Otherwise minded

Many adults with 'neuroatypical behaviour' have been writing for a lay audience over the last few years: unfortunately, bipolar author Susanne Antonetta, a new collection of whose works has just been published, missed her moment. By Polly Morrice

The notion that society should accept, even prize, people whose brains are wired differently than the so-called norm arose about five years ago when some adults with Asperger's syndrome decided their off-kilter traits weren't disabilities but "neuroatypical behaviors". The neurodiversity movement soon attracted converts, at first among the ranks of those whose brain differences have been otherwise diagnosed (attention deficit disorder, Tourette's syndrome), but eventually among a lay audience: witness the interest in Temple Grandin's books, which detail the workings of her autistic mind. It would seem the perfect time, then, for Susanne Antonetta, a poet with bipolar disorder, to publish her meditation on neurodiversity. Unfortunately, with the muddled, self-referential essays of A Mind Apart: Journeys in a Neurodiverse World, she has missed her moment.

Antonetta, the author of a highly praised memoir, Body Toxic, conceives of neurodiversity as a mantle covering not just the usual neurological suspects but also schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder and "my Van Gogh's disease", as she calls her bipolarity. Ostensibly, she's seeking to explore "different kinds of minds," but Antonetta so often extols her own brain – speculating that being a "bipolar" enables her to love more deeply, react intensely to colors and, above all, think creatively – that the reader may assume she's writing "My Beautiful Mind".

The book's loosely related chapters, some previously published in small magazines, ruminate on topics like the nature of evil, evolution and the birth of human consciousness. Many follow a pattern, mixing the author's personal experience – email messages from an in-law who's a "many-head" (inhabited by multiple personalities) or excursions to view whales near her Bellingham, Washington, home – with reflections on her current reading and gnomic insights on the neuroatypical condition. ("Autistics, manic-depressives, schizophrenics can think musically. We have imagined ourselves as being not just God's image but an image that replicates shiny and alike as sequins on a gown.")

In this context, the few pieces intended as journalism, albeit subjective, feel welcome but aren't enlightening. When Antonetta heads for a peace conference at the Maharishi University, we anticipate that she'll debunk the event. And her encounter with an orangutan named Chantek, who signs hundreds of words and comprehends many more, makes her look oddly credulous. The claim by Chantek's trainer that "enculturation" has reshaped part of the orangutan's brain into that of a "neuroatypical human" doesn't send Antonetta to an animal behavior expert for a second opinion. Instead, she notes that "Chantek's color processing might resemble mine."

Even as Antonetta celebrates the "lusciousness" and value of neurodiverse minds, she fears that advances in "gene testing and gene correcting" may cause such brains to be absent in future generations.

She's not the first to fret that parents, given the option, might elect to forestall bipolar disorder and autism in their unborn offspring. However, Antonetta has her own ideas about which minds are worth saving.

Recently, some neurodiversity activists have drawn fire for claiming that parents who aggressively treat autistic children will undermine their identities. Antonetta distances herself from this controversy by stoutly defending her decision to use medication and therapy to manage her condition. Yet it doesn't seem to occur to her that many others, who can't afford these interventions, don't have the luxury of choice. "There exist severe, lowfunctioning autisms and other cases, like untreatable manic depressions," she declares, "that probably warrant the term tragedy. I do not address myself to those and would not have the hubris to declare anyone's life livable for them." Reducing an enormous moral question to one sentence may not be hubris, but it's arguably the Animal Farm approach to neurodiversity. Some minds might turn away.

Polly Morrice is a frequent contributor to the Book Review

©2006 The New York Times