1. What is Asperger Syndrome?
Although it is not clearly stated in the film that Nathan and Luke have Asperger Syndrome (Asperger Syndrome), but for all the disorders of autism and its spectrum (this is based on my English Spectrum of Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder), anyone who understands the symptoms can see it, this is about Asperger. In fact, many people with high IQs have Asperger: the prototype of this film, Daniel Lightwing (not only won the International Mathematical Olympiad, but also fluent in Mandarin, married a Chinese girl-what an important proof of genius), can be accurately calculated in "Rain Man" Tom Hanks and Zhu Deyong, who are guaranteed to win at the poker table (according to Chinese Wiki). As for the suspected performance based on the characters, there are more famous celebrities: Newton, Einstein[Note 1], Tesla, the contemporary Zuckerberg (see the film "The Social Network"), and Sheldon's classmates are also very popular. obvious.
Asperger's is also known as high-functioning autism because of the occasional high-IQ figure. A scholar said under the Chinese Wiki Asperger entry: "The various abilities carried by Asperger's genes have repeatedly made outstanding contributions to human evolution and civilization development."
I know and understand Asperger completely because I know Zack. I really hadn't heard of it. I only know a little about autism. Zack was diagnosed with Asperger's disorder when he was in elementary school, and Zack has a deep understanding of all the special experiences and feelings that Asperger's children go through in the film. The typical scenario resonated so deeply with Zack (to his surprise) that he repeatedly told me that the creator must have had Asperger's personal experience.
Asperger was first treated as a child with autism. The reason why this symptom is called Asperger Syndromes (also referred to as AS) is because an Austrian researcher has contacted countless children who are considered to be autistic and found that many children are actually different from other autistic children. . He observed and recorded the commonalities of this type of children and the difference between them and autism, thus proposing that the method of AS intervention should also be significantly different from that of autism. After this discovery was universally recognized, AS was named Asperger after him.
The same social barriers make it difficult to connect with people, but there are important differences between Asperger and autistic children: Asperger is the same as ordinary children in intelligence, language, and cognitive ability, and even has a slightly higher probability of high IQ (no Solid data and literature, but the film is obviously biased towards this theory). People gradually find that children with AS can be intervened in a timely manner and the method is correct. They can take care of themselves completely, and even seem to be no different from ordinary people in terms of function and social interaction. people feel the same way). In addition to social barriers and emotional barriers, children with autism in most cases have a lower IQ than average, poor language comprehension, and late cognitive development (or even unable to develop to the average level), even if timely intervention may It is difficult to look like a normal child. So Asperger is also known as High-functioning autism.
Zack is a very successful example of intervention (at least I think, and I have also asked many American friends for their opinions). When I first met, I had only been in the United States for less than half a year, and I had not yet felt the pulse of the basic American character, so although I sometimes felt that he was a little strange, I thought that he was from HomeSchool, and he looked like seventeen or eighteen-year-old. Teenagers are about the same, have less experience with different groups of people, have not experienced peer pressure intensively, and it is not surprising that emotional and social skills develop late. Moreover, he is still an American, and I think the strange thing may be the commonality of Americans. In short, never thought he would be diagnosed with AS. So much so that I was shocked to learn that he actually had a serious disability a few years ago, and I had to give me countless examples that would never happen to ordinary people. Zack's little brother was more severe, having seizures at every turn as a child.
The main features and examples of AS are as follows (I summarize, unofficial, but I think it is easy to understand - because of experience, theory must guide practice!):
Refuse physical contact - Nathan refuses to hold her mother's hand in the film (at the funeral Running away despite his mother's pleas is due to the contact reflex, and also reflects his inability to synchronise/empathize with ordinary people's emotions). Correspondingly, Zack didn't want to be hugged when he was born.
Can't read people's expressions, especially can't capture subtle emotional changes and various non-verbal cues - reflected in the film is that Nathan's expression has been dazed when socializing with people, and he will be a little nervous when he is anxious, but there is no ordinary person. Smiles, grief, surprise, worry (especially seeing his father in the driver seat beside him being seriously injured in a car accident, Nathan's blank expression contrasting with his mother's explosive grief) and other complex and detailed expressions.
Narrow interests to paranoid obsession - Nathan on Maths: I love nothing more than maths. Zack liked trains very much when he was a child (like Sheldon), and every time a train passed by his door, he had to see it. If he didn't go to the house, someone had to see it for him.
Dislikes change, likes repetition - this Nathan speaks out in the video. Everything has to follow a pre-established procedure. It's better not to have surprises, rarely on a whim, and the first reaction to your whim of the proposal tends to be against it. For example, in the film Nathan must eat prime shrimp balls. When Zack was a kid, he would cycle infinitely on any song he liked until he couldn't stand it completely. He liked only one color of clothes.
All kinds of. These phenomena are not because they lack self-control, but because they feel different from ordinary people. Each Asperger person may be different, but overall, experiences that are obvious to us (emotional changes through facial expressions, subtle cues) are too small a shock for them to enter the processing system. Just ignore it. Nathan was able to communicate with his father as a child because his expression was more logical and more focused on mental understanding than emotional understanding. This means that Nathan can learn by reasoning through logical analysis without having to rely on what we call "intuition". An Asperger child doesn't "intuitively" understand that a parent dropped something for no reason because they were angry, or that a slight increase in someone's voice was a sign of nervousness or fear, etc.
The easiest way to get them to react to these subtle changes in a similar way to normal people is to tell them logically (like writing a program). They usually have strong language comprehension and cognitive abilities. In a way, their brains work like computers: so Nathan likes math, Zuckerberg is so good at programming, and Zack is immersed in the principles of atomic physics. When I went to his house for Christmas for the first time, his mother told me that children with autism live in their own world in their own way, and Asperger children live in our world in their own way. Zack told me that he played with his brother (the only normal one in his family) when he was a kid, and his brother got angry and punched him and he didn't know why. The emotion recognition of people now is because my parents taught him one by one when I was a child (I always think of micro-expression recognition).
On the other hand, once something enters their system, such as their focus on something they find interesting, all other sensory experiences become background sounds, and the experience in focus is magnified. For example, Nathan was attracted by goldfish in the kitchen, completely forgot his original task, and couldn't hear his mother's cry. There is also a more classic feature. Generally, as long as there are media such as TV that can provide a more concentrated sensory experience, it is very easy for them to ignore the sound of the surrounding life. In a way we can understand analogy, the TV is yelling at you, and the voice of the person next to you talking to you is faintly drifting from the other side of the room. If we are as tempted by our favorite games as children with AS, their senses may be many times stronger than ours. They go through this shock all the time, so it's really hard for us to really appreciate how hard it is for them to be "just like everyone else."
2. Nathan and Luke, the same system, different lives
When it comes to Nathan, the main character in the film, Zack almost thinks that the starring actor himself has Asperger's disease (it shows that the acting is really good). I think the film's most important contribution is that it explores the growing experience of two Asperger children with different circumstances and choices: Nathan and Luke. This is where the film is very refined and profound. If you get to know an Asperger child, you will know their loneliness, hesitation, resistance and (shown) indifference due to their desire to fit in but not being able to (e.g. in the film Nathan has only negative emotions before he finally understands and experiences love) , no subtle expressions, only a few smiles). The life experiences of Zack and Nathan are very different. But compared with Luke, Zack and Nathan are the lucky type of AS children - with the joint efforts of countless people, they finally no longer resist, but reconcile with the world and understand others' emotions in their own way and link. Luke’s story is embarrassing, confined to his own world—a logical, pragmatic, lonely world without emotion.
"X+Y" is so real and full because it is adapted from a previous BBC documentary. And this documentary (it seems to be called Brilliant Young Mind) is to track and record the entire process of the British children participating in the Mathematical Olympiad from entering training to the final competition. Many of these children have Aspergers. The prototype of this film, Daniel Lightwing, is a mathematics major, and there is also an Oriental Studies (I don't know how to translate it), anyway, he is fluent in Mandarin. During the competition, I met a Chinese girl, and now the two are husband and wife. There are prototypes and actors, and it is naturally worth seeing.
There is a scene in the film where Isaac, the genius of the sky (a normal genius in all aspects, first in exams, IQ crushing all geniuses, and popular with everyone. How can there be such a person! No reason) in a very natural scene to explain to Nathan Luke says - Luke is socially awkward and obsessive. It's the same tone as when we comfort our friend and ignore him, that person has a problem with his brain. Nathan's mental activity must have been complicated at the time - he knew very well that he was too. But because of their different upbringings, the two reacted very differently to the impact of the world on them.
Let's talk about Luke first.
Although the film hardly mentions his upbringing, except that his parents have always told him that he is very smart and that he will definitely get ahead by studying mathematics well (probably so, I am too lazy to watch it again). According to my conjecture (and for the clarity of this article, even if Luke is not), Luke's arrogance on the surface (which can also be understood as the drama version of Sheldon), self-centered, and must use his own theory Stopping by pushing others to the point of nowhere is a self-protection mechanism.
In fact, on ordinary people, self-protection is the same - refusing to dress up. In this way, it can be said that it is not because no one likes me that I am unfit, but because I don't dress up. Strong and arrogant and difficult to get along with - it's not that I don't have friends because people don't like me, but I don't want friends! In the final analysis, he chose to use only his talent to crush others in order to win the respect of others - Luke's self-worth is all based on this foundation. So he felt that he was only valuable when he was the smartest. Since he is the smartest, his flaws, his helplessness and incompatibility, are less important. As mentioned earlier, Luke himself said that his parents have always told him since he was a child: he is very smart, and he must make good use of his intelligence. To put it simply (that is, ignoring many other factors, a rough generalization), I call this ideology utilitarianism, or pragmatism.
What is utilitarianism, what is pragmatism? It sounded familiar to me when I listened to Luke's monologue that he was always smart. From childhood to adulthood, what is the main purpose of the school: study hard, work hard, go to a good middle school - go to a good university - find a good job - everything will be fine.
Ability + Effort = Results = Your Value = Happy Life.
When you find out that this is not true, a new formula appears:
ability + hard work = money = house and car = good partner and good life.
There is no good life because you are not working hard enough and lacking in ability (all kinds of abilities, socializing ability, drinking ability?). Another example is that children who study well should study science - because it is easy to find a job. Choose a major - what's the use of being a teacher? Can you make money? Any question of "what's the use" is basically a question of utilitarian pragmatism. In this context, naturally, people equate their own worth with their own achievements—once they fail, the self-worth built on their achievements will collapse as a whole.
Nathan actually has this tendency. For AS children, the rules of pragmatism are clear, the logic is clear, and it is straightforward and efficient, so it is easy to internalize this utilitarian and practical consciousness. The result is to materialize oneself, to force oneself indefinitely, and to be unable to bear failure. At the end of the film, when the national teams entered the Cambridge examination room for the International Mathematical Olympiad, Nathan's mother said good luck. Nathan said there was no such thing as luck. If you don't admit luck, how much do you have to push yourself? Is it scary?
So even though Luke is rejected by everyone, he still believes that he has value, and his explanation for himself is - I didn't want you to be my friend in the first place, my value is my talent. He clings to the label that he is a genius. It seems that he is arrogant when he says this, but from another perspective, he is also convincing himself: don't waver, you are valuable, you don't need friends, you don't need understanding, you don't need love. So it doesn't matter if you don't.
Luke was devastated when he learned that he was not selected for the final 6-man team. The difference between Luke and Nathan's results in the tryouts is small, how can it be said that it is not luck? But for Luke, since there is no fruit of victory, everything is meaningless. The last pillar of self-worth fell, and his whole ego collapsed. There's a short paragraph about how everyone copes with stress before the game, which is very interesting, and the others don't talk about it (Zhang Mei is very normal, looking for emotional support and being with the person she likes), but Luke is watching the comedy video. He didn't laugh. But he looked again and again. It's his way of relieving stress, escaping the real world and immersing himself in a world that has nothing to do with him.
Later, after Luke failed, he also watched the same video in the computer room. The next day, everyone was fishing and eating together. He was isolated by himself. During the meal, he took the initiative to come over and say something inexplicable to everyone. No one knew about this funny passage he found in the video. Trying to make everyone laugh and integrate into the group. But everyone felt very abrupt and inexplicable. It's not that Luke doesn't work hard, it's really that the starting point is different and the frequency is different. Luke's story had a big impact on Zack. He had a deep understanding of Luke's loneliness, sadness and collapse. If it weren't for the tireless efforts of so many people who loved him, this might also be his story.
However, Luke's attempt also failed. You know, this is something he will never try before because he is extremely afraid of failure. AS children cannot deal with emotions, because emotions have no logic, cannot be rationally understood, cannot be analyzed and cannot be deduced. So Luke alone suffered a huge emotional shock and couldn't help no one to talk, so he mutilated himself to divert the pain. This place also extends, do not arbitrarily say that others are weak, such as the pain that Luke suffers, ordinary people may never feel it. (So now it's good to live a small life as an ordinary person? The stronger the ability, the greater the risk)
[Finally finished writing Luke. Sad. There must be such children. ]
Nathan (speaking with Zack)
Luke goes through a lot of Nathan too: not being able to connect with people, not feeling his mother's efforts to love him. unhappy. Nothing but math. Leaving aside possible personality differences (Nathan may have a less pronounced tendency to be aggressive and more prone to avoidance), it is too difficult to discuss when there are too many factors, and this is not the purpose of this article.
The key to Nathan's ability to build an emotional self-worth is the people around him. The film details the important people in Nathan's life and his relationship: his father - although he died in a car accident (Nathan was also in the car) in the first 10 minutes of the film, Nathan's memories of the car accident scene, and The memories of his father's moments together are crucial to his emotional growth throughout, and to his ultimate finding of his own worth and emotional meaning. His mother, Julie, couldn't communicate with him in the language Nathan understood like Nathan's father, but she loved Nathan very much, and has been trying very hard to be close to him, to establish an emotional connection with him, and finally to go to Nathan for Nathan. study math.
The third was his tutor Humphrey. Humphrey himself is also extremely talented, but has muscular sclerosis (I didn't study it too closely, it is roughly similar to Hawking's disease, and the body slowly becomes rigid and loses its function). In terms of developing talent, no matter how bad his situation is, Humphery always insists on mentoring Nathan and understanding him. Nathan is really lucky to have this (unconventional) mentor, even though he has no father. Humphrey was terrified and hopeless about his illness. These manifestations are very angry youths, and they use drugs and alcohol to anesthetize themselves. At the same time, he is also afraid of trying and refuses to try to get better (everyone has this problem, the more afraid they are, the more afraid to try). But his attitude of ignoring secular views happens to be quite useful for Nathan (his method is also a contrast to Julie's method, involving the issue of how to intervene, which will not be discussed in this article). Apparently Humphery also took great care of Nathan.
The fourth person is the Chinese girl Zhang Mei (it took almost 6,000 words to write about her). Although there is not much ink, the mutual liking of the two teenagers has given Nathan a completely different emotional experience, which is very important for Nathan to finally break through the world of his own complete rational logic (emphasis added, not breaking through is like Luke or confused for a lifetime). AS is not without emotion, but with different thresholds, different ways of feeling, and different ways of processing. Only by being able to deal with emotions, AS will have the happiness of ordinary people (such as Zack!).
Why are AS children reluctant to understand emotions? It's the same reason why I didn't participate in the Mathematical Olympiad. It was so difficult and strenuous. It would be equally good for me not to go. . . In the same way, AS children will not actively pursue emotions - even if they are very lonely, very eager to love, and eager to understand (know that understanding them is very, very difficult, and requires constant effort). The 4 people around Nathan, but they never gave up and offered their emotions. Be proactive, persistent, and give love even when there is no response. Very important.
Why can Nathan finally understand love, understand emotions, reconcile with his mother, and bravely pursue Zhang Mei? His active, unconditional love and security with these 4 people is very important. Zack's mother is like this. If you don't let me hug me, you have to hug me. Let your emotions go first. I don't care if I have to adapt; if you ignore me, I will also tell you that I love you. Rather than blood kinship love, first requires a very persistent effort from the normal party, even if there is no response. They will not be active. Even the initial response was negative. For example, the first few contacts between Nathan and Zhang Mei were very passive. For example, some of Zack's important friends are older than him. They approach him actively, love him unconditionally, and tell him repeatedly: you can't wear green clothes every day (he likes green), you need to buy new clothes and use some perfume , should the shirt be tucked into the pants or out... I can't think of anything else for the time being. In short, if no one taught him, he would never read fashion magazines by himself, pursue matching, or learn from others. Implicit reminders are also useless to him.
Nathan also has a very special experience, that is, a car accident. This incident obviously had a huge impact on him. But because of Asperger, he didn't have the reaction that a normal child should have—no crying or sadness. But he kept thinking about it. This forces him to confront emotion, an important event that can only be explained by emotion. At the end of the story, because all the above factors acted at the same time, the strong feelings caused by Zhang Mei's departure were compared with the feelings of mathematics (his understanding of love was actually a more rational choice), and the mother who had worked hard for a long time finally Using mathematical language to explain his feelings to him, he suddenly understood his most important emotions - the great sorrow for the passing of his beloved father, his love for Zhang Mei, and the sadness of losing Zhang Mei. Without these huge and decisive emotions, how can the heart-piercing tragedy and trauma be explained only by reason? So for the first time we see Nathan crying, laughing, holding Mom's hand after Dad's death, the blank expression is replaced by vividness. Leave the hot pot restaurant (a Chinese restaurant in a city in the UK, which he likes very much) and go after Zhang Mei.
The whole story has no ups and downs, no pretense. It is a special child's special growth, reconciliation with himself and the world. The same is true of Zack's growth, soaked in unrequited love and constant hard work, so much so that her mother's attitude towards him leaving home alone is half sadness and half joy - finally independent (and finally not hers). responsibility).
After writing 6,000 words, what I want to say, the same setting, different results, the key variable is love. Not selfish, for you to love me, for you to raise me, for your fulfilling and glorious love, but no matter what, I love you, I try to understand you, get close to your world, and show you mine world.
Note 1: Einstein We also discussed about, Zack said no one gave him the diagnosis, but he was so talented, even strange character ignores people we do not want it as a quirk of genius passed
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——Two words after the end of the text:
Asperger also has many good points, which I find particularly interesting. . . In the beginning I always researched how Zack thought about the problem and I found it very interesting (probably that's why I wrote so much). Then I thought it was a lot like me, and I told him I had Asperger too. He doesn't care about me.
I recently discovered that I think the most precious character is probably what Asperger brings. Because they are naturally not good at socializing, they are not easily affected by the environment (so they can concentrate and persist in inexplicable habits for countless years or something), and they have no desire to study how to use relationships and how to play on the scene. Running programs to socialize is a last resort for them. As a result, the innocence and persistence of many children are retained. It often makes me sigh.
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