Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Asperger's and Spirituality Kara Andresen who is managing an autism genetics study at Mass General has challenged me to think about the spiritual lives of individuals on the autism/Asperger's spectrum.  So, I recently asked 3 adolescents with Asperger's to tell me about their beliefs in "higher powers" or God and so on.  One AS high school student said, "I understand why people are interested in these things" but would not elaborate at great length about his own views.  He was attracted to Jungian concepts of archetypes and bipolar concepts of traits that exist within all of us (e.g., good vs. evil; independence vs. dependence; light vs. dark, etc.).  Two of my AS adolescents agreed that comic book and video game characters would be "more interesting" if they exhibited these seemingly "opposite traits" rather than, say, only being evil or only being good.  12:20:18 PM    comment []

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