This is not an argument. In fact, your entire post is devoid of any
argument that GG did not have it.
I must not have made
myself clear. Regarding Asperger's Syndrome, I have the deepest suspicion that
there is no It for anyone to have in the first place.
And if ever something called for
sarcasm, it's the questionable scourge of Asperger's Syndrome, certainly in
Glenn Gould's posthumous case.
I've been associated with families who
had to contend with authentic, full-blown autism, and I have more than a little
experience (working in homeless shelters) with a variety of other psychiatric
illnesses about which no one was in any doubt. That people with these disorders
face stigma on top of their suffering has never been an issue with me;
schizophrenia is no different to me from tuberculosis insofar as the way a
decent community is supposed to respond to it.
Asperger's Syndrome just doesn't rise
to the clear diagnostic level of these diseases. Every Gould clue that leads
some to an Asperger's diagnosis leads me to conclude simply that he was an
unusually quirky, inner-directed, self-indulgent guy, in ways my experience long
ago concluded is typical of people with big egos and the intellect and talent
that justifies them. That these are not high-class terms worthy of health
insurance reimbursement isn't my fault.
We might also profit by devoting our
lives to researching what songs the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles used when
he hid himself among women, but we're as likely to discover these answers as we
are to figure out what psychological problems dead people had. As to the
ultimate value of this kind of research and the kinds of intellectual giants who
pursue it -- I can't even complete this thought.
What's going on here with the late
Glenn Gould, Asperger's sufferer, is pure and simple pidgeonholing. "Ah!
Asperger's! Finally we understand Glenn Gould!"
I'm happy for the special kind of
people who finally understand Glenn Gould.
I never said Gould is some sort of
"perfect genius" or even that he was free of this or that neurosis --
he was goofy as the day is long. As are most highly intelligent and artistically
accomplished people I've ever known, and as I am, and as most interesting people
I've chosen or had to know in intimate detail. Anyone want to read about a
really screwy guy? "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers," a recent
biography of the late number theorist Paul Erdos. And we are infinitely richer
for his life, and would have been infinitely diminished if whatever was ailing
him had been cured early. (He also seems to have been a really nice, sweet guy,
as real facts about Gould regularly lead me to conclude he was in most
circumstances.)
Abusing over-the-counter medication is
hardly any kind of insightful or instructive smoking gun. I once read that most
of the population of Scotland seems to be habituated to abusing aspirin to a
kidney-threatening degree. We might all have had a wonderful extra few decades
of Gould if he'd had a bit of intervention and detox, but that makes him as
psychiatrically unique and interesting as half the people in line at the
pharmacy. The phenomenon of interest here isn't Gould's inner life, but that all
these pills and sprays are so freely, cheaply and uncritically available.
Everybody has aches, pains and spiritual maladies, real and imagined. How we
enable everybody and his Aunt Maude to deal with their symptoms rather than
causes for $5 three times a week is the only thing going on here.
I could be interested in some
psychological insight about Gould, if I had the slightest confidence that it had
the slightest bit of scientific objectivity and basis in fact. Gould's purported
Asperger's has neither. Asperger's all by itself is as dubious and evasive an
ailment as I've ever run across.
And the question of stature and
achievement compared to Gould's -- Maloney, Ostwald -- who will know these names
in twenty years? Of Newton's detractors, Goethe said: "Every whale has his
louse."
I'm sorry if I've said many of these
same things every six months; under ordinary circumstances I pride myself on
originality. But this dumb Asperger's thread won't go away, and I long ago ran
out of original ways to express my contempt for it.
Bob
At 8:36 AM -0400 5/3/01, Elmer
Elevator wrote:
Compare the stature and lasting achievements of those pointing
the Asperger's finger at GG with Gould's own stature and enduring
achievements. Small wonder such "experts" want to drag him
down to their miniscule size. They already know they're doomed to
obscurity, if not oblivion. And Gould will grow in fame and admiration
forever.
This is not an argument. In fact, your entire post is devoid of
any argument that GG did not have it.
You just seem insulted that someone might argue that he had any sort of
deficiency; it's almost defensive.
In the field of psychology, there are many branches. Some study
the chemistry of illnesses, some do clinical work, etc.. There is a
growing branch of historical psychology that looks at past figures and
analyses them based on what they know from memoirs, biographies, handwriting
samples, and so on. This study is not necessarily for the benefit of
furthering knowledge of psychology, but gives people insight into the minds
of great figures from the past. In fact, amongst musicians/composers,
among those who have been canonized as "great" there is a
phenomenal array of mental illnesses which are manifestly obvious even from
the layperson's standpoint (take Mozart or Schumann as the most obvious
examples).
I was surprised and disappointed that I was the only person this past
November to attend the giant joint conference held in Toronto. I was
there primarily as a member of the American Musicological Society, but the
Canadian Society of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres met
as well. Mr Conway mentioned the work of Timothy Maloney; well, his
work has come to fruition and he presented a paper called "Glenn Gould:
Eccentric or Autistic?" on 4 November at this meeting. It was an
hour and a half presentation with all of the arguments for and against it
(and it was the short version, by his account).
I went to the meeting fully prepared to argue against the label of
autism - indeed by modern standards it seems pejorative - but his
comprehensive/meticulous attention to detail left little argument. In
clearly defining and clarifying the crucial differences between
"mainstream autism" and Asperger's, the diagnosis seems
increasingly accurate. And, by taking the basic indicators from the
two main forms of diagnosis and comparing them to the historical evidence we
have from the many biographies (including Ostwald's, with which he has many
problems), he cites countless (and I mean that) examples of how GG fits into
just about every criterion.
Before anyone criticizes the possibility that GG did in fact have a
mild Asperger autism, I suggest you educate yourselves to exactly what it
is. One of the criteria is NOT "capuccino (sic) obsession"
and such sarcastic comments only hampers the promotion of understanding.
At 8:36 AM -0400 5/3/01, Elmer Elevator wrote:
This
is all about conformity. In GG's posthumous case, it's ghoulish. GG
wasn't sick. Efforts to portray him as sick are sick.
Having a mental condition should be no more embarrassing than having a
physical one; there is no violation of "the respect for the memory of
someone" to say that they had a stroke, why should it be that way with
another form of illness, mental or not. It's not like someone is
making the claim that he was a child-molester. I think that people who
are "insulted" by this diagnosis have a sad perspective on what
many mental illnesses are -- simply an illness, just like diabetes or
muscular dystrophy. Anyone who thinks GG had NO mental illness is
delusional as is clear from his abuse of prescription drugs for physical
illnesses he thought he had. In fact, this is explained very neatly by
Asperger's, but you will have to read the paper in order to find out more.
In any event, I encourage anyone who cares to broaden their
understanding of GG (perhaps at the expense of "destroying" your
image of "the perfect genius") to contact Mr Maloney at the
National Libary of Canada and read the ENTIRE manuscript of his paper.
You will find that the evidence for a positive diagnosis is very
persuasive. And, if you are really into psychology, you may find holes
in his argument that I did not see, which would be of interest to Mr
Maloney, who is an opened-minded fellow.
I find it amazing that in a list of people who care what kind of
arrowroot biscuits GG ate to be of absolutely pinnacle importance that
helpful, specific medical information would be shunned.
Finally, it may come as some surprise to people that there are MANY
people in the Western world who have not heard of GG. Comparing his
fame to that of psychologists is absolutely preposterous. There
are people who haven't heard of Elaine Pagels, but her research has been
revolutionary in the world of religious studies, and there are people who
don't know the names "Christoph Wolff" or "Joshua
Rifkin" even though their research has contributed to the world of
musicology in more fields than I can list comfortably. Historical
figures? Louis Pasteur? Rosa Parks? C'mon - most people don't
know a lot about a lot, so when we make comments like the following, we only
reveal our own lacunae in our knowledge:
At 8:36 AM -0400 5/3/01, Elmer Elevator wrote:
Again
I would remind people of the notorious trendiness of psychology and
psychiatry. Will Asperger's make the time cut? Will anyone even remember
it twenty years from now, except as an embarrassing
footnote?
I might add that there are just as many "trends" in
music. Once upon a time Meyerbeer and Telemann were the rage, but do
we hear them a lot now? Let's be more civil and objective about the
research that other people do. And, before we criticize it, let us
first read, assimilate, and inwardly digest it before making passionate
outcries of indignity and indecency. Sheesh. I am,
Respectfully yours,
Nemesio Valle, III