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Conversations on Creativity with Daniel Tammet - Postscript, My Candid Reflections
My reflections on my conversation with Daniel Tammet
Posted December 31, 2009
Last night I was eating dinner with my parents back in my hometown in Philadelphia. I was telling them about my interview with Daniel Tammet, and how I was working on a post about my reflections on the interview. My father, who reads everything I write (which can be awkward sometimes!), looked at me and said, plainly and simply, "I see a lot of similarities between you and Daniel, Scott." Those words were a kind of crystallizing moment for me. I suppose I knew at an intuitive level that this interview was so meaningful to me, and I was aware that I had this great drive to get the complete interview out there for people to read, but with that comment by my Dad, it really hit me why the experience was so meaningful: this interview really was personal.
To the best of my knowledge, I don't have Asperger's syndrome. But I did have an auditory learning disability growing up that made me feel like an outsider most of my early childhood, a feeling which remains to this day. My interview with Daniel was so profound to me because I think it really made it crystal clear to me, at least clearer than ever before, that whatever the "disorder"- learning disability, personality disorder, attention deficit disorder, mood disorder, anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, etc. - or life circumstance, anyone whose marginality put them on a different path from the rest of the kids, from the rest of the adults, from the rest of society, are united in that feeling of being different. Daniel Tammet's feeling of a great loneliness and isolation growing up spoke to me, for sure. But I'm sure it also spoke to a great many people reading the interview.
There is a bit of Daniel Tammet in all of us. I think all of us, at one time or another, have felt different in a particular context, and have felt the intense conflict to simultaneously want to fit in while also wanting to just be accepted for being different. Not all of us may be able to calculate pi to as many places as Daniel can, or can automatically associate numbers with colors, or can write both prose and poetry as beautifully as he does, or can paint as he does. But what my interview with Daniel taught me is that it doesn't matter if you can't do everything he does. Life is not about deliberately practicing yourself down someone else's path. It's about staying true to yourself at all times, and being fully open to going down your own unique, unplanned, and unpredictable path.
Researchers have asked me whether, after my interview with Daniel, I think he is a "fraud". I suppose they want to know whether he really is "autistic" or whether he really can truly do all the mind tricks he appears to be capable of. They saw his interview on Letterman, where he was very charismatic and socially engaging and they wonder whether he still has Asperger's syndrome, since he didn't seem to display all of the symptoms on the show.
I, too, saw the Letterman interview. What I saw in that interview was a very smart person who was capable of being social. There is no doubt that Daniel has gone through a great transformation over the years, becoming more socially adept and outgoing. He has learned quite a bit about life, love, and relationships. But still, talking on the phone with him, there were moments when I could tell he was struggling a bit to understand some of my more ambiguous phrases, that he still processed some of the things I said literally. Whether he would still be labelled "Asperger's" today though, is in many ways missing the larger point.
The point is that there is something it means to be Daniel. Daniel was born with a unique mind, wired in a certain way, which contributed significantly to how he sees the world. He has been able to compensate quite a bit, but there still remains a core to him that makes him unique. And I saw absolutely no dishonesty in my interview with him-- in fact, what I had the honor of witnessing was one of the most truest individuals I've ever met in my entire life, a person who lives his life always trying to stay true to himself in a society that labels him as different. In a lot of ways, a lot of people in this world every day of their own lives are trying to do the very same thing.
Throughout the interview, Daniel was very critical of IQ testing and the study of individual differences. I fully appreciate where his critiques were coming from. I agree with him that many things we do serve to reduce people to just one dimension, and in the case of a poorly administered IQ test, reducing a person to just a number. But as I've reviewed recently, the field of IQ testing is rapidly evolving. The major aim of most modern day IQ test makers I talk to is not to reduce, but to broaden-- to identify a particular individual's unique pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses and to custom tailer an educational program for that person. This is a goal I think Daniel would agree with.
I think Daniel also underestimated the importance of investigating individual differences more generally. I study individual differences in my research program. The reason why I do so is because I fully believe that's where most of the interesting aspects of human nature lie. It's so fascinating to me how we can all vary so much from one another-- on so many attributes like physical features, personality, intelligence, creativity, style of thinking, life experiences, etc.-- and yet at the end of the day we are all part of the same species. We all have similar fears, desires, and foibles. I think the study of individual differences is important-- not as a way of reducing people-- but as a way of broadening the spectrum of ways people can differ and the ways in which both innate dispositions and culture shapes who we are.
It is clear from my interview with Daniel that he really was born with a unique brain wiring. It wasn't solely deliberate practice that got Daniel Tammet to Daniel Tammet. It was the unique constellation of potentials that the body named "Daniel Tammet" was born with, and that, through a series of fortunate opportunities, allowed him to more fully express and realize his potential than could have easily been the case - unfortunately, many people have life circumstances that hinder them from realizing their potential, and they erroneously think that their current life is all that is possible for themselves. If anything, I'd imagine most of Daniel's deliberate practice went toward trying to learn things that come more naturally to others (such as how to recognize faces), just so he could better fit in, than learning things that already came more naturally to himself (such as dancing with numbers).
In this new year, this new decade, and well into the future of humanity, let's all try a little bit harder to appreciate each other's differences. And by doing so, let's also remind ourselves to remain true to ourselves, despite society. Like Daniel Tammet.
© 2009 by Scott Barry Kaufman
Photo Credit for picture of Daniel Tammet: Rex USA.
Other parts of the series:
Part I, Embracing the Wide Sky
Part II, How a Prodigious Savant's Mind Works
Part IV, IQ and Human Intelligence
