| Asperger Syndrome (AS) has received much attention in recent years, as our society seeks to rework old dichotomous categories and replace them with an understanding of individual difference in all its domains. AS is an attractive candidate for such consideration, because as a syndrome that seems to marry language difficulties and social disease with unusual forms of intelligence, it seems like an exaggerated version of something to which many can relate, academics in particular. Thus, the 2013 decision to drop AS, as a separate category, from the DSM V and place it on the autism spectrum seems counter to a developing social understanding. Yet, from a strictly clinical point of the view, because language delay is not essential for the diagnosis of autism, AS represents high functioning autism (HFA), not a separate category. Whatever the clinical definition (AS or HFA), recent first-person narratives by self-identified Aspies, such as the NYT bestseller, Look Me in the Eye by John Robinson, challenge the rest of us to reconsider notions of normal and abnormal, functional and dysfunctional. Yet, the question remains, what is the biological basis of AS and what does it say about the evolution of human mental capacities more generally. GEEKS attempts to address this question by combining an evolutionary perspective from Dean Falk, a prominent paleoneurologist, with illustrative accounts of personal experience from her granddaughter Eve, a high functioning Aspie. As such, this is a book intended for a wide audience with an interest in science and human experience. It might be useful in undergraduate courses in anthropology, psychology, and human development as a way of enriching scientific learning with personal experience. Falk starts by providing a summary of three basic evo devo trends that characterize the human species; delayed development, the importance of infant-mother contact, and an early brain spurt. In the next three chapters she provides a basic overview of AS, including the need for comfort from sensory overload, the coexistence of social naiveté with a cognitive focus on classifying things, and the way in which the focus of obsessive classification seem to follow sex typical differences (girls like animals; boys like trucks). At the end of each chapter, Eve tells us about her obsessions, how she experiences sensations and fears, the way she thinks in words and pictures, and how she found AS girls so much calmer than the boys. I was particularly struck by Eve’s description of how the need to pay attention to sensations would divert her attention from the normal cues that ease social interaction with others. |