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A Spectrum Is Haunting Texas (a sequel)
Yesterday I did a post about the “autistic spectrum” in which I assumed that autism is defined as the lack of Theory of Mind. That is not currently the case, and I apologize to anyone I offended by passing along that misinformation. I wish to thank ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrissa, kalimac, elenbarathi, and ertla for helpful comments on this matter.
I suspect that autistic may be one of those concepts on which I am followed around by an invisible Zen Master who will whap me upside the head if I say that I am or if I say that I am not one of those. (It happened with fannish.) Fifty years ago I decided that the most important Two Kinds of People is those who live in the world and those who live in their minds and deal with the world, and that I am one of the latter. I found two brilliant writers of that sort—Robert Anson Heinlein and Robert Anton Wilson—and learned much from them without entirely agreeing with either. I thought that Jung’s extravert/introvert was that distinction, but it’s more complicated than that. I keep thinking about that. Maybe we should call it allistic/autistic or externalist/internalist, but it seems to me to matter a lot.
mrissa, kalimac, elenbarathi, and ertla for helpful comments on this matter.I suspect that autistic may be one of those concepts on which I am followed around by an invisible Zen Master who will whap me upside the head if I say that I am or if I say that I am not one of those. (It happened with fannish.) Fifty years ago I decided that the most important Two Kinds of People is those who live in the world and those who live in their minds and deal with the world, and that I am one of the latter. I found two brilliant writers of that sort—Robert Anson Heinlein and Robert Anton Wilson—and learned much from them without entirely agreeing with either. I thought that Jung’s extravert/introvert was that distinction, but it’s more complicated than that. I keep thinking about that. Maybe we should call it allistic/autistic or externalist/internalist, but it seems to me to matter a lot.