Book Review: NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman

Perhaps this is not so much of a book review as a life review as a result of this book's powerful affect on me. You decide.

I went to a school concert recently. As the teenagers leisurely tromped onstage, I idly scanned the crowd. My eyes stopped instinctively at one young man—then a second. Who knows, maybe everyone else in the audience was doing the same thing: something about these boys just caught the eye for some reason. Perhaps it's because it's such a strong part of our human nature to notice, categorize, and analyze why someone else is different.

 These young men who caught my attention looked ill at ease in their own skin. They weren’t chatting with their neighbors like most of the other kids. Without knowing anything of importance about them I could tell they were socially awkward. Geeks. Nerds. I could even armchair psychoanalyze these kids as being on the autism spectrum.

How could I tell? How can any of us sense, even from a distance, that someone is just “not quite right”—in other words, not like us? I’ve seen this same analyzing stare from strangers for many years as they watch my kid, who is also on the autism spectrum. I know it well. In a way, it bothers me—“Just let him be who he is without your personal judgments on what kind of a person he is or what kind of a parent I must be.” And yet I find myself at times, like at the school concert, doing the same thing.

Are we instinctively programmed to value human symmetry? Are our personal worlds not right until we homogenize everyone around us? It seems true. And yet there’s something so “ugly American” about the thought. Many of us would probably reject the idea on its surface—but then go right on staring.

Before I could write a review of NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman, I’ve had to digest it for the last month. I’ve had to reconsider everything I’ve thought about autism and do some soul-searching as I’ve examined our family history “on the spectrum.” This is a long book, a comprehensive history of autism and the development of the field of psychology in the 20th century, and although I think it's fascinating reading, I'm not sure if a casual reader would want to read in its entirety or would benefit from just reading excerpts.