Mark Haddon said he did not intend to write about autism, and had no specialist knowledge of psychology, but rather about an \"outsider\". It was the editors who put Asperger\'s on the jacket. Still, Haddon has accepted that Christopher would be diagnosed as autistic.
But dismissing him as not being genuine autism seems to me a narrow view of the condition. There\'s a reason why the diagnostic criteria have proven very difficult to pin down, it manifests in hugely different ways. And during that \"meltdown\" (really more an acute episode of social withdrawal) he is lucid, but also paralysed by emotions. The two go together, he can think clearly only as long as he ignores everything around him. And it\'s not simply a fondness for maths that would invite the diagnosis, it\'s also his lack of understanding for those around him, being prone to sensory overload and reacting badly to the world around not making sense.
And I can say that he is definitely not a psychopath/sociopath. He is very detached, but has emotional affect; the whole plot starts because he pursues justice for a dog he liked. The defining trait of sociopathy is that they have no emotional affect for others. He doesn\'t understand those around him, but he cares for them, or at least his idea what they are. It\'s myopic and stilted empathy, but it\'s there. A sociopath would not feel revulsion at being betrayed.
And yes, his parents are neglectful, and that has certainly left another layer of ill-development on top of the autism. But he is a very difficult child, and it\'s hard to distinguish cause and effect in this dysfunctional family. That\'s the core theme of the novel.
The reason this novel received such acclaim is that it puts the reader in the mind of someone with a very alien mentality. Even if it\'s inaccurate, that\'s a very important step to making people more accomodating for those who don\'t fit society\'s norms. If there are some who read this and assume autism always has these symptoms, that\'s a problem of under-representation and putting everyone in boxes. What we need is to make Christopher one character among many, and see him as a unique character and not some kind of generic representative.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
You lost me at \"But he is a very difficult child\". (You initially had me at \"he is not a sociopath\".) Saying the child is responsible for the parents\' behavior seems so backwards, though. But yes, let him be one among many and his Hollywood Autism might seem more genuine.
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Not Autism
This is a book about child abuse, where the abusers never get their comeupance. Christopher – well, maybe Haddon though he wrote an autistic character, I don't know. The fact is he is written more as a psychopath.
One clue that he is not autistic is on the first page, where he supposedly has a meltdown where he stims, but he is totally lucid the whole time. His narration makes it sound as though he is in control the whole time, which indicates that he is not having a meltdown, but is just acting.
You might have thought it was a social commentary on how people get misdiagnosed because psychologists believe in stereotypes. Maybe if Christopher hadn't been so fond of maths no one would have mislabelled him as autistic. Maybe someone would have realized that his antisocial behaviour was due to childhood abuse and neglect at the hands of his clearly mentally ill mother, and later his father who shows no signs of mental illness himself.
Or perhaps it could be interpreted as sociopathy running in the family, whether genetic or not, from the father to the son. But since the author and publisher insist that it's autism, it is just a book further stigmatizing autistic people while pretending to help.