be vastly different. One example of the impact of personality preferences impacting attention, imagination, and memory is its connection to Aphantasia, Hyperphantasia, ADHD and Autism. My research showed that self-reported personality traits, word association, and early memory themes all independently showed a correlation between one of the seven personality approaches, Deconstruction, and Autism.
Using the seven vehicles analogy, the Deconstruction approach would be the tractor, specifically an excavator. The seven approaches are steps in information metabolism which together result in an integrated approach. The steps are:
1. Initiation - Identifies a good starting point and jumps in
2. Deconstruction - Dissects what it jumped into down to the variables at play
3. Expansion - Explores what is tangentially related to the variables found
4. Unification - Brings everything together as harmoniously and synergistically as possible
5. Implementation - Constructs and implements a comprehensive plan
6. Preservation - Separates the plan from what might interfere with it
7. Transformation - Reflects back on the original intention, outcome to find a better alignment
Though the 7 approaches are actually sequential steps in information metabolism cued by our emotions.
We get fixated on our favorite 3. Each approach when fixated on has different consequences. Some of the consequences are more straightforward than others. For example, the approach which leads to ADHD is Expansion, which makes sense because expanding out on tangents rather than focusing on one single thing, encapsulates pretty well the traits of ADHD.
Autism’s connection to the Deconstruction approach can be seen in the specific tools of Deconstruction which are:
Objectivity: Concentration and Accuracy
Subjectivity: Context and Emersion
Causation: Insight and Antithesis
Empiricism: Corroboration and Categorization
If you have Autism, how much value do you see in these tools? Each would need a more specific definition of course, but already, you might be able to see the connection.
For the definition for each, it is a matter of looking at it through a series of dichotomies. Each of the seven approaches and their specific tools are arranged in a wheel so that the opposite nature of each can be better visualized. The dichotomies of Deconstruction suggest that it is: Direct, Specific, Present, Speculative, Bottom up thinking, Rigid, and both Linear and Nonlinear. The opposite of Deconstruction would be: Indirect, General, Future, Interactive, Top down thinking, and Flexible.
If you have autism, could being a little too Direct, Specific, Present, Speculative, Bottom up thinking, or Rigid be what’s making it hard in social situations sometimes? Also, the ability to be both linear and nonlinear might have something to do with it as well.
More research would need to be done of course, also more feedback from the broader Autistic community, but you might be able to see already the correlation, and I hope it is inspiring.
The claim that Deconstruction is correlated with a personality preference towards the Deconstructive approach does not mean that it would be the only of the 7 approaches you might use. My research has shown that everyone uses all 7 approaches, but each has a different priority. The top 2 approach preferences a person has have the largest influence. This means that though anyone whose first preference is deconstruction would have typical autistic traits like Monotropism, but the second approach a person prefers would produce quite a different experience of Autism. Similarly, someone with a different first preference but with Deconstruction as their second preference, would still have many Autistic traits, except the frequency or intensity might be different. This is where the vehicle analogy comes back into play–Traits associated with Autism are the result of the primary vehicle being an excavator.
Excavators are good for digging deep, and can also be used as a crane, but are not very good for other tasks like going down the freeway. This one difference is likely why Autism was first seen as a disorder, because the other 6 vehicles can all do well driving down the freeway.
The strengths of the Deconstruction lens are accompanied by weaknesses as well. Using the excavator analogy, not every scoop of the bucket is smooth–digging a little bit too deep or into too hard of ground can halt everything, and maybe even blow a gasket in the process. It might be you asking too deep of questions to yourself about life, or asking other people deeper questions than they are comfortable with.
One thing about Deconstruction is that it really likes truth or objectivity, which means it likes really specific definitions for words. They have a difficult time doing something for unknown or illogical reasons. This means that someone with a preference for Deconstruction has a hard time getting on the same page with other people who aren’t interested in finding truth. They are often pitted between truth and togetherness. A good example of this was Socrates, who was given the ultimatum by the government to either reject his own study of truth and blindly accept their beliefs and social norms or be put to death. The pain of believing and espousing a lie was worse than death to him.
It’s not that someone with a preference for Deconstruction always chooses death rather than espousing a lie. Often they see the cost and benefit of playing along with social conventions, but it is both exhausting but also disenchanting. For someone with a preference for Deconstruction it doesn’t make sense to make small talk or gossip, because could that really be the doorway to a deep and meaningful relationship?
Deconstruction dissects things down to their most fundamental variables. What are the most fundamental variables of social norms and traditions? This shows what the seven approaches really are–they are measuring sticks of value or success. In deconstruction, a movement towards objective understanding is the measurement of success. Opposite of Measuring for truth is measuring for Harmony or Beauty. This doesn’t mean that someone who likes objectivity can’t also like harmony or beauty, but that the idea of harmony and beauty will be nested inside the idea of objectivity because of their priority. For someone with the primary lens they see life is deconstruction, they has a more difficult time imagining something like Harmony or Beauty not rooted in truth or objectivity. Someone who prefers Deconstruction might easily see beauty in something like a mathematical proof or a well designed experiment.
It’s not always very straightforward what the right approach is in life. For example, imagine a child who is stressed and almost in tears trying to do their math homework, and someone sits down with them, helps them get self confidence, and helps teach them how to do their homework. Is that Beautiful? Is that Harmonious? What they didn’t know, but they were teaching them wrong? Is the Beauty or Harmony gone?
The tension between truth and togetherness for someone with a preference for Deconstruction sometimes is seen in troll-like behavior, especially online, but is often internalized as a sort of existential dread. This is why those with a preference for Deconstruction sometimes need alone time. It is also why they might do physical behaviors in order to ground themselves back into reality rather than lost in the sharp analytics of their thoughts. Those with a preference for Deconstruction if they aren’t careful, will dig so deep that the ground under the excavator starts to crumble and it sinks in. It is possible to think so deeply about so many things that you lose touch with the physical world.
When you look at a chair what do you think? You might wonder whose chair it is, how comfortable or sturdy it is, or whether it is aesthetic. Deconstruction looks at what its irreducible components are. It might wonder what what building materials it is made of or even what molecules it is composed of. It might even consider the exact philosophical defintion of what a chair really is and the lines of what it isn’t. Deconstruction as a preference doesn’t always lead to someone being a chemist, engineer, or philosopher, because the second personality preference also matters. Although, it does mean that whatever that second approach preference is, they will probably be an expert in it. Their expertise is often focused on one thing, or at least one thing at a time. This leads to the main attribute of Autism and why it seems a personality preference for Deconstruction explains it, and that is monotropism. Monotropism is focusing on one thing at a time. Polytropism on the other hand is focusing on more than one thing at a time. Deconstruction is unlike the other 6 approaches because it is the only one that is monotropic–that doesn’t make it a neurodevelopmental disorder. In a sense Deconstruction is still polytropism, but just at a deeper layer of analysis, because it is not focusing on one thing, it is breaking one thing down into its smaller parts.
Deconstruction is like an excavator, but it is also a lot like a microscope. It focuses in on one thing and then deconstructs it. Just like looking at a under a microscope–you see the individuals cells, but if you zoom in, you see individual organelles. Microscopes are great for getting a deeper understanding, but you can’t see anything through it if you are moving around or if what you are looking at is moving around. Life under a microscope can look scary, because in order to put living things under the microscope, they lose their life. This is why the brain is so mysterious, is because the only way to see the actual neural circuits, you have to cut it into thin slices so it can be seen under a microscope. This means that the only direct insight into the brain can happen only after someone dies. FMRI, for example, is interesting, but hardly shows what is actually going on in the brain, because it only sees a rough picture of the movement of water, which isn’t how signals in the brain are sent. That real data is just found in a post mortem analysis, and even then isn’t a picture of what was happening in the brain when the spark of life was in it. This can lead to a gloomy view of life. Whereas some people don’t know why they are depressed and go to someone else in hopes of finding out, deconstruction knows all too well what is going on. It is a deep existential dread, known by some philosophers as depressive realism.
Anatomy of Mind and Emotion is designed to bring awareness to the true capacity of your heart and mind. You might have developed one approach really well, and that has likely lead to some benefits and also some negative consequences. A.M.E. is all about learning about all seven approaches so that you can use the right one for the job rather than just what one you are most comfortable with.
Life, and especially love, have seven dimensions. It is worth it to learn to recognize and appreciate them. A.M.E. is here to support you in that journey. I hope this helped you understand yourself and others at least a little bit better.
To address the initial definition of Autism, would it make sense that Autism prefers fantasy to reality? Or would it be quite the opposite? Fantasizing that a social norm is real and playing into it without hesitation in my opinion is the neither better nor worse than assuming that social norms aren’t real and not entertaining them.
