Neurodiversity

Wednesday

Julie Burchill

The death of personality

My late mother was a kind woman – who I treated badly in adolescence, as teenage girls are often inclined to do – so the few times she said nasty things to me stick in my mind. In fact, I can only think of one: when I was 11, she told me that I had ‘no personality’. I remember sitting in my bedroom, staring at a poster of David Bowie, my eyes practically crossed in crossness. What did she mean, ‘no personality’? I was a right weirdo, already well under way with the process of changing myself from a wholesome working-class Bristolian schoolgirl into a total freak, thanks to growing

Thursday

Ross Clark

Autism isn’t a ‘superpower’

A very warm welcome for Margaret Thatcher inside autism’s ever-growing tent – if she can find space to wield her handbag. I could even lead the welcoming party myself as I am in there – according to some of my friends – on account of my unusually good ability to recall dates and a liking for solitude. As for Thatcher, she has gained entry on the strength of her biographer Tina Gaudoin’s diagnosis, which is based around the former PM’s absence of a sense of humour (or at least an inability to share the jokes of her male, public school-educated colleagues), a lack of embarrassment, her ‘special or restricted interests’

Tuesday

Sara Wheeler

Who will care for the carers themselves?

When her brother Lionel was born in 1949, ‘the concept of neurodiversity didn’t exist’, writes Caroline Elton. The subtitle of her profoundly moving memoir, ‘A Portrait of My Autistic Brother’, is misleading. The book is really about the experience of being the sibling of a person who is not like you. Lionel was nine years Elton’s senior, so she draws on their mother’s testimony to relate his infancy and childhood, turning to her own recollections for the later years. He learnt to read before he could speak, played the piano faultlessly by ear (his mother taught him), and could tell you what day of the week a date would fall