In 1951, Franz Polgar a Hungarian born psychologist, mind reader, and hypnotist was booked for a single night’s performance in a town called Forest, Mississippi. Polgar was staying at the home of one of Forest’s wealthiest families, the Tripletts.
Polgar’s act had been mesmerising audiences in American towns for several years, but according to local legend, that night it was his turn to be mesmerised when he met the Triplett’s older son, Donald. Eighteen-year-old Donald appeared unusually distant, uninterested in conversation, and awkward in his movements. However, Donald had a few amazing abilities of his own, including a faultless ability to name musical notes as they were played on a piano and at multiplying numbers in his head. Polgar allegedly asked him to multiply “87 times 23” and Donald, with his eyes closed and without hesitation, correctly answered “2,001”.
The history of our understanding of autism is inextricably linked to the childhood of Donald Gray Triplett. Donald was born in Forest, a small city in central Mississippi on 8th September 1933, to Mary a high school English teacher whose family owned the local bank, and Beamon, a lawyer who had been educated at Yale Law School.
According to his father, from early childhood, Donald was “happiest when he was alone, drawing into a shell and living within himself – oblivious to everything around him”. It was also a world that had its own logic and unique use of the English language. Donald did not respond to other people, including other children, and was indifferent to demonstrations of caring and emotion, even those from his mother.
What he did have was a need to demonstrate repetitive behaviours, which included spinning objects and repeating mysterious phrases. If he was prevented from conducting his numerous rituals, he threw severe temper tantrums. In addition to his unusual behaviours, he also demonstrated significant abilities in certain areas, especially with numbers.
At two-and-a-half, he repeated with complete accuracy and perfect pitch, carols he had heard his mother sing only once. He was renowned for his phenomenal memory, on one occasion resetting in order, a set of beads his father had randomly laced onto a string.
At that time, it was common for children with what were considered serious mental and emotional issues, to be institutionalised and following doctor’s advice, in August 1937 at the age of just four, Donald’s parents sent him to a state-run children’s facility. His parents soon regretted this decision and after about a year brought him home, taking him instead to see psychiatrist Leo Kanner.
Dr. Kanner founded the first child psychiatry clinic in the United States at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, Baltimore. At first, Kanner was puzzled by Don’s symptoms and was initially unable to diagnose his condition. Kanner saw Triplett several more times and by 1943 had seen 10 similar cases in children. That year, he published a paper, “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact” that described case studies of 11 children; he said it “illustrated a condition that differed markedly and uniquely from anything reported so far in the annals of psychology”. He described the basic symptoms of the disorder, which would later become known as autism. In this paper, Donald was referred to as Case 1, Donald T.
With Donald as his first case, Kanner defined a condition that included obsessive repetitive behaviours, “excellent rote memory” and an inability to relate “in the ordinary way”, to other people. He called this form of autism “rare” but added that it was “probably more frequent than is indicated by the paucity of observed cases”. Kanner’s paper, along with the copious notes provided by Beamon Triplett describing his son’s behaviours, became the foundation of what is known today as autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
When he was nine, at Kanner’s suggestion, Donald went to live on a farm about 10 miles from his family’s home. The couple who owned the farm had no children of their own and during his four years there they engaged Donald in farm work, where his appetite for counting and measuring was put to good use digging wells and counting the rows of corn as he ploughed.
After four years Donald returned home. He went on to graduate from high school - where his condition was largely accepted - and then college, where he studied French and maths, during which time he also sang in a Capella choir and joined a fraternity.
Following graduation, he returned to his parents’ home, becoming a bookkeeper at the bank founded by his grandfather and majority owned by his family – where he worked for 65 years.
Donald’s success was achieved despite his obsessions and behaviours. He always spoke mechanically and struggled to hold a conversation but in spite of this, he embarked on a life that would have seemed unimaginable as a neurodiverse child brought up in the mid-20th century. In his 20s and 30s, he learned how to drive and drove his own Cadillac. He also managed to take holidays by himself, travelling across the US and to several countries around the world.
IMAGE: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35350880
Donald’s life and remarkable self-sufficiency was largely unknown until it became a national story following an article in The Atlantic in 2010, written by John Donvan and Caren Zucker. This then led to their book, “In a Different Key: The Story of Autism,” which was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and the subject of a documentary aired on PBS.
Mr. Donvan and Ms. Zucker drew several conclusions from Donald’s story, not only that his family’s wealth and social status was fundamental to him securing a decent life, but also the importance of the attitude, support, and protection of the people in Forest, his hometown. The community of Forest, they wrote for the BBC magazine in 2016, “made a probably unconscious but clear decision in how they were going to treat this strange boy, then man, who lived among them.” “They decided, in short, to accept him”. From this community of approximately 3,000 people, Donald gained many friends, including in retirement, a group of men who joined him for coffee every morning.
On three occasions during their reporting, Mr. Donvan and Ms. Zucker wrote, that residents of Forest gave them a warning in strikingly similar language: “If what you’re doing hurts Don, I know where to find you”. As one friend stated: “Don’s got some odd behaviours and some eccentricities, but he’s our guy”.
Donald Triplett, who was ‘Case 1’ in the history of autism diagnosis and as an adult became an influential case study in how people with autism can find fulfilment, died at home in Forest at the age of 89.
What would Donald’s life have been like if as so often happened, his parents had left him in that institution? The love, care, and unstinting support of his parents, coupled with the acceptance of his community was overriding in his life’s fulfilment; especially that of his mother, who worked tirelessly to help him learn how to communicate with others, acquire language and take care of himself.
According to the African saying: ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. In the case of Donald Gray Triplett, this was clearly the case, an example to all communities who have neurodiverse and other people who are ‘different’, living among them.
MAIN IMAGE: https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/donald-triplett-autisms-case-1-dies-at-89/
Dejar un comentario