Can autistic people be artistic, musical and mathematic?

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maybe you have to be one of the three if you want to write a best selling aspergers book. =)

Which is what i have been reading lately....

Seems like the mainstream view of aspergers is askew and people including myself feel left out of the picture, maybe that is why many do not get discovered- glad to see it's not so fine cut. I don't know any aspies though I have suspected some of my friends are though not diagnosed. My cousin is autistic on the lower functioning end and I can't relate to him at all, and when people think of autistic that's what they typically think of in my experience hence the difficulty understanding aspergers.

That sounds pretty normal (or aspie!!)

Piano is not really my forte as I have a slow left hand .. at the moment I don't have a piano at all (and I am occupied with two other interests) but when I do I either:

*sit at the piano and feel the instrument, listen to the sounds of the notes and compose a piece or song

*learn a piece in the way I was taught as a child, which is to read the music (yes, it can be rather painful) and get to know the piece, isolating places where I am clumsy and practicing them more, with separate hands. I generally benefit hugely from listening to a good recording of the piece, though I do not actually learn by ear on piano.
I think with voice I can learn by ear.
I find that there is an exponential learning process, when learning in this fashion.

It can take time, and that is the same for everyone, as far as I know, so take heart and perhaps learn to balance your work and play on the instrument


(note: I do confess, once I know a piece by memory, that's it. It's in there and I play it over and over and over. Very bad technical practice really, but there's the aspie bit I guess. It does develop the musicality though, as it seems to weave emotion into the playing .... getting to know the little dynamic changes between all the notes, the cadences .... ooohhh!!)

I guess all have our own thinking. I don't have any genius when it comes to numbers. But I understand the logic behind them. I never gone beyond grade 10 in math, but I got good grades. My prob with math is I can't hold 2 numbers in my mind simultaneously, because they must use the same space in my mind. Therefore I can't count in my head. I can count on paper. Also I never saw a deeper meaning to math, it seemed like slave labor so I always came to hate math.

Writing, I'm good at it. I love writing prose and it is a bit mediocre, I wish it was better because I feel that is my thing. Not many writers are INTJ, but I am and I think INTJ writers write in another manner than INFJ and INFP writers for example. My poetry is good. I must say so even if it is bragging, because it comes to me so easily.

I can paint even if I haven't done that in ages. I had an art exibition. Always had top grades in art. Something is missing in my art though, because I cannot hold an image in my mind. I'm a picture thinker but not like TG I see just sort of the layout in my head.

I'm good at music even if the piano is not my thing. I rather play the guitar. I'msure no mastermind but my sense of music is much above average even if it would be veeery far from genius level.

I'm an artistic/writer-type of Aspie.

I suck at both math and music. My "imagination" and apparent "creativity" had always led me to believe that I wouldn't qualify as "Aspergers" because don't all Aspies memorize bus schedules and line up toys? Not according to my Shrink, or Tony Attwood for that matter.

Being "artistic" doesn't have anything to do with having good social skills, so I have no idea why some people are so adamant about excluding us wool-headed types. Amazing artistic autistics unite!!

--XFG

Why not?

ruveyn

Every aspie (or individual, for the matter) is different. People don't have to "fit the bill" perfectly, or be all the same to be on the autistic spectrum. I think that some people have a much more specialized skill set than average, but then some people have a much broader skill set. I happen to have a broader skill set. I think I have an almost equal skill set in math and art, and I have a broader set of special interests (not just the one and only one that some "experts" talk about). It also depends on nature vs. nurture, or how one is raised vs. what skills that they were born with. This is why having autism, or even just being human, is spectral. There are those with extremely vast skill sets while there are those who have one skill set. There are those that are functioning at a very high level while there are some with extremely low functioning. There are those that are tremendously tall while there are those (like me lol) who are like Tom Thumb/Thumbelina. We're all just different (which is what makes us the same! lol). I think it's quite beautiful

Yes they can. I am very good at painting and drawing, and always have been. I strongly beleive that such talents are inborn.

Generally, most people who write about autism (whether in books or otherwise) are highly affected by standard stereotypes of autism. They can end up force-fitting themselves into a mold, even if they do not fit that mold at all. So, at least some of the people writing books (although I would not be able to say who, because I don't know them) could well be people who don't fit the main stereotypes, but who feel like they have to think they do, and who just end up ignoring the non-stereotypical aspects of themselves. I've read most books that exist by autistic people (I collect them), and with few exceptions they all contain elements of whatever theories about autism the authors have been exposed to at the time they were writing it. It can create an effect where they write about the parts of themselves that fit the theories, and figure the rest of themselves don't have to do with autism at all. Or several other ways that standard theories can affect people. I also suspect that who gets published the most widely depends somewhat on stereotypes as well.

None of these things are absolutes, and I would never claim to know which autistic people were the most affected by these various forces. But it's clear (reading things and knowing what was thought about autism at the time) that this does happen, even if it's not always possible to figure out the cause, or to pinpoint which authors are being influenced by which part of the trends.

It is very important for autistic people who do not fit some particular theory, to continue to explain who we really are, as opposed to what theories say about us. I understand that for some it may be impossible though, and wouldn't want to put pressure on any single person to do so. Because sometimes a lot of a person's life can ride on seeming to fit the theories even if they don't. (Although as long as there is that situational pressure to meet stereotypes, there will be people who by necessity cannot fully be who they are. And there is pressure. There's pressure from certain autistic people who are terrified of the idea of autism not just being one thing, or of this huge wave of people who "think they're autistic but aren't" or "pretend to be autistic", and who treat badly anyone they see as breaking stereotypes. There are nonautistic people who think the same way. I have seen autistic people who don't fit stereotypes be denied services that they desperately need for survival or safety reasons. I have seen any number of people who exert social pressure because they have some kind of vested interest in all autistic people fitting a certain theory. And most autistic people are not immune to at least some of these kinds of pressure and others.) Autistic people who don't fit certain theories have even affected research at times, by saying "Hey, we're not all like this, revise your theory." Sometimes it works.

But I'd never say anyone had to do this. It's just a good thing when we do just be ourselves in the face of stereotypes. There's just too many variables for me to feel comfortable saying that we all have to do that or something. But it's a good thing when we can manage to do it. Because I've never seen an autistic person who entirely fits the stereotypes, just ones who do more than most others do. It's not an all or nothing thing.

I am highly mathematical, musical, and to a lesser extent, visually artistic. In fact, when I get to transfer to the right university I intend to major in mathematics and music. I can draw reasonably well, but it would take years before I could develop my skill to render a skillful life drawing, for instance, and my paintings are mediocre. Amateur good, but I doubt I could ever make a living at it.

As for music, I am on more the composing side, creating spontaneously as I play or think, writing directly to paper or by playing on keyboard or clarinet. I know how to read music, though sometime have trouble keeping up on keyboard reading the grand staff. I'll have a period reading/playing smoothly, then just stop and stare, going over and over the next measure, trying to take it in but unable to. It's much easier reading just a treble clef, but then again I haven't gotten advanced enough on clarinet to play anything really fast, so it might become a problem with reading speed then. For memorized pieces I don't stop in the middle at all, unless there is a major distraction, whereas while reading sheet music, particularly for piano, very minor distractions or anxiety will trip me up. I had a year of piano class and an hour of clarinet instruction.

I am talented at creative writing, majored in creative writing in high school, as well as studying film production, and have always had recognition of the ability to write interesting stories since I could write, including getting a national writing award for a dramatic script I wrote. I also took all the advanced math classes since fourth grade, including skipping precalculus so I could take AP Calculus in junior year of high school (I got a B first semester, but had to quit second semester, as well as another AP class AP Chemistry I also got a B in because I was failing my US History class and they didn't want me to fail a required course, but I ended up having to make it up at a community college the following spring anyway - aced it - leading me to wonder why I didn't just drop US History at the beginning of the year and take it at a community college instead to compress it in half the time).

That sounds a heck of a lot like confirmation bias, and is something I've seen in my own writing numerous times. Or some variant thereof, in which there are various levels of conscious awareness (ranging from very aware to very unaware) that one is altering their history to adhere to expectations.