978-1572305441

Sharon 63
eccentric, even as a child. Sharon felt that, more and more, these difficulties
were getting in the way of her job and her relationships with
close friends and potential clients. Architects have to meet prospective
clients, understand what they want, and express themselves confidently
and precisely. They have to anticipate what the client wants, almost before
the client finishes a thought. They need to exhibit considerable
personal charm in meeting with clients during the design process.
Sharon said she needed lots of explanation to help her understand what
other people wanted in the makeup of a building. She needed to write it
down and go away and think about it. Often during a conversation, she
had to repeat to herself what another person might be saying and deduce
his or her meaning in a logical fashion. She also had to monitor
what she wanted to say in return and to make sure that it was not inappropriate.
She had little intuitive understanding of others and had to
regulate her interactions with a continuous stream of self-monitoring.
She was, however, brilliant at being able to translate into visual images
and then drawings what the clients desired but could not articulate by
themselves. It was this skill that made her so successful as an architect.
Sharon knew that other people did not have these difficulties in
making social interaction as fluid and as automatic as possible. One day
she read an article about autism in a newspaper and experienced a flash
of recognition. She went on to do more research, including reading the
firsthand accounts of people with autism written by Temple Grandin,
Gunilla Gerland, and Donna Williams. Reading these had been a revelation
for her. What she originally thought was a personal failing or a
fault in her character perhaps now had a name and held out the hope of
greater understanding and of support from others with similar experiences.
I asked her to give me some examples of how she had coped with
these difficulties. She told me that, years ago, she had learned to write
rules in her head to guide her behavior. In this way she could compensate
for her lack of intuitive understanding. She usually did this in bed
at night after a particularly humiliating day at school or at the university.
Each social disaster was meticulously analyzed and categorized. A
rule was written for each situation and either added to the list or else
subsumed under some other more general rule: Look at people when
you talk to them; put out your hand to shake theirs; smile if they smile
when making a joke. Although this approach was generally effective,
the number of rules soon began to increase out of control. There were
too many rules to cover all possible social situations. Experience was