Why do we often fail to recognize the brilliance of neurodivergent minds?
It’s time we celebrate and foster the strengths of neurodivergent individuals.
Key points
- Various exceptional individuals throughout history were (or are thought to have been) neurodivergent.
- Social struggles should not overshadow the valuable and much needed contributions of neurodivergent minds.
- High levels of divergent creativity are found among individuals with moderate psychopathology levels.
Genius Of Neurodivergent Minds
There was something about art that was so calming to Mason*, both at therapy and at home. This one time in my office, he drew a bunch of eyes on a small, neon Post-it note.
“Do you like it?”
“Sure,” I fibbed.
Meanwhile, my imagination outlined a narrative in which other teens saw this drawing—and then swiftly tacked an invisible note with the word “nuts” onto Mason’s forehead.
Read More Here: Is Bluey Neurodivergent? Exploring The Fan Theory About The Beloved Character
Mason was autistic, and his teachers constantly complained about his “inappropriate” language and “overblown” reactions in class. His parents brought him into therapy because they were tired of the daily requests from school to pick Mason up following an outburst. But Mason wasn’t the only “problem.” And his behavioral responses certainly did not sprout in a vacuum. Mason’s classmates physically and verbally bullied him, and he didn’t have a single friend at school to defend or support him.
I glanced at the Post-it note in Mason’s hand. It was unarguably a strange thing to draw—just eyes. So. Many. Beady. Eyes. The pressure that he placed on the pencil, the smudges, and the shading between the squinting eyes—all of it came off as creepy.
Then Mason held up a similar Post-it note with something I couldn’t identify.
“It’s a tree trunk. And these are the eyes,” he pointed to the previous picture. Then he slapped both on my wall, stepped back, and scanned the images: one little square with beady little eyes and a second little square with—
In that moment, his thinking process became clearer to me. Mason was playing with perspective. He started with a distinct, strange detail (eyes), before he zoomed out and depicted the bigger picture (a tree trunk with eyes).
“It’s a silver birch tree,” he added.
And it definitely was.
At that point in his life, Mason was a rejected, underappreciated kid. But hidden under those misattributions was an extremely talented and unique thinker.
As the silver birch tree symbolizes, Mason deserved the capacity to thrive in a world that was not built for him.
Mason’s story isn’t an anomaly. Far from it.
Let’s consider Vincent van Gogh, the famed revolutionary artist now commonly referred to as a “mad genius.” I’ll call him Vincent, because that’s what he went by both personally and professionally while he was alive.
Recently, I traveled to Amsterdam and attended a tour at the Van Gogh Museum. I’ll just be transparent and say up front that I intentionally booked a tour with a knowledgeable tour guide because otherwise, considering my past museum etiquette (and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), I would no doubt be sitting on a bench in the middle of a random room surrounded by history, staring at my phone and learning absolutely nothing.
During the tour, although I found Vincent’s artwork to be interesting, I was way more interested in Vincent himself.
This is ironic. Because while Vincent was alive, he only started to get even slightly recognized as a talented artist after he mutilated his ear. It literally took cutting off most of an ear for someone to write about his art.
And according to his archived letters and historical accounts, Vincent hated that. He wanted to be respected and loved for his art, not his “madness.”
Yet his “madness” is what seems to really resonate with people, and Vincent’s life’s work was not admired (or even purchased at a respectable price) until after he died and his family pushed for his art to be recognized (alongside his personal written exchanges with close others, especially his brother, Theo).
So, while I stood there and our tour guide started describing Vincent’s characteristics, including his…
- Cognitive and behavioral rigidity
- Difficulties with picking up on social cues
- Periods of intense hyperfocus
- Variable specific interests/”obsessions”
- Tendency to try on different professional and personality “hats” (actually, quite literally too, as he often wore different styles of hats and painted himself wearing them)
- Concreteness in his art
- Extreme sensitivity to detail, especially detail pertaining to nature
- Openness to more abstract philosophical concepts, like life after death
- Rejection by others—even many in his family
- Description as strange
- Clear longing for acceptance, appreciation, and understanding
- Magnetism to the “outcasts” and “rejects” of society
- Willingness to take risks and stand out as “different”
- Brutal honesty, especially when he was describing his own work
… my ADHD made its presence known, and the words “He was autistic” spilled out of my mouth. I almost said it like it was a fact. In reality, I know this cannot be confirmed. I will say, though, that my thought was apparently far from absurd. An article published in 2022 made the case that Vincent was probably autistic, in addition to struggling with other conditions, possibly including ADHD.
But instead of focusing on the specific diagnosis, I want to shift and review the characteristics listed above and how they so clearly resemble those of neurodivergent individuals. I see Mason in these descriptions. I see myself. And maybe you see you there too.
The real problem, though, is this: The world waits way too long to celebrate these people.
It seems that the social difficulties of neurodivergent people overshadow their unique and valuable perspectives. People get so caught up in how “difficult” someone is to deal with that they cannot see past that. But in reality, Vincent was a genius.
Can’t we remove the “mad” and just appreciate the artist and his work because they deserve to be appreciated as they are?
I think that we need more research focusing on the strengths of neurodivergent individuals. We already know that the most creative people display at least some traits consistent with psychopathology. Researchers studying the association between creativity and levels of psychopathology have shown that individuals with low or high levels of psychopathology are not particularly creative. But those who fall somewhere in the middle show the highest divergent creativity levels.
One possible explanation for this is impulsivity: People who can be impulsive will be more inclined to take risks—and to be creative and innovative, you have to take risks.
If people just took the time to sit with others they deem “different” to try to understand them with an open heart, maybe we wouldn’t have to wait until it’s too late to appreciate them.
Read More Here: The 5 Neurodivergent Love Languages: How Your ADHD/Autistic Partner Shows Love
Maybe then, through open communication and additional research, we could more adeptly identify individuals who have the potential to be truly exceptional and successful, given the right levels of support and acceptance that they so clearly deserve.
(Mason is a false name used to protect client confidentiality. Specific details were omitted or changed for the same reason.)
References
Abraham, A. (2014). Is there an inverted-u relationship between creativity and psychopathology? Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00750
Arrow, A. (2023, April 18). January tree of the month: Silver birch. Dartmoor Tree Surgeons Ltd. https://www.dartmoortreesurgeons.co.uk/news/january-tree-of-the-month-s…
L Friedman, S. (2022). Autism added to behavioral profile of Vincent Van Gogh. International Journal of Forensic Sciences, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.23880/ijfsc-16000255
The museum about Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam. Van Gogh Museum. (n.d.). https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en
© Gilly Kahn, Ph.D.
This post was also published at Psychology Today
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Written by Dr. Gilly Kahn, Ph.D.
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