Joined: Jan 10, 2008 Age: 41 Posts: 75 Location: Los Angeles at night
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:22 pm Post subject: Do you think Bobby Fischer may have had Asperger's Sydrome?
I'm new to this site, so I will feel a bit (more than usual) out of it if this is common knowledge already, but I was wondering if anyone wanted to discuss whether Bobby Fischer, the chess champion who just passed away, had Asperger's. I thought the way he acted since he was young sounded as though he may have had Asperger's, but maybe not.
Joined: Jun 24, 2005 Age: 36 Posts: 420 Location: Ireland
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 6:11 pm Post subject:
It was said by a colleague/friend of his in a documentary about Bobby Fischer I saw on the Biography Channel, that he had Asperger's - though it did seem it was speculation by an unqualified person and not an official diagnosis (the guy who said it also looked AS).
I watched the documentary a few times, to carefully hear again what was said, and he definitely said he thought Bobby had Asperger's and that this explained his difficult and reclusive personality.
I do think he was autistic, but he was also highly paranoid and delusional, which I guess sometimes comes with the territory. Whether he had crossed over the line to real mental illness, I don't know.
It makes perfect sense that he had Asperger's Syndrome. In fact, it's odd that not many people are talking about it. You can almost see how his brain is structured, with intensely hyper-connectivity in the areas that pertain to chess, with severely low-connectivity in the areas of socializing. His chess skill is a savant skill, which comes from the hyper-local-connectivity. You cannot get this without sacrificing some inter-departmental connectivity. In other words, his brain was like a special-purpose computer processor (like math and graphics processors), as opposed to a general purpose processor that most people have. It just happened to be wired perfectly for chess. This is what Asperger's Syndrome is.
I've followed chess for a long time. Watched and listened to Fischer carefully in both early and latter years of his life. I strongly believe he did NOT have AS or was on the spectrum. He had something else.
im a Jew myself, so i dont appreciate his charracter. I dont care about his accomplishments if so strongly shouted anti-semitic notions. The danger in doing so is that people start to actually beleive it.
im a Jew myself, so i dont appreciate his charracter. I dont care about his accomplishments if so strongly shouted anti-semitic notions. The danger in doing so is that people start to actually beleive it.
I totally agree with you, but I meant that his rejection of his heritage as well as his country, plus other odd behaviors, point to some bigger problems - mental or chemical.
We all have the right to criticize our country and our religion/cultural heritage, but his perceptions and rants seemed more in the irrational range.
So, yeah, he was an anti-semitic, anti-American bastard, but he also seemed, at the end, especially, REALLY unbalanced. _________________ I'm as puzzled as a newborn child
Joined: Jun 23, 2008 Age: 38 Posts: 283 Location: Boston MA
Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:14 pm Post subject:
I don't know if speculation about dead (i.e. undiagnosable) people is useful. Maybe so, maybe no. I think he had some other form of illness or disability, dunno what exactly.
The anti-Semitic stuff was unfortunate, detracts from his chess achievements. And he was half Jewish.
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