Thinking in Holograms, Autism's Different Language

Being autistic means being outside of the majority style of languaging the world, this is at the core of our differences,

At the root of the autistic experience is a different way of using language. (I've also written about it here). It's a theory Leon Brenner writes in his book 'the autistic subject on the threshold of language', I find it endlessly fascinating. It seems to account for a lot of the disparate and sometimes seemingly disconnected experiences people with lived experience of autism often talk about. I like it because it has depth and implications for further thought and research.

It goes roughly like this.

Before any of us came into the world, the world was here. We were born into a culture, one which has it's own more or less coherent way of organising experience, of understanding how to be human, how to 'get on'. This culture lives in language, the language is a kind of code for all of these rules and governing ideas. We are all born into a languaged world then, which existed before us.

In order to survive humans generally find a way to take on this language, to learn it, because unless we speak it we can't get our needs me. We have to learn to cry in a way which *means* something to our parent 'hunger' 'fear' 'cold' in order for them to respond. This is in such contrast to other mammals, a lamb jumps to it's feet just after birth and starts helping itself to its mothers milk who stands there with an air of resigned tolerance. In humans there's another step, a gap to be crossed by infants if they are to reach food. The gap is bridged by language.

The idea is that, for whatever reason, autistics take on the shared language in a different way to allistics (by shared language I'm not talking about English or Cantonese but the shared way of separating this from that, from organising experience into meaning and categories). We set off on a path of developing our own language unique to us. Allistic people tend to take on, fuse with, the language that existed before us.

Maybe it's to do with the way genes express themselves in behaviour, it's certainly visible in brain activity and architecture when the child is older.

The result is we are not woven into the dominant social fabric in the same way allistics are but retain some kind of seperateness from the culture. It's not necessarily the case the we don't learn to use words, lots of us do use the dominant language in order to share information but we do not inhabit it fully, or it does not inhabit us. It's a tool but it is not part of us.

This idea accounts for so much trouble we get into when trying to 'get on' in the allistically biased social world. It means that when we do use spoken language we use it deliberately, less carelessly, which leads to us being called 'rigid' or 'inflexible' or 'concrete'. This judgement comes from the fact that we have to translate constantly. We have to go from our unique language and ways of structuring thought, to the allistic shared one, and then the allistic reply back to ours. The process is never perfect. There isn't a perfect match between my mind and an allistic mind but in the dominant culture it is expected. This gap is never experienced as positive by the allistic people we are communicating with. They expect and value a smooth match.

As an example I think in 3D images, like holograms, each image has texture and atmoshpere, colour and light and many many associations. I think by combining these sound-colour-texured-atmpospheres to make increasingly complex concepts. I don't think in words so I then have to find words for this inner world, a process which is so imprecise I sometimes think 90% of my inner world goes unshared because there simply are no ways of signifying it that can be understood (by allistics, different with other autistics). Other autsitc people might think in logic systems, or mathematically, or in sound images. There's a lot of variation. As I said, we each have our own unique language.

Allistic people, it seems, think more simply in categories a lot of the time, they use a kind of system of empty placeholders and derive a lot of the meaning of the language they use through context. And the meanings deriving from context are shared in this system we call 'language'.

Think of the word 'sorry', it means so many different things depending on context. It can mean 'I am regretful' but it can also mean 'fuck you' if used in a particular tone, or it can mean 'thankyou' sometimes even (e.g. if someone picks a pen up from the floor for you), it means 'excuse me' on a crowded railway platform, it means 'I'm not sorry' if used sarcastically. I could go on. One 'empty placeholder of sounds' + context = meaning.

For autistic people this is different. For us often sorry means whatever it meant when we first got the word. It means 'apologies' probably, like we were taught as a child. If we need someone to get out of our way there's a better word than 'sorry' which is 'excuse me'. I find myself saying, in exasperation, all the time 'why on earth would you have said that when there's an exact word in the English language that says what you *do* mean'. It's a more precise system which ensures meaning is conveyed with the use of the exact words. It's a more 'wordy' system if you like.

It's not like these specifity laden words are the only tools we use to communicate. We are often good at perceiving patterns of communication and also relying on much more unconscious layers of communication which is why we get called psychic (we might well be actually and that's a way less spooky thing than it sounds). But our rhythms are our own individual ones, our way of using specific words are unique to us alone, the patternings of our speech are unique to us.

It means communication is more creative, rich and beautiful and requires a kind of demandless entry into each others worlds. When two of us are together problems with communication tend to disappear. We know how to let each other be, how to let whatever is happening be how we are together, we don't demand shared understanding from each other but can trust the understanding is there way under the surface but most definitely there. We give each other time. We clarify. There is space for ownership of our own speech and our reception of the other's without demands that anyone changes.

It has helped me so much to have a theory which can pull things together and works at depth. I like depth. It's helped me understand a lot about my own experience of communication and the impasses I've come to when trying to get my point across, as well as the frustration, the missteps and the often present autistic feeling of being an alien in the world. It helps to have an understanding of just why that is.