I had an email from Jenn Watzke, a senior at Northshore High School in Slidell, Louisiana. She wanted to ask me about Savant Syndrome so I agreed to be interviewed. Here’s our interview:

JENN WATZKE:
1. Along with Autism, were you born with Savant Syndrome?

DONNA WILLIAMS:
I was probably born with brain injury. I understand my mother took Quinine twice which was (mistakenly) thought to cause abortion in the days they were illegal here and apparently causes nervous system damage. She was also an alcoholic and my father’s mother was the offspring of two first cousin marriages (her grandfathers were brothers, her grandmothers were mother and daughter) and there is ADHD, dyslexia, bipolar and others on the autism spectrum in that family. Around 30% of those on his mother’s side are also dancers, musicians, writers, artists, including an award winning artist, a musician in the Philharmonic, a champion dancer and a champion speed skater, so along with the inbreeding and deficits there were obviously some exceptional abilities happening there too. Both of my parents were left handers as is one of my two brothers. I was mixed. So that may contribute. So given my theory is that Savant Syndrome traditionally occurred in those with significant deficits, I’d say I was born with the predisposition to both extreme abilities and disabilities.

Jenn, the whole Savant thing has become ‘social currency’, meaning its one more way people are using to set themselves apart, be ‘special’ and sell their public speaking, their books, their films, their art etc.

‘Savant’ means ‘knowing’ and originally came from ‘Idiot-Savant’ which meant one had extremely exceptional skills combined with ‘mental retardation’. So in the 90s to be an ‘Idiot-Savant’ one had to not only be ‘gifted’/’genius’ but also be ‘mentally retarded’ which meant having an IQ score of under 70.

My IQ score at age 26 was under 70, placing me as ‘mildly mentally retarded’, after I already had a post graduate degree in Sociology and a degree in Linguistics. The score was comprised of exceptional skills in pattern recall and memorisation together with significant disabilities in processing language in long typed strings (a novel) and interpreting pictures or even recognising them coming together. So half my abilities were the highest possible score, others were exceptionally low, with the over all result being just under 70.

At that point I had exceptional memory skills and had been a composer since my teens when I began to play piano instantly without ever learning and began to prolifically compose. I also already had four languages: English, Italian, German, French, all self taught with the German in three months and the French within a week and had written my first book in 4 weeks (which became an international bestseller and have 10 published books now). About a year later I became a painter and a few years later a sculptor in the same ways. At the same time it can be extremely difficult for me to acquire a skill like using a microwave or an alarm clock, run a bath, cook food without fire danger.

Some people have referred to me as a Polymath but because my skills were all automatic and appeared without any overt or conscious training they are deemed ‘Savant’

At first the term ‘Savants’ tended to mean ‘mathematical savants’, ‘calendar calculators’, ‘musical savants’ who could play anything by ear (and many blind people can). But as those like Stephen Wiltshire became famous as ‘Autistic Savants’ the term shifted to meaning ‘those who were prodigies and had shown their skills since early childhood’. This meant those with such severe anxiety disorders or so emotionally or behaviourally disturbed or from homes so abusive self expression could be dangerous, were now not considered ‘true Savants’ as they hadn’t demonstrated themselves as child prodigies.

Although most people with autism do not have ‘Savant’ skills (only around 10% of those with autism are deemed to have Savant skills) , people came to associate autism with ‘exceptional skills’ and this is deeply annoying to many families who find the first question they’re asked is ‘oh, autism, well what’s his/her exceptional skills?’.

The term ‘Autistic Savant’ shifted from ‘child prodigy’ to simply ‘gifted’. Before long those like Temple Grandin who has several PhD’s, exceptionally high IQ and high level engineering ability with cattle chute design, earned inclusion as an ‘Autistic Savant’. Others with autism who were also talented, even ‘gifted’ felt they too had ‘Savant’ abilities. So the term ‘Savant’ took on a more ‘cultural’ meaning far removed from its original diagnostic description.

JENN WATZKE:
2. What do you believe causes Savant Syndrome?

DONNA WILLIAMS:
The term ‘Savant Syndrome’ has become so trendy, used so loosely, that pretty much anyone with any high level ability can now lay claim to it, especially if they have a diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum. So I will only comment what I believe caused my exceptional abilities (in the context of my far from exceptional dis-abilities). In fact I’d say that being meaning blind and struggling to process simultaneous self and other or to be able to feel and take action or retain the meaning of something once not touching it, I’d say that learning to run a bath by age 40 was my most exceptional ability, so you see, its really all relative. But I digress for you are asking about standardly recognised/celebrated ‘talents’

My instant abilities in arts stem from my disabilities. I grew up meaning deaf, meaning blind, so I came to see MUSICALLY and actions, feelings automatically translated mentally into music and my fingers would move on the air since I was about 3, playing what I later found were musical intervals on the piano. Because I couldn’t see bodies or faces as a whole, I became acutely tuned into movement.

I couldn’t hold a simultaneous sense of self and other so I gained awareness of the feel of a person, their ‘music of beingness’ by how they ‘sat in their bodies’, and through this I was intuitively already a sculptor, just needing to put my hands onto clay to begin to speak that through my hands. My painting is done sculpturally, so I capture movement and how it speaks.

My abilities for languages comes from being echolalic and I’m generally able to sing and speak in any language within a millisecond of the speaker so I can sound as if I am speaking as them almost in the same time they speak. My ability to retain lengthy vocabulary comes from having an encyclopedic mind for lists.

Some parts of my mind also have the inability to forget movement which is part of a filtering problem but also related to the exceptional ability to map movement in space as part of meaning blindness. What this means is an exceptional ‘serial memory’ for movement, so a bit like a movie version of a photographic memory, but not for visual detail, but for all movements in space along a sequence.

For example there was someone here yesterday and I could replay the entire sequence of everything they did from arrival to departure and I’ll be able to replay that in 20 years because I can take the same type of memories from 20 years ago and tell them now to those who were present. Yet I’m NOT a visual thinker, I really struggle to put visuals to incoming language or come up with any cohesive, fluent visual thinking, yet I can replay anything spatially. I’m also faceblind so can meet someone and have no idea I’ve met them but as soon as they say who they are or I recognise their voice or movements I can replay for them everything they did last time I met them. So for me, these skills are the pay off for deficits.

I also sense people, I map their systems, its part of being an exceptional logical thinker and also lacking all the social pragmatics so I tune into their systems, how those systems come together to present as a person. This means I cut straight past the cladding. I think this came from being meaning deaf, face blind and unable to see people’s faces, bodies as a whole or process actions in visual context. So I developed an ability to empathise, to FEEL people, but as a systematician.

JENN WATZKE:
3. What effects has the condition had on you?

DONNA WILLIAMS:
My skills have given me alternative ways to navigate the world but also isolate me. Most people are not highly sensing, they don’t see musically, they don’t have the inability to forget movement, they don’t accumulate encyclopedic list knowledge and sound like a walking encyclopedia on anything they’ve gathered information on. So I feel naturally like a spy and rather alien to the human race, yet in other ways more aware of it because of these skills. Yet as someone with not just autism but also agnosias and Disocciative Identity Disorder my 9 different ‘selves’ have different ‘savant’ abilities. So two are sculptors but very different kinds. Three have been painters, all differently. Five have been composers, all differently. One of the 9 acquires the foreign languages but only two of the 9 use them.

JENN WATZKE:
5. What skill of yours is your favorite?

DONNA WILLIAMS:
That’s like saying do you prefer to breathe or sleep?

JENN WATZKE:
6. How do people react to your condition?

DONNA WILLIAMS:
I was terrified to show my art skills or typing for many years. I hated jolting my own conscious awareness of my own existence (Exposure Anxiety). I have come to terms with the morbid fascination and appreciation of others though I don’t cope well with being exceptional, I prefer to see myself as equal, just I have deficits and pay offs, no more, no less. I don’t want to be a freak show or a show piece, a trophy, a fascination. My most exceptional work should be in being alive, retaining my humanness and standing up for my equality internally in my own world and externally in the world too.

Warmly,

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.

http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com