The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003) By Mark Haddon
This book's main character is a 15-year-old boy, Christopher, with Asperger syndrome. He's completely confused by the social interactions of people but precocious in mathematics. The book describes, albeit fictionally, the disconnect between his understanding of systems—in this case mathematical, numerical systems—and his difficulties with understanding people. There's also an extra element, in that Christopher is a victim of domestic violence at the hands of his father, so when the reader is trying to figure out what's causing what, it's quite difficult to disentangle. It's a book I would recommend because I think it has an original style. The risk is that readers might think that all children with Asperger syndrome have unusual talents, which is not the case.
The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind (1994) By Steven Pinker
This is a popular science book from a highly respected cognitive scientist. He took one part of the mind—language—and looked at it from every angle. It's a wonderful example of what you can do: take research into something as fundamental to human nature as language and make it accessible to a wide audience. Pinker looks at how infants develop language, whether other animals are capable of understanding language, how the brain produces and processes language, how we use language in the media, and so on. It was, justifiably, a very popular and successful book. Language is at the core of many of the humanities, yet here is a scientist addressing it and bringing into contact, for example, people who work in literature with people who work in brain scanning.
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) Dir Werner Herzog
I saw this film more than 30 years ago. It is based on the story of a real-life teenager who turned up wandering the streets of Nuremberg in 1828. He was barely able to talk and eventually claimed he had been brought up in an isolated cell with almost no human contact. Part of the enigma about Hauser was his origins: had he been abandoned by his parents; did he have an important family history? But the big question was, how could somebody find it so hard to develop language and to make sense of people? Some people wonder whether autism is a modern phenomenon, but Kaspar Hauser might be the first well-documented case of autism in literature, or even in history. The film (and the many books that have been written about Hauser) raise similar issues to Haddon's The Curious Incident, with a central character who is somehow detached from the rest of society.
The Intentional Stance (1987) By Daniel C Dennett
Dennett is a philosopher, and one of his goals in writing this book was to take philosophical ideas and make sure that people in neighbouring disciplines were thinking about them. The key notion is how we understand other people, and in particular, whether we adopt the "intentional stance"—that is to say, whether we approach other people by assuming that they have minds, with beliefs, intentions, emotions and desires. Dennett wrote a book that was very readable: he didn't compromise the academic complexity of his subject, but he wanted to ensure that it was widely accessible. This book gave rise to a lot of the research that was carried out in developmental psychology into how children understand other people, and how they develop the capacity to "mind-read." It certainly inspired my work in understanding children with autism.
Attachment (1969) By John Bowlby Bowlby’s theory of attachment was a simple but powerful idea. In essence he told us something that we all knew, that the bond between a parent and a child is really important. But he didn’t just say this anecdotally, he said it on the basis of his clinical experience. He was based at the Tavistock Clinic in London, where he worked with children who hadn’t had the luxury of strong relationships with their parents. Many had been brought up in a children’s home, and had developed delinquency or other problems by their teens. The reason I’ve selected it here is that it’s a very nice example of an environmental influence that affects all of our outcomes in adulthood. Whereas Pinker talks about genetic or innate factors that predispose humans to produce and understand language, Bowlby reminds us that our early experience and our social environment is equally important.
Interview by Cal Flyn for fivebooks.com
This book's main character is a 15-year-old boy, Christopher, with Asperger syndrome. He's completely confused by the social interactions of people but precocious in mathematics. The book describes, albeit fictionally, the disconnect between his understanding of systems—in this case mathematical, numerical systems—and his difficulties with understanding people. There's also an extra element, in that Christopher is a victim of domestic violence at the hands of his father, so when the reader is trying to figure out what's causing what, it's quite difficult to disentangle. It's a book I would recommend because I think it has an original style. The risk is that readers might think that all children with Asperger syndrome have unusual talents, which is not the case.
The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind (1994) By Steven Pinker
This is a popular science book from a highly respected cognitive scientist. He took one part of the mind—language—and looked at it from every angle. It's a wonderful example of what you can do: take research into something as fundamental to human nature as language and make it accessible to a wide audience. Pinker looks at how infants develop language, whether other animals are capable of understanding language, how the brain produces and processes language, how we use language in the media, and so on. It was, justifiably, a very popular and successful book. Language is at the core of many of the humanities, yet here is a scientist addressing it and bringing into contact, for example, people who work in literature with people who work in brain scanning.
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) Dir Werner Herzog
I saw this film more than 30 years ago. It is based on the story of a real-life teenager who turned up wandering the streets of Nuremberg in 1828. He was barely able to talk and eventually claimed he had been brought up in an isolated cell with almost no human contact. Part of the enigma about Hauser was his origins: had he been abandoned by his parents; did he have an important family history? But the big question was, how could somebody find it so hard to develop language and to make sense of people? Some people wonder whether autism is a modern phenomenon, but Kaspar Hauser might be the first well-documented case of autism in literature, or even in history. The film (and the many books that have been written about Hauser) raise similar issues to Haddon's The Curious Incident, with a central character who is somehow detached from the rest of society.
The Intentional Stance (1987) By Daniel C Dennett
Dennett is a philosopher, and one of his goals in writing this book was to take philosophical ideas and make sure that people in neighbouring disciplines were thinking about them. The key notion is how we understand other people, and in particular, whether we adopt the "intentional stance"—that is to say, whether we approach other people by assuming that they have minds, with beliefs, intentions, emotions and desires. Dennett wrote a book that was very readable: he didn't compromise the academic complexity of his subject, but he wanted to ensure that it was widely accessible. This book gave rise to a lot of the research that was carried out in developmental psychology into how children understand other people, and how they develop the capacity to "mind-read." It certainly inspired my work in understanding children with autism.
Attachment (1969) By John Bowlby Bowlby’s theory of attachment was a simple but powerful idea. In essence he told us something that we all knew, that the bond between a parent and a child is really important. But he didn’t just say this anecdotally, he said it on the basis of his clinical experience. He was based at the Tavistock Clinic in London, where he worked with children who hadn’t had the luxury of strong relationships with their parents. Many had been brought up in a children’s home, and had developed delinquency or other problems by their teens. The reason I’ve selected it here is that it’s a very nice example of an environmental influence that affects all of our outcomes in adulthood. Whereas Pinker talks about genetic or innate factors that predispose humans to produce and understand language, Bowlby reminds us that our early experience and our social environment is equally important.
Interview by Cal Flyn for fivebooks.com
