Autism and the God Connection by William Stillman

I heard the last two minutes of an NPR show featuring the author, and decided to check out his book.

Stillman is not a good writer. As Twain noticed, there’s a bit of difference between the “lightening” and the “lightening bug,” and Stillman's editor, if he had one, was asleep at the switch.

The title is grossly misleading. Stillman doesn’t write much about God, and even when he does he much prefers to say “Higher Power.” He does, however, write a lot about ghosts, angels, dreams, and “Spirit.” The book is chock-a-block with anecdotes of supernatural occurrences surrounding people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome (of which he is one).

From these incidents he concludes that mystical experiences are to be expected (though not always found, he admits) around autistic people, who ought to be reverenced as spiritual guides for the rest of us.

There is only one thing in the book I’d consider worth the effort to read, and I can save you the time of finding the book.

He believes that mental retardation and insanity are no more common among the autistic than among the rest of us, and that most of the autistic are normally intelligent and emotional people imprisoned in some sensory overload or inability to communicate. My experience with Asperger’s people and with autistic people via the AUSome Society suggests that he is correct.

Reread my last paragraph and skip the book.