Our view of autism is a limited one. We do know that there is a spectrum of autisms, we do know that each case is different in it's particulars, and we do know that there are some common characteristics. But, really, the formal knowledge is very sparse, and the carers of people with autism don't have much to go on.
If you haven't had personal experience with autism, you might be thinking of Dustin Hoffman in "Rain man" right now, or a similar popular depiction. You would be wrong. I know that my understanding of even a "well-adapted" autistic person was way off the mark. Autism is, in fact, a world completely different from our own, and our attempts at grasping it fully are doomed to fail. Naoki wrote "The Reason I Jump" when he was thirteen, and his depiction of the world of autism shatters into pieces a multitude of our common sense misconceptions. So many things we would take for granted seem to be the polar opposite of reality. This is so much the case that it is difficult to classify the book as "non-fiction". Either the book was made up by someone who is non-autistic, and is complete fiction, or we have up till now grossly underestimated and unappreciated the potential and complexity of autistic personalities.
The three characters used for the word ‘autism’ in Japanese signify ‘self’, ‘shut’ and ‘illness’. My imagination converts these characters into a prisoner locked up and forgotten inside a solitary confinement cell waiting for someone, anyone, to realize he or she is in there. "The Reason I Jump" knocks out a brick in the wall.
David Mitchell
As mentioned, autism shows it self in multiple variations. The "lighter", more socially adapt cases may be characterized by strange behavior, such as lining items up all the time into regular shapes, feeling uneasy when talking with strangers, repeating a particular phrase over and over, but overall it is possible for the person with autism to function as a part of society (an ugly sentence, but a true one - it displays a failure of society, though, not the autistic person). In "heavier" cases, the afflicted keep acting like preschoolers even when they grow up to be adults - they are unable to empathize with others, they keep "being naughty", even though they have been told multiple times not to do the bad thing, they can't seem to understand abstract concepts, they can't learn to read or write, they go off wandering on their own without knowing how to come back... The list goes on and on. When carers are faced with this kind of behavior, it is only natural to give up on believing that the person they're dealing with is a complex, developed human being. All the evidence is to the contrary. However, here is a game-changing idea: what if it's not the person that is broken, but rather only their means to communicate?
You can’t judge a person by their looks. But once you know the other person’s inner self, both of you can be that much closer. From your point of view, the world of autism must look like a deeply mysterious place. So please, spare a little time to listen to what I have to say. And have a nice trip through our world.
Naoki Higashida
Naoki falls on the more severe end of the spectrum. He is unable to communicate directly even with his nearest relatives. However, through his own and his mother's persistence, he has learned to write out words on a computer. A particular tool that he calls "the alphabet grid" allows him to maintain focus just enough to be able to form complete sentences. By using this method, Naoki has not only begun to communicate with his family, but has also written complete books. "The Reason I Jump" is merely a series of his answers to questions he often gets from friends, family and strangers, along with a selection of a few of his stories.
Naoki paints for us a real-life sci-fi scenario: his own memory, senses, motor control, and other internal mechanisms work differently from everyone around him. On it's own, that might not be a problem, but the fact is, this particular circumstance also makes it impossible for him to communicate properly what is going on. Thus, it is all too easy for his carers to give up on him. The most striking point for me was the fact that the worst aspect of his life is the way he feels bad when he lets his carers down. He thus displays very strong empathy, which is the exact polar opposite of what we consider a defining aspect of autism.
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