BlackOxford's Reviews > The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
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![17744555](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p2/17744555.jpg)
Coping With Conscience
My 34 year old daughter is severely autistic, and has been since she was seven. No one knows why and the condition has never varied in its intensity. So she is stuck in time. She knows this and vaguely resents it somewhat but gets on with things as best she can.
Each case of autism is probably unique. My daughter has no facility with numbers or memory but she does with space. As far as I can tell any enclosed space appears to her as a kind of filing system which she can decipher almost instantly. When she was twelve I brought her into a cavernous Virgin megastore to get a particular CD. She had never been in the place before, but after standing in the doorway for three or four seconds, she walked immediately to the correct aisle and bin and picked out the desired CD without any hesitation.
I have a theory, probably rubbish, that autistic people perceive the world as it actually is or, more precisely, within strictly limited categories that might be called ‘natural’, somewhat in the vein of Kantian transcendentals - space, time, numbers, etc. Most, like my daughter and Christopher, the protagonist of The Curious Incident, have no facility with purely linguistic manipulation - metaphor, lying, irony, jokes, complex allusion, actually fiction of any sort. The world is not just literal, it exists in a way that ensures words are always subservient to things and without imagination that it could be any other way.
In my experience autistic people tend to become upset when non-autistic people attempt to reverse the priority by making things subservient to words. This makes the autistic person confused, anxious, and often angry. They appear resentful that such liberties can be taken with what is so obviously reality. In effect, the autistic life is devoted to truth as what is actually ‘there’, stripped of all emotional, figurative, and cultural content.
This makes autistic people often difficult to live with. They insist and they persist about things which appear trivial to others. They nag and needle until they obtain recognition. In those areas that interest them, they are capable of splitting the finest hairs to avoid abandoning their perceptions of the world. They may on occasion conform in order to gain a point but they never really give in. They are stalwart in being, simply, themselves. Adaptation occurs elsewhere, not in them.
It is, therefore, probably impossible for non-autistic people to live without tension among autistic people. The latter are maddening in the solidity of their selves. They are, in a sense, elemental, for all we know formed in the intense energy of a star in some distant galaxy. Fortunately, the fact that most of us cannot understand their elemental force is not something that worries them very much. Their emotional reactions may be intense but these attenuate rapidly, leaving little damaging residue.
Ultimately, perhaps, autistic people are the conscience of the world. And conscience is always troublesome, not because it threatens to judge but because it reveals.
Postscript 19/08/22: My daughter died today of a cerebral stroke, aged 37. I am devastated.
My 34 year old daughter is severely autistic, and has been since she was seven. No one knows why and the condition has never varied in its intensity. So she is stuck in time. She knows this and vaguely resents it somewhat but gets on with things as best she can.
Each case of autism is probably unique. My daughter has no facility with numbers or memory but she does with space. As far as I can tell any enclosed space appears to her as a kind of filing system which she can decipher almost instantly. When she was twelve I brought her into a cavernous Virgin megastore to get a particular CD. She had never been in the place before, but after standing in the doorway for three or four seconds, she walked immediately to the correct aisle and bin and picked out the desired CD without any hesitation.
I have a theory, probably rubbish, that autistic people perceive the world as it actually is or, more precisely, within strictly limited categories that might be called ‘natural’, somewhat in the vein of Kantian transcendentals - space, time, numbers, etc. Most, like my daughter and Christopher, the protagonist of The Curious Incident, have no facility with purely linguistic manipulation - metaphor, lying, irony, jokes, complex allusion, actually fiction of any sort. The world is not just literal, it exists in a way that ensures words are always subservient to things and without imagination that it could be any other way.
In my experience autistic people tend to become upset when non-autistic people attempt to reverse the priority by making things subservient to words. This makes the autistic person confused, anxious, and often angry. They appear resentful that such liberties can be taken with what is so obviously reality. In effect, the autistic life is devoted to truth as what is actually ‘there’, stripped of all emotional, figurative, and cultural content.
This makes autistic people often difficult to live with. They insist and they persist about things which appear trivial to others. They nag and needle until they obtain recognition. In those areas that interest them, they are capable of splitting the finest hairs to avoid abandoning their perceptions of the world. They may on occasion conform in order to gain a point but they never really give in. They are stalwart in being, simply, themselves. Adaptation occurs elsewhere, not in them.
It is, therefore, probably impossible for non-autistic people to live without tension among autistic people. The latter are maddening in the solidity of their selves. They are, in a sense, elemental, for all we know formed in the intense energy of a star in some distant galaxy. Fortunately, the fact that most of us cannot understand their elemental force is not something that worries them very much. Their emotional reactions may be intense but these attenuate rapidly, leaving little damaging residue.
Ultimately, perhaps, autistic people are the conscience of the world. And conscience is always troublesome, not because it threatens to judge but because it reveals.
Postscript 19/08/22: My daughter died today of a cerebral stroke, aged 37. I am devastated.
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Reading Progress
February 11, 2018
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February 11, 2018
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February 11, 2018
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February 12, 2018
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Comments Showing 1-50 of 343 (343 new)
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
I hope everything "going" well with your old daughter."
Thanks. Things get neither better nor worse. And stability is I suppose not a terrible outcome.
![João Carlos](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1528787185p1/17544299.jpg)
I hope everything "going" well with your old daughter."
Thanks. Things get neither better nor worse. And stability is I suppose not a terrible outcome."
I understand.
Every day is a new day.
Every day is a different day, always with new challenges...
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
I hope everything "going" well with your old daughter."
Thanks. Things get neither better nor worse. And stability is I suppose not a terrib..."
👍
![Katia N](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1370960553p1/7381993.jpg)
I am sure we can learn from this type of people a lot, in spite of the difficulties in communication.
Thank you for poignant and honest discussion!
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Thanks back Dawn Carole.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
I..."
Thanks for that. The difficulty seems to be that communication must always be on their terms. Part of the insistent persistence about reality.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
I think so too. But I’m not sure which direction implies evolutionary progress.
![Fionnuala](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1368182051p1/5498525.jpg)
david wrote: "..I would suggest that all of us are somewhere on this spectrum..."
I was thinking the same thing as I read B's piece.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
david wrote: "..I w..."
Thanks F. You’re right. I think anyone with a large enough family can identify a range of sensibilities. There does seem to be the possibility of a built in aesthetic that defies choice and awareness. Then there a few of the rest of us who feel compelled to explain the others so that we can stay in our own reflective sensibilities. Ah well... the paradoxes of being human.
![Anni](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1618399491p1/17465866.jpg)
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Anne, that is my opinion as well. And that’s one of the reasons that it can become unbearable for others.
![Lori](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508609296p1/68050592.jpg)
![Ingrid](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1547371456p1/6181069.jpg)
![Beverly](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1505852430p1/68708752.jpg)
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Thanks Lori. It was certainly a revelation to me.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Thanks Ingrid. I too find them in myself in accepting my daughter’s condition.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Yes, Beverley, each is unique. Hence even the category ‘autistic’ has no fixed denotation.
![Michael Dodsworth](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508183916p1/72557669.jpg)
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Thanks Michael.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
⚛️
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Quantum interactions. Very mysterious. Hard to pin down. Can lead to explosive consequences.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Not that English. No idea.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
The latter being pulled by a single lonely horse presumably.
![Joyce](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1560887557p1/33127231.jpg)
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Thanks Joyce. Her mother is dead. My daughter’s condition certainly didn’t help in keeping her alive. Ultimately she couldn’t accept it.
![Greta G](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1525435609p1/45248887.jpg)
A few weeks ago, I read a memoir of a mother of a still young autistic son, who wrote : "...he is underreactive in his sense of space: he still knocks into people on the street and would talk to me about two inches from my face if I weren’t constantly grabbing his shoulders and pushing him back." (To Siri With Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of a Machine).
So it was interesting to read that your daughter has a facility with space, and this shows again how different each person on the spectrum is and that we should not stereotype them.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
You’re so correct Greta. Like Christopher, my daughter will not make eye contact when conversing. This is very problematic in many situations. And yet others, as in your example, insist on staring down the other person. The fact that there are no entirely general rules for dealing with the condition (or conditions) is one of the most important lessons we all learn eventually, usually after a great deal of mutual frustration. However, having accepted that even the most unusual behaviour is highly purposeful, even if its purpose isn’t totally clear, interactions become much easier. I think this lesson is of general relevance in dealing with everyone, not just those with the condition.
![Greta G](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1525435609p1/45248887.jpg)
Actually, this boy, Gus, didn't make eye contact either. He just had this problem with space.
![Marc](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1569160429p1/2876105.jpg)
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
👌
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Thank you. By now however it's the new normal. If anyone ever needed a justification for the NHS, her case is it. Without them her life would have been a disaster. But they have supplied the most amazing care over the last 27 years, at a level that would have been impossible to buy at any price anywhere.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Thanks Marc. Talk of the 'spectrum' makes it seem like there is a progressively serious condition. It is clear however that there is not a single condition nor a common etiology. Names are assigned more for comfort than meaningful diagnosis. It is a practical fact that an understanding of brain functions and abnormalities is an infant science.
![Christine](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1571934651p1/54731976.jpg)
Having taught several autistic students, in my inclusion classroom (2nd grade), for many years in a Title I school, I find your descriptions to be the most understandable, of any "definition" of autism that I've ever heard. Including those of mental health and special education professionals.
Best wishes to your daughter, and to you! She is lucky to have a dad who has put so much thought into her needs and her worldview. : )
![Frank](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1614252464p1/2458054.jpg)
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Having taught several autistic students, in my inclusion classroom (2nd grade), for many years in a Title..."
Thank you so much Christine. When I'm not too annoyed with her, I feel like I'm very lucky to have her as a daughter. Your good wishes are also greatly appreciated.
![BlackOxford](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1484863606p1/17744555.jpg)
Frank, I can't say it has, but I'm not sure because I don't think understand what you mean.
I hope everything "going" well with your old daughter.