On August 18th and August 19th, 2009, Daniel was gracious enough to let me peer into his world. I was aware of the great number of interviews with Daniel that already exist, but as a psychologist, I still had many lingering questions, which Daniel was very patient in answering for me. These two days, I left my prior expectations, biases, and ways of thinking at the door and transported myself into Daniel's mind. As a result, I was fortunate enough to be able to share his unique way of seeing the world. 

Daniel's insights changed my own way of thinking, not only with regards to Autism and Asperger's syndrome, but also in terms of the full extent to which personal change is possible, the nature and nurture of individual differences, intelligence, creativity, genius, fiction, art, poetry, math, love, relationships, the mind, brain, the future of humanity, and the appreciation of many different kinds of minds. A portion of my interview can be found in the November/December issue of Psychology Today (Numbers Guy: An autistic savant joins the wider world). 

Over the coming days I will reveal my complete interview with Daniel, laid out in six parts. I hope you find Daniel's reflections, insights, and ongoing journey just as fascinating and thought-provoking as I have.

In this first part (see parts II, III, IV, V, VI, postscript), Daniel talks about Embracing the Wide Sky, plasticity, Autism, and Asperger's disorder, while dispelling popular myths.

S. I really enjoyed reading your book Embracing the Wide Sky. These issues are at the very front of my mind and the field's, and it was really great to get your unique perspective. What was the most surprising psychological finding you discovered while you were researching the book?

D. One of the things I found very interesting was the plasticity of the brain. There is this mythology that says that when people are born, their brains are essentially fixed very early on and they're not able to change their connections. I was aware that was a myth and that people could learn new skills. From a linguistic point of view, it's possible to learn a second language well into adulthood without it being such a difficult task. The extent of that plasticity was very interesting to me, and was surprising. That people were actually able to control their capacity for happiness. That meditation had such a striking effect on the brain. That just by thinking about an activity, by visualizing it, people were able to improve their skill in that area, whether it was in terms of their goal swing or in terms of playing the notes of a piano. That was very interesting.

S. Most savants as you know aren't able to reflect on their condition let alone write books. What unique combination of personality traits do you think enables you to have such a high level of refection?

D. My autism is a very mild form. It was diagnosed at the age of 25, partly because it wasn't diagnosable as a teenager (this is Asperger's syndrome, specifically). But there were certainly traits within that condition, within the autism spectrum in general, especially at the high functioning end, that I think are best looked at as pluses.

Often autism is portrayed in the media as a very negative condition, as something that prevents somebody from communicating or from socializing or from being able to have any kind of normal, happy life. These are exaggerations - exaggerations to the point of distorting the reality of the condition, which is complex.

In terms of Asperger's syndrome, and those pluses, I'd say there is a great curiosity to understand the world. People going through their childhood who don't have this condition, who aren't on the autistic spectrum, will make friends in general. They will fit in, will go through the routines of society, of school, of family life, and so on, and these things will seem to them natural because they come naturally to them so they don't feel the need to question them or to find them puzzling or unusual enough to want to question them whereas those on the autistic spectrum, myself included, are very puzzled by most things people take for granted- the intricacies of body language, of telling a joke, of having a conversation with somebody.

This curiosity can then develop in all kinds of ways and can broaden out into much bigger questions about the nature of life and death, the universe and the meaning of it all and so-on. So I think curiosity is one of the primary traits that has been a plus and has been a big part of my development and a big part of the motivation for writing Embracing the Wide Sky because of my curiosity for how the mind works and what makes my mind different but also not so different from other people who obviously haven't had the same journey as I've had.

S. In what ways do you think Aspergers has contributed to your extraordinary abilities?

D. I mention this in the chapter on creativity. I quote one scientist Fitzgerald, who is a professor of psychiatry in Dublin. He studied genius as he termed it and believed that many of those people who we would traditionally describe as possessing genius- Newton, Tesla, Mendel, and many others- were likely to have, were they alive today, been eligible for a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome or some kind of autistic disorder. He singles out a number of traits, such as single-mindedness and perseverance.

When things don't come so naturally to you, you want to persevere, you want to keep pushing yourself to overcome obstacles that prevent you from having the kind of life that you want to have. And of course curiosity, as I've already mentioned, is a very important trait in pushing back against ideas that people receive but don't necessarily question and having that insight, or that creativity- the ability to mix ideas up and come up with new ways of thinking of something.

I could very well believe what Fitzgerald had written about them and see clearly in my own case that these traits did contribute a great deal. Of course, these traits aren't unique to the autistic spectrum either. We see examples of course of people achieving many great things who are not autistic at all, but I certainly think that this is helpful in some respects in that it makes it clear that autism is not purely to be seen in negative terms. The brain is an incredibly complex thing and in certain people it develops differently. That obviously incurs certain costs but it might also bring certain benefits as well.