Autistic?Moi?

OK, so admittedly, it was the train spotting thing that got me going in the first place. When Bill Bryson met up with a train spotter, as related in his book, “Notes from a Small Island” [Transworld, 1995, ISBN 9780552996006], my suspicions were immediately raised and I guessed just what was coming over the next few pages.

Bill got trapped in transit with his train spotter on a train in North Wales and short of wandering off to the toilet to hide, trying to find the non-existent buffet car or simply telling the bloke to ---- off, [as he himself put it], he was stymied until one or other of them got off.

Bill’s parting shot was that he had read a newspaper article in which a speaker at the British Psychological Society had described train spotting as a form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome. An expert from the Medical Research Council’s Cognitive Development Unit had apparently claimed that train spotters and others who are obsessive about collecting items of trivia, may be suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome, which is widely recognised as being a psychological condition at the milder end of the autistic spectrum.

The North Wales encounter took place between an erudite writer who decided that his new acquaintance was one sandwich short of a picnic and a man with characteristics associated with classic Asperger’s Syndrome, namely an obsession with detail in a distinct area of interest and more particularly an inability to recognise when his target audience had had enough of listening to him going on about trains. 

My early interest in the same topic, no doubt encouraged by access to the original series of the Reverend W. Audrey’s Thomas the Tank Engine books, has provided me with a rewarding life-long hobby, in which the recording of numbers is but one facet. I have been entertained by some splendid railway literature, indulged for a time in railway modelling, travelled extensively in many countries in relative comfort by rail, appreciated the subtlety of unfolding landscapes, gasped at some wondrous scenery from my passing window, admired architectural masterpieces fairly close up, found fascination in the construction of railway infrastructure and its regional variations, marvelled at engineering feats, appreciated the aesthetics of various locomotive designs, met interesting people to chat to [honestly], enjoyed the togetherness of being part of a club of like-minded souls, revelled in the company of friends who share my passion and been mesmerised by the beating heart of the steam engine, fighting its way up-hill through stunning surroundings to Ais Gill summit on the Settle to Carlisle route with a heavy load.

I have also collected locomotive numbers. It is difficult to talk about individual steam engines without making reference to their numbers. Railwaymen have to do the same thing on a daily basis, otherwise particular engines could not be given specific tasks. There has to be a system which involves numeracy. So it is for rail fans. Numbers are how we tell them apart, in addition to the obvious variations in design of the different locomotive classes. It is the obvious way to do it. In the past, big important engines also received names, plus they were painted red or green rather than black to communicate more clearly their place at the top of the pulling-power hierarchy.

Surely, being interested in all this does not mean you are suffering from a psychological condition? Bill Bryson’s travelling companion was not suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome because he was interested in trains, but because he bored him to death in a one-way “conversation.” He gave him a relentless ear-bashing and was unable to pick up on the signs that his new friend was turned off by this monologue within seconds of its having begun.

With over 400 psychological conditions to go round, according to the American Psychiatrists Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [Fourth Edition, A.P.A., 2000, ISBN 9780890420249], there is a fair chance that quite a lot of us, railway enthusiasts or not, have symptoms of some of them, even if they are not prevalent enough, in terms of frequency of occurrence or over the necessary range of recognisable behaviour traits, to tip the balance sufficiently for us to become labelled as belonging to one identified and specified group of sufferers or another.

I worked closely with young people with autism for over six years and on the whole I found them to be delightful and benign but they generally showed little disinterest in making relationships with each other. As a caring adult, it was eventually possible to gain their trust. Many were amusing and most were pleasant company. At the same time, their condition was, for the majority, patently very real and to varying degrees was an enormous impediment to their progress over a whole range of life skills and competencies.

The main problem appeared to me to be that it was a life sentence and that significant change was unlikely. Its severity varied enormously and in those with more marked symptoms, any ability to adapt their behaviour to manage their autism sufficiently to allow progress in any measured or mainstream educational sense was dramatically impaired. In fact, it often seemed to be a complete non-starter.

The blanket accusation of affliction aimed at train spotters niggled me a bit because it seemed a sloppy way to describe vast numbers of disparate people and because it begged more questions than it answered. “Intense interest in something is not sufficient reason to label people as suffering from this or any other disorder, though I suppose the way they relate their passion to others might be grounds for concern,” was how I put it in my book, “Train Spotters.” [M. Priestley, Countyvise, 2010 ISBN 9781906823542, p.166]

The American reference book goes on to define when interests becomes obsessions, namely, when they are “compulsions that are severe enough to become time consuming, ie. they take up more than one hour a day, or cause marked distress or significant impairment” [2000, p.456/7]. That still seems like a pretty grey area to me. There is a massive difference between the first part of the claim, which I would have to declare myself guilty of, and the second, which I would confidently claim is not really me. With so many psychological conditions to go round, the law of averages would suggest that it is likely that some rail buffs are indeed so afflicted, but it is another leap of faith altogether to suggest that one equals the other.

I have to admit to having found some comfort in making collections - in the past of train numbers and more recently in some of the paperwork of the railway companies, in the form of advertising posters, carriage prints and paintings. They have an artistic merit, as well as being significant historical documents and indicators of cultural change.

I recognise that my attraction to order, predictability, consistency and symmetry puts me right in the frame for some commentators about the condition. I think that this is the extent of my obsessive behaviour, however, and if we are to include collectors of all descriptions then we would certainly have an extra avalanche of sufferers of Asperger’s Syndrome to deal with. Not just stamp collectors or those possessing an array of porcelain figures, china tea pots or silverware, but geologists, fossil hunters – in fact, hunters in general with their animal remains traditionally on show in cabinets or plastered to the wall; modellers, gardeners of all description from roses to cacti, book worms with extensive libraries, those with voluminous wardrobes containing far more clothes or jewellery than they could ever actually need to keep warm or look smart in, vintage car enthusiasts and bird watchers with tick lists of the species they have identified - all disabled by a psychological condition that they did not know they had.

In fact, anybody with any interest at all, whose enthusiasm leads them towards acquisition, is presumably tainted, especially if they derive some comfort from the assembly of paraphernalia. How is the pleasure gained to be measured? Is the nature of the pleasure only autistic if it involves classification or recognises numerical coincidences, shows a preference for sequences or a liking for complete sets of items? I would have to admit this fits me to a tee.

“Classing” of locomotives - the recording as seen of each one in a set or type - was one of the main aims of the hobby when I was younger and I definitely got a buzz out of it. I remember standing on Newton Abbott station early in the 1970’s to welcome in D1028 Western Hussar, the last one I “needed” to tick off all of that class, as clearly as if it was yesterday. I was elated, probably punching the air and letting out a whoop of delight, which may well have attracted some curious looks from the passengers on board as the train pulled up in the platform – and all that was just for a diesel! I then underlined it carefully in red biro with a ruler to register the completion of that particular sequence. What must it have been like for steam in the 60’s, when I was an impressionable school boy? At the time, it was the nearest thing to heaven for me.

To continue the theme to the present day, I also possess all 24 of C. Hamilton Ellis’s “Travel in….” series of 1950’s carriage prints, cosily enclosed in archival quality, see-through, display envelopes, which I get out from my art folio carrying case at the drop of a hat to show to anyone who shows the remotest flicker of interest in seeing them. If I accept that this is an indicator of my being an Asperger’s sufferer, I would probably respond by insisting that that is probably the only one of the symptoms I’ve got. But would that alone be enough to seal it for me? Surely not?

If I have Asperger’s Syndrome, then so does a very significant proportion of the population. I think it is unlikely. It would only be based on one criterion, after all. However, the idea that I might be more closely aligned than I had previously thought to the people I started working with when I was 56, after 34 years as a classroom teacher in mainstream comprehensive schools, certainly provided me with another angle with which to investigate the behaviour of my new students. I was obviously more like them than I had previously thought.

So what is the point I am trying to make here? One engrossing aspect to all this is that some train folk probably do have manifestations of the recognisable characteristics of these various conditions, but on the psychologists own reckoning, it is the whole cocktail that has to be present to acquire the condition. Human individuality blurs the clear-cut distinctions and casts doubt on the labels that some would like to confer in their strenuous efforts to categorise people.

I suppose my argument is that one ticked box is not enough for a diagnosis, but there must be millions of folk with odd ticks here and there to emphasise not only that autism is a continuum, but that there must be a very wide transitional zone straddling the ultimate dividing line between autism and normality [which the experts prefer to call neuro-typical behaviour].

My second point is really the answer to the question, “So what?” Well, it is obviously important to many people because accurate diagnosis is the prerequisite for allocating scarce and necessary resources to provide help for those who need it. In most cases of autism that I have seen, it is blatantly obvious where this is a “must.” For the rest of us, living full lives and hopefully in control of our own destiny but maybe carrying a few idiosyncratic behaviour traits, all this simply adds to the richness of human existence. It does not affect our day to day lives, does not impede our progress in our chosen fields and should certainly be regarded with tolerance and maybe with some fascination by those who are so bland that they are apparently free from all accusations of variation from the norm.

[Based on an article that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]