American Normal

Asperger's has never been clearly defined, bordering autism on one side and high intelligence and verbal eccentricity on the other. The disease is a kind of cultural lightning rod. First, it's a condition onto which we project the very real and well-founded fears of social isolation inherent in mental illness. But also attached to it is a kind of admiration and envy and (among those who suffer from Asperger's) a kind of elitism, a sense of being one of the elect, in a world mainly peopled by neurotypicals. Just how different from the so-called normal are those with Asperger's, and is it possible that virtually all of us have a little of the syndrome in ourselves? Setting aside the usual pieties of medicine and rehabilitation, he embarks on a quest that casts a skeptical eye on American psychiatric culture, with its tendency to over-diagnose, then over-medicate. And even more, he ventures into the elusive but essential realm where one has to ask what is the difference between eccentricity (with all its potential for creativity, for enriching our society and ourselves) and normality, with its undertones of blandness, averageness, and uniformity?