Asperger’s used to be commonly defined as autistic with speech. Now it’s included in the autism spectrum. Tough call. As a parent of a child on the autism spectrum, who didn’t speak words for several years, had a vocabulary of 20 at age 5 1/2 and now speaks in full sentences but very limited conversational skills. Those with standard speech acquisition versus those with severely delayed speech may have the same whatever it is that drives autism, but the experience of being able to communicate versus not being able to communicate during the early formative years has a lifelong impact.
I’ve never gone deep on Einstein, but I don’t get the impression you would check off most of an autism indicator checklist. Just my two cents.
Autism is a spectrum disorder and as a developmental pediatrician explained it to me those who are completely non-verbal have Classic Autism, those that have a speech delay when younger but are somewhat verbal and may eventually speak fine are Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, and then at the other end of the spectrum would be Asperger’s or “High Functioning” which is not associated with a speech delay. I believe however they are changing the terminology and I’m not sure if Asperger’s as its own separate term is still going to be used going forward. I have read that when they examined Einstein’s brain he had an enormous amount of glial cells compared to a normal individual and that possibly this gave him an immense spatial reasoning or something, I’m not sure if this is true though.
A lot of this “handicapped” as a kid stuff always seems to be an appeal to students in school. Much like the fact that they leave out Helen Keller being a radical socialist and anything else after learning to communicate, schools and many other places like to harp on this stuff in an effort to pressure people to live up to their “potential”.
After all, if Einstein overcame his hardships and became great what is your excuse?
By the way, this happens with David from the Old Testament ALLLLL the time. Its rare to hear anything about him after his slaying of Goliath, despite that being the least of the things he ever did in the OT. Its all about overcoming some huge adversary and how its supposed to inspire you.
And while its not a totally bad thing to tell someone they can be great regardless of what holds them back its just stupid to make stuff up to fit the idea. When kids find out, or even adults, its a betrayal that is hard to forget and makes them ever more jaded.
You would think that *“Got some poor sod murdered to disguise the fact that he had been doing his wife” *would overshadow the time when he cowardly used a weapon to defeat an opponent that was expecting fair combat, but noooo…