Medical student's syndrome, I hope

So, the other day I went to visit a friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in quite a while. Surprise, surprise, we got to talking about books, and right away I mentioned Animals in Translation, which I thought she'd like not only for its own sake but also because her son is autistic. She in turn lent me her copy of Songs of the Gorilla Nation by Dawn Prince-Hughes. And as I mentioned before, two days later I'd finished it.

Unlike Animals in Translation, which is really a treatise, Gorilla Nation is the memoir of a woman who was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome at the age of 36. She has a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary anthropology, and she studies gorillas. Spending time with gorillas enabled her to come to terms with her own problems and even appreciate her different way of viewing the world. Similar to Temple Grandin, she felt a special empathy with the gorillas because of her autism. The thing is, Dawn is a poet. She writes so beautifully and vividly and honestly about herself that you really do see the world through her eyes.

Too vividly, perhaps. Now I'm worried that I have Asperger's Syndrome, too! That is to say, so much of what she described about herself reminded me of me, although to a much lesser degree. For me, too, even very small social interactions are somewhat stressful, especially if they involve me talking about myself. I am likely to obsess over what I said to the cashier at the grocery store for the rest of the day. I mostly don't know what to say, and I sometimes wish I could take notes on what other people say in certain situations so that next time I could do the same. Like Dawn, I am very bad at recognizing faces, though I'm great with names. Like Dawn, I have a one-track mind and it's very hard for me to switch gears when I'm in the middle of something. I easily get overstimulated by auditory stimuli, at least to the extent that I cannot listen to talk radio or books on tape, though I have music on all the time. I like being by myself; I'd probably make a pretty good hermit.

The main thing I share with Dawn, though, is her obsession with the gorillas. Well, I'm not specifically obsessed with gorillas, but I am absolutely obsessed with early humans. It's like a religion for me, the way the gorillas took on religious significance for Dawn. I guess it started when I read Clan of the Cave Bear as a teenager. (Let me hasten to add, it's not the soap opera aspect of the book that attracted me; it's the idyllic life and culture. Nasty, brutish and short? Au contraire!) Frequently in the course of a day I have imaginary conversations with a Stone Age cave-dweller who might as well be called Ayla. I think this is how I come to understand and cope with life: I try to explain things to Ayla. And, half-joking, I say to myself: WWAD? What would Ayla do? And again, I don't mean specifically Ayla from the books. I know what she'd do: she'd save someone's life or invent some new technology. But "Ayla" symbolizes for me precisely what the gorillas meant to Dawn: they are innocent, simple, honest, unaffected, dignfied, and nonjudgmental.

Honestly, I don't really think I have Asperger's Syndrome. I think I have Medical Student's Syndrome. (I had that once before, as an undergrad, when I took Abnormal Psych. It's a very unpleasant condition!) But it's a testament to the power of this woman's writing that she made me think I did.