Harmonious Traits of the autistic personality type
Sometimes we also use the word “atmosphere” for what people of the autistic type are able to create. Out of an enormous number of small things we never notice, they will put together something that makes us feel good too. During a religious service, for instance, there are people nobody notices, and yet it is thanks to them that the service turns into magic. Here they lit a candle, there they carried something in, here they lent a hand, there they walked past with a little cup. Their actions are all but invisible in the general flow of the process, and yet it is precisely these actions that create a particular atmosphere and the very environment in which the whole thing unfolds. People of the autistic type are especially good at this, because their attention to small things is extremely high.
For some people programming is a set of squiggles — and then there are people of the autistic personality type who are able to write a program several hundred thousand lines long without a single error. And all of it thanks to attention to small things.
Autistic people are very sensitive to external signals, both their own and other people's. The latter spills over into caring about the immediate needs of others — that very “atmosphere” mentioned above. Through their sensitivity to sensations they pick up the signals of anyone at all, and so they have a very good feel for needs. As a colleague at work, as someone close to you or as the person you are talking with, they can take the discomfort out of your life. Autistic people, by the way, latch on to the mood of the person in front of them very easily — and afterwards have a hard time disconnecting from it.
At the same time they have a fairly free, non-stereotyped view of life, because a stereotype is already a “gestalt”, a fixed template — and that is something an autistic personality cannot build. Thanks to this they can sometimes arrive at a completely new, unpredictable perspective.
They are pragmatists, and their pragmatism is taken to the level of an art. Every other personality type has its “bouts of pragmatism”, when we work out all sorts of “principles”. But people with a violated right to Be — they are the real pragmatists, because everything is thought through down to the last detail.
They are very, very good at completing a structure, when every small thing has been thought through. They sense the deviations and the disruptions of a large system far earlier than other personality types do — earlier than the point at which large-scale signs appear and the system starts to fall apart.
And they also sense falseness and insincerity very easily.
Conflict traits of the autistic personality type
People of the autistic personality type often drop out of the world, withdraw from social life, do not put themselves forward and are frequently inconspicuous socially.
A tendency toward symbiosis
What is conflict-laden here is the merging and the failure to draw a line between themselves and others, the tendency toward symbiosis. Although people of the autistic type believe that they do not exist, they are very good at sensing both themselves and other people, literally looking into the soul. The difference is that the moment they look into the soul, they stop separating themselves from the external object. So much so that they begin to confuse the signals: are they coming from the other person right now, or from me? That is, they perceive it all as a single whole.
And what follows depends on how educated the person is: he attributes everything either to himself or to the external object, including his own feelings, emotions, inner experiences and sensations. This shows itself in the Observer knowing what we feel — and knowing it better than we do. We have not yet become aware of our own sensations, but the Observer already knows them and can tell you about them. At the same time the Observer starts attributing his own sensations to the object at the level of feelings, which means there will be a great deal of transference and a great deal of ascribing what is his to you.
A tendency toward the truth
Another conflict element is the tendency toward the truth. The autistic personality type takes truth as a pure fact, without any appraisal whatsoever. As a consequence of the violated right to Be, they want to be truthful themselves and demand the same of others. But for everyone else the truth is criticism, and criticism causes pain. People of the autistic and the psychopathic types tell you “the truth to your face” with no aim of hurting us.
Imposing silence
Conflict-laden and disharmonious, too, is the imposing of silence: the demand to turn the sound down, to make things less bright, so as to “calm” the external receptors and reduce the number of incoming signals. They start actively demanding this not only of themselves but of everyone around them, either training them into it or running away. This provokes conflict.
Attention to small things and violation of the hierarchy
The same goes for excessive attention to small things. From the autistic person's point of view there is no such thing as excessive attention to small things, because they are not small things at all. By controlling the small things and trying to “gestalt” the environment, the Observer very easily violates the hierarchy. From our point of view, he might kill an old woman over ten kopecks. For him a person close to him and a flowerpot on the windowsill are absolutely equal and equally important. If the pot is suffering, he will think nothing of kicking a person, even one who stands higher in the hierarchy.
Freedom and one's own needs
Disharmonious, too, is the way they assert their right to freedom and to the satisfaction of their bodily needs. The theme of their own comfort is the base, the key — and in a very physical form at that:
“If I am doing something and I enjoy it, the rest of the world can wait.”
In the classic version, people of the autistic type react very badly to an abrupt change of environment. If a person at work is doing something according to a plan he has thought up for himself, and the boss comes running in and changes the tasks, then the autistic person “hangs”. Instead of switching over and starting on something else, there is a long pause, during which the person retreats entirely into experiencing his own comfort. He is not thinking about work at all at that moment, because now the whole world has to be tested all over again and a new system invented — which again leads to conflict.
Stopping such a person, or bringing him out of that state, will be hard, because any attempt to do so runs into serious aggression in defence of his bodily comfort. “You have just deprived me of external reality, so leave me my comfort! I have the right to sit here and zone out!”
The way they drink alcohol
Autistic people drink alcohol solely for the physical sensations. If it gives them a particular state at the level of sensations that they like and that brings them satisfaction, they will drink. If they do not like it, they will not drink at all.
While the rest of us may drink different amounts, people of the autistic type always have a notion of a precise measure: “until I reach this particular state”. So do what you like — if it is four mugs of beer, then it will always be four mugs of beer, in order to reach exactly that state. And there is no talking them into less, because it would make no sense (the state would not be reached). As soon as the state has been reached, the rate of drinking drops sharply. After that there can only be maintenance.
Bodily signs
A woman of the autistic type is usually very petite and keeps a certain childlike quality even in her face.
With a man it is more complicated, since the underlying male gender principle is there regardless of personality type. Men of this type are usually very large physically and quite conspicuous. And yet this “wardrobe” goes unnoticed in the corner. The person is fairly big in body, but people keep forgetting about him, keep not noticing him.
Clothes: soft, loose in shape, comfortable against the body. Colours — natural, muted. There are practically no bright elements in their clothing.
Fears and manipulations
To influence autistic people you need to know their fears and to recognise their main manipulations. They are afraid of unfreedom, of physical pain, of injustice. Most of all they are afraid of deception and of restrictions.
The main roles and manipulations
“I don't trust you, you have lost my trust.” You can hear this from an autistic person quite often.
“Without me everything will fall apart, I am irreplaceable.” Since they know the value of every small thing, and know how everything changes because of every small thing, they understand that if you remove “such a small thing as me” right now, everything will collapse.
Their favourite game of all: “Don't shout, I have a good memory for facts.” But this is very close to the truth. Practically nobody except the autistic type is able to establish and name facts (what happened, when, who was present, what the weather was like and so on). So most of the time we can trust autistic people on this. But sometimes they make use of it, and then the manipulation begins.
