Lynn on Autism

Lynn put up an interesting post a couple of days ago on Autism: The astrological connection. Autism is back in the news because of the death of John Travolta’s son Jett. Here is an extract from her post:

“I have long felt that there is a Uranian component to the autism spectrum of disorders. Astrological Uranus rules technology and all things geeky - it is the planet of innovation, of invention, of reason and new ways of thinking. It is Uranus which opens the doorway to "Eureka" type experiences, that seem to come from nowhere in a blinding flash of insight. Uranus is not concerned with emotion - it remains detached and focused on order.

The astonishing rise of the prevalence of autism since the early 1990s suggests a link to the Uranus-Neptune conjunction that began in 1991 and continued through 1994. The combination of Uranus to Neptune opened all kinds of doorways and dissolved the boundaries of reason and old paradigms of thinking. The children that were born during this period carry this archetype within them, and they are a new breed entirely. It is during this time that the concept of the "Indigo Children" began, as it was apparent that these new children were very different than the generations that preceded them, and it is in these children that we see the dramatic increase in autism rates.

But the astrological connection actually goes further and is closely tied to the Saturn/Uranus cycle. Saturn rules order and structure and Uranus is the rebel and radical influence that destroys the status quo, so the cycle of Saturn and Uranus is often found during periods of radical change. Many of the baby boomers who were active during the cultural upheaval of the 1960s have Saturn squared to Uranus in their charts. Autism was first described in 1910 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugene Bleuler as he was defining symptoms of schizophrenia. At the time, Saturn in Aries was exactly square to Uranus in Capricorn.

The term "autism" was first used in its modern sense in 1943 by a child psychiatrist named Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins Institute, and one year later by Hans Asperger in Vienna. During this time Saturn and Uranus had both just entered and conjoined in Gemini, the sign that rules communication and the mental process.

Despite this early discovery of the autism phenomenon, it wasn't until 1985-1987 that the autism rate began to increase dramatically. During this time, Saturn and Uranus were conjunct in Sagittarius and both planets were opposed by Chiron, the wounded healer, which was in Gemini at the time.

Ever since the conjunction of Uranus and Neptune in the early 1990s Uranus and Aquarius has been very active astrologically. Uranus entered its own sign of Aquarius in 1995, marking the explosion of the technological revolution. Neptune followed shortly thereafter, entering Aquarius (ruled by Uranus) in 1999 and blurring the boundaries (Neptune) between technology and reality in an explosion of virtual reality software and games such as SimWorld in which participants create an online world of their own.

Wired Magazine has a fascinating article about "The Geek Syndrome" postulating that what we call Aspergers is closely tied to the Geek personality found in Silicon Valley, home to one of the fastest increasing rates of autism spectrum diagnoses, and perhaps due to the self-selection of geeks who marry other geeks which intensifies the geeky qualities in their offspring."

Lynn’s article also includes a link to an Autism Quotient test (by a cousin of Ali G, of all people). I don’t personally know anyone I’d consider autistic, but I’ve read a very good novel about it, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, written entirely from the point of view of a kid with Asperger's. If anything, I seem to encounter the opposite: people who are very “right-brained”, very connected to others, artistically talented and hopelessly disorganised and useless at Maths! I don’t know if there is a name for it, but such people can have a hard time in the education system. I know one young man like this, preternaturally perceptive about adults from a young age, who now cares for adults with mental disabilities. He says it’s not like work. But his formal education was a disaster, even though he’s highly intelligent. I know a 7 year old boy like this who is starting to receive the sharp end of the education system. There is no lack of intelligence in these people, in fact they are often gifted and far more human than any number of computer nerds. But the education system doesn’t seem to recognise them.

I’d say that if anything the education system is geared towards the aspergic/autistic end of the spectrum. As a teenager, when your personality is at a formative age, what society judges you by is your ability to memorise facts that do not relate directly to your life and your ability to think abstractly. And it wants you to do this intensively. Society doesn’t care too much if you are no good at relating to others. It’s those grades that matter, and this pressure has only increased in recent decades. It is, of course, barking mad. But it suits our competitive, technological society if people are a bit autistic. It means you can become very skilled in abstract tasks like computer-programming. No wonder there has been a rise in autism. It is the extreme end of what is needed more generally. It is the same, in principle, to people developing white skins who moved to colder climates, or Southern Europeans developing a tolerance to alcohol. Roll on artificial intelligence I say, and let the machines do that kind of thinking for us!

Up to the age of 18 I was a great academic performer. And then something switched off in me, and when I got to university I couldn’t apply myself any more, however hard I tried. I scraped through with a 3rd. But that inability to study was the product of something healthy in me, and it has since taken me decades to unlearn how I was in my teens. With natal Mercury in Aquarius opposite Uranus, you could say my mind has a great potential for being autistic! Maybe it was the square to watery Neptune-Node in Scorpio that said hang on, no more.

Lynn links autism to Saturn-Uranus. I first began to experience the pressure to study hard at a rather harsh Catholic school when I was 6, when Saturn and Uranus were starting to oppose each other on my Mercury-ruled Asc. When I stopped being able to study in the summer/autumn of 1976, Saturn was square to Uranus, with both hard-aspecting my Mercury. It was quite a sudden event (Uranus) that inhibited my ability to apply (Saturn) my mind (Mercury).

So there is my take on it: modern society needs you to be a bit autistic. And Saturn-Uranus reflects this, and it can take you into it, and it can also help you bust out of it.

What I'm damning here is not autism, but an education system that is designed to produce some of its less desirable characteristics. And I'm sure a bit of it can help, for example, if you need to shut out the world sometimes and ‘obsessively’ create something. It would seem to me to be a problem only if you haven’t got at least a basic awareness of the emotions of others and how to respond appropriately. But there again, I don’t actually know anyone with the syndrome. All I know are the tendencies in that direction that modern society seems to need of us.