Free In a Different Key: The Story of Autism by John Donvan, Caren Zucker Page B

unknowable. In the decades after Kanner “found” autism, a small group of scholars investigated whether autism had a “pre-history.” While acknowledging the speculative nature of retrospective diagnosis, the researchers turned to legends and ledger books to find compelling accounts of long-gone individuals whose odd behaviors earned them, during their lifetimes, the status of outsiders, sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. Once labeled fools, idiots, or madmen, they were reevaluated through the lens of Kanner’s description of autism. Viewed this way, their stories lent intriguingsupport to Kanner’s assertion that autism, as one permutation of being human, was nothing new.
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    H ALF A MILLENNIUM AGO , a Russian shoemaker named Basil, born around 1469, was spotted walking about naked in winter, spouting incomprehensible utterances, while remaining inattentive to his own needs, even for food. The populace did not see this as madness. They thought, rather, that they were witnessing extreme holiness. The Russians called this “foolishness for Christ” and regarded Basil’s self-abnegation as a courageous, difficult, and pious path, which Basil took in order to allow Christ to speak through him. Even the tsar—Ivan the Terrible—who was known to have waiters executed for serving the wrong drink at dinner, let Basil criticize him in public. He believed Basil could read his thoughts, and he took it to heart when the wandering shoemaker scolded him for letting his mind wander in church. It was said that Basil was the only man Ivan truly feared.
    In 1974,a pair of Russian-speaking scholars at the University of Michigan suggested that something other than pure foolishness or holiness might have been at work in Basil, and in a few others with similar stories. Natalia Challis and Horace Dewey dove deeply into the available accounts of Basil’s life and some thirty-five other “Holy Fools” of bygone days, all recognized as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church. Challis’s and Dewey’s academic specialty was Russian history and culture, not autism. But Dewey had a son, born in the 1950s, who had been diagnosed with autism, and that gave him insights into the behaviors of the ancient wanderers. He came to believe that autism, not insanity or divinity, might explain the Holy Fools’ behavior.
    This set of individuals, he and Challis wrote, was “unhampered by society’s preconceptions” and content to live in a state of social isolation. Certain of them were wedded to rituals. They noted that Basil’s tolerance of extreme cold—which let him “walk barefoot on the frozen Volga”—was reminiscent of how some people with autism appear indifferent to extremes of cold, heat, or pain. The Holy Fools were also observed to get by on limited sleep and food—again, similar to some people with autism.
    While some remained mute, several were known to echo the words of others, and still others spoke in riddles. And legend has it that some blurted out whatever they were thinking into the faces of the powerful. That tendency, Challis and Dewey wrote, was a major part of what endeared the Fools to the Russian public. In a culture where few dared to question authority, their impertinence was reminiscent of the great prophets of the Old Testament.
    Paradoxically, a diagnosis of autism, had it existed five hundred years ago, would have undermined the Fools’ credibility as pious citizens. Awe and respect accrued to the Fools only because it was assumed that they had deliberately chosen this harsh and isolating way of life. In later centuries, some self-appointed Fools fell under suspicion of faking their piety, adopting certain behaviors only to advance their careers as beggars and con men. The resulting mistrust helped bring an end to the phenomenon of the Holy Fool. Gradually, the worship of and tolerance for such strange behaviors abated, and those who displayed such behaviors were once more neglected, if not