Ahem. Just sayin'…Again….This is a movie deserving of your dollars, time and attention. Hollywood's Foreign Press Association thinks so, too. The Social Network is, ironically, a movie about a socially inept young man (now billionaire Mark Zuckerberg,) who is the greatest social network architect since Alexander Graham Bell. Ring-Ring! Hello?! And, Bell, by the way–as is the point of this post–originally published on this blog October 27, 2010, probably also had high-functioning autism….
From the opening scenes of The Social Network, the movie about the creator and creation of Facebook, it's obvious to those of us immersed in the culture…founder Mark Zuckerberg has Asperger's syndrome.
Asperger's is the latest frontier of public and medical community awareness on the autism spectrum frontier. The syndrome only landed in the medical books in about 1981, though recognized and eponymously named by German psychiatrist Hans Asperger within about a year from when Leo Kanner gave the constellation now known as autism a name.
Often what keeps family members, teens and adults from recognizing and accepting the diagnosis is several things. First, the word autism. In reality the disorder encompasses a huge continuum of functioning. Secondly, the stigma of disAbility. While the intellectual capacity of Asperger's is average to often gifted–the individual communicates with words, so, what's the problem? A lot. Until my daughter was diagnosed with autism, albeit, moderately severe now at age 16, I'd never considered how connected the brain is to our ability to interact socially with the world. And that part of the brain is damaged in autism and markedly in Asperger's, where people often may seem otherwise normal–sometimes.
Do not be misled by the assumption that children who did/do have some speech challenges early on or who as children or adults are OVERLY social do not fall into the Asperger's diagnosis. Such misbeliefs have kept many family/child/adult from receiving needed services. Remember, there is a constellation of symptoms across the entire spectrum. Society, as we are learning weekly, is packed with people who have Asperger's and who've never been diagnosed, and who are either having difficulty meeting the demands of a typical workplace-pace or, who have somehow managed to finesse an arsenal of coping skills….
Bless Temple Grandin. Her following paraphrased proclamation makes it into every interview and speech I've heard her deliver in her endearingly odd-inflected voice. If it weren't for Asperger's syndrome, she declares, we'd have no engineers, NASA scientists. And, Einstein plus Mozart and more, would today be diagnosed with the disorder.
As I am learning from someone to whom I am very intimately connected–causing me to really put legs onto the words from 14-years of the disAbility journey with my daughter–the key is to see disAbility as a difference….Not a deficit….
We have the intellectual, social…Asperger's difference of Mark Zuckerberg to thank for the social media phenomenon of Facebook.
As for The Social Network, the movie? Go see it. Entertaining, engaging, fascinating and exploding with layers of irony….A social network created by someone with a social…challenge….
Amen. The reluctance to accept and take ownership of a diagnosis of Asperger’s due to the stigma of being on the autism spectrum has been, and continues to be, a great source of distress and unnecessary life “complications” for my 21 year-old son. My eldest, first suggested as having Asperger’s at age 13, continues to kick against the goads–abhorring the reality of who he is rather than embracing the quirky person I, as a mother, adore and just learning to roll with it….he is an amazingly intelligent university drop out, part-time pyromaniac, and recovering drug addict still in search of an ever-elusive and accepting social niche….at any and all potential costs to his personal life and limb. In stark contrast, his little brother who was diagnosed very early on, was more significantly impacted with a full autism diagnosis, will no doubt surpass him in life, if my eldest does not reach a major catharsis, as my youngest embraces his differences and excels academically and socially in spite of them (yet not without struggle). As a mother, I no doubt have a bittersweet soft spot for the scores of individuals with Asperger’s who have fallen through the cracks of society, and yet I rejoice with those who have utilized the inherent strengths associated with Asperger’s to catapult them to a life of meaning and fulfillment in whatever unexpected form it may take.
WOW. Beautifully put, Juli. I do think a part of it, too, is the “age” in which each grew up. The culture is so more accepting and adaptive for people diagnosed at a later time, IMO.