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While leisurely reading the novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,1 written by the 2018 Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, I was struck by realizing how incredibly the main character in the novel fits the psychological profile of high-functioning autism. I was excited to discover how this psychological prism may marvelously account for the intricate complexities and nuances of this extraordinary and seemingly incomprehensible character, providing us with a coherent conceptual framework for understanding this fascinating piece of literature.
Autism is a common neurodevelopmental syndrome characterized by substantial cognitive, emotional, perceptual, and sensual characteristics. The main characteristics of autism include impairments in communication and in reciprocal social interactions, restricted and repetitive behaviors or interests, sensual sensibilities, a high level of anxiety, impairments in executive functions, and more. Alongside these difficulties, there are also many assets to be found in autism, such as a heightened sensitivity, attention to details, high curiosity, non-conventional thinking, creativity, compassion, and high ethical standards (e.g., Blumrosen-Sela, 2021).
In this article I address the subgroup within the autism spectrum referred to as “high-functioning” autistic people—defined by having average or above-average intellectual abilities (formerly referred to as Asperger's syndrome, but in recent
years included formally under the wide umbrella of autism spectrum disorders). Apparently the majority of high-functioning autistic adults living today have actually not been diagnosed as such—and were therefore labeled the “Lost Generation of Autism” (see Baron-Cohen & Lai, 2015)—as this diagnosis has officially existed only since the end of the 20th century (the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome appeared for the first time only in the 1994 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM]). To this day