So different and yet so similar
A fascinating book on an essential subject. Autism and the integration of autistic savants. The book is written by an autistic savant himself and that's its main interest. It might have been proof-read by some editor but it remains the direct testimony of an autistic savant about his whole experience. He righteously insists on his difference and his right for his difference to be recognized and welcomed in society. He explains and exemplifies the cases when it was not true, either because the social group did not make the effort to accept his difference, but also because his autism made him feel insecure, in many situations, and then he was blocked in his inner world and unable to communicate. What saved him was first of all his mathematical ability with numbers and basic operations that produced miracles when associated to his phenomenal memory. Then he could score a world record with PI and beat a Las Vegas casino in a Black Jack game. But that is not what is essential. It is that he was not discriminated against by the institution of his country, England. He was able to follow a normal school career and he could have gone to university, but he chose differently. Then he was accepted on a volunteer program to go and teach English in Lithuania. Then when back as a volunteer in his neighborhood to help young children in their school tasks. And it is like that he discovered the two other capabilities that will make a difference in his professional life: his abilities to teach foreign languages and to learn a foreign language in a few weeks of complete immersion. He knew he had a tooth for foreign languages since he had learned French and German at school, but Lithuania brought him in contact with learners and with a new language he had to learn all by himself. He thus devised a method that was to become his bread-earning activity: teaching languages via the Internet with the site http://www.optimnem.co.uk/, certified by the British authorities overlooking English language "schools". But another element was necessary for him to be able to jump onto this new adventure. He recognized and accepted his gayness in Lithuania and then fell in love when back in England. His parents were supportive in that important change in his life. He was then able to start living with someone on a totally trustful and intimate basis. This partner is extremely supportive, all the more since he is a computer technician working from home via the Internet. His world record on PI led him to be discovered by all sorts of scientists who are trying to understand how the minds of savants work and that led him to world wide fame thanks to TV. Did he have a lot of chance, or even luck? No, he benefitted from positive conditions that are far from being offered to all autistic children, especially when their autism is more stringent. Too often they are kept away from real life and locked up in institutions. Daniel's meeting Kim Peek, the model of Rain Man, the autistic character performed by Dustin Hoffman in the eponymous film, helped him understand how he benefitted from a tremendous change and a tremendously positive environment. In Kim Peek's days autistic people were institutionalized and lobotomized if necessary. We are speaking of the United States and of a recent period. He was only born in 1951, hence raised under Eisenhower and Kennedy, some ten years after the revelation that the Nazis exterminated all psychologically disabled people they could seize in Europe. That's were I want to make a remark that is going to be quite surprising to some. I do not intend to negate the difference of autistic men and women. But I do want to point out that some of their abilities exist in everyone and are just not trained and developed. We have been in the process of discovering that all children, all people are visually dominant and that they all use synesthesia now and then. We just don't recognize it and we often discourage young children to use the improper words to speak of any subject. Not four letter words but all these creative metaphors children like so much naturally, the way Shakespeare spoke voluntarily. We have to reconsider our education of children to encourage their synesthesia and their creative use of language and some abilities that are not in any way encouraged. For one example Daniel insists how letters have a personal individual phonic identity, which goes against the global method to teach how to read, even if the eye is going to capture patterns when reading, but the phonic identity was experienced by a child a long time before learning how to write and read, hence these colorations of each individual letter are already completed when he discovers his first pen and reading book. Daniel Tanner insists too on the fact that a language is not only words, far from it. it is also syntactic patterns and the learner has to build some intuitive experience of the syntactic structures of a language. The main signifying element of a language is thus the syntactic patterns that arrange the words and not the words alone. You can know a whole dictionary of words and never be able to speak a language, whereas even with a few words, if you control the syntax you will be able to say things and then learn a lot faster the words you need to enrich your discourse. This book is essential if we accept to reconsider our basic ideas about differently-abled people.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne&University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

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