Building bridges between "countries of the mind"

[mojogeorgo]

It was just last Thursday that I first learned about Daniel Tammet, a young man with Asperger's Syndrome who was featured on 60 Minutes due to his amazing math and memory abilities. Since that time, I have written several posts about Daniel, including some similarities I noticed between the experiences he has related and those of my son who also has a diagnosis of Asperger's. Those posts can be found here
http://independentbloggersalliance.blogspot.com

Below is an excerpt from in interview Tammet did on NPR:

I definitely think that one of the real challenges for people with autism is that we really do feel uncomfortable in this world. There is so much bombardment of our senses: too much noise, too much texture, too much information, and it can feel overwhelming. And then we retreat into our own private world to feel calm and cope with that experience. And language, like numbers, is another way of doing that, of creating anther world in which you can belong. And for me, I'm very lucky--in a sense, I have dual nationality. I belong in the world of people, *and* the world of numbers. I belong to two countries of the mind simultaneously.

And the challenge, I think, for any person with autism, is to find that bridge from one country of the mind to that of people. Because we need people, we need social interaction. We need people that we can love, people we can trust, people we can have emotions towards and to believe in and to hope for the better of.

More here
http://independentbloggersalliance.blogspot.com


Update: Sorry--I flaked on this! It really should be in general discussion rather than general discussion, politics. I've tried to figure out if there's a way to move or delete the post, and I'm not finding one. I thought for sure I'd seen a delete button in the past.