Disabled or just different?
BY Susan Smalley
“Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way,” the renowned psychologist William James wrote decades ago. Today, we refer to such behavior as thinking “out of the box” — a much-desired trait in our culture, so amply reflected in a slew of recent bestsellers on creativity and intuition.
Enter Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a neurobehavioral disorder characterized by symptoms of inattention and/or hyperactive-impulsive behavior and impairment. ADHD causes people to “see the world” differently. Going by James’ definition, 5% of the U.S. population diagnosed with ADHD might be described as “out-of-the-box” thinkers, even though treatment is important to reduce their suffering.
Although numerous anecdotal reports of heightened creativity or intuition have been attributed to ADHD, scientific investigations of them are too few and lacking in rigor to draw definite conclusions. However, data do support a range of differences, including the fact that many of those with ADHD tend to have difficulties with memory, attention and time estimation — underestimating, for example, a 15-second time interval.
Now, Einstein demonstrated that time is relative to the observer, noting famously that an hour with a beautiful girl may seem fleeting while a second touching a hot stove may seem like an eternity. This suggests that behavioral variations stemming from ADHD are neither right nor wrong. They’re just different — not unlike differences in our height, weight, skin color and hair type. In some situations and cultural settings, these differences may pose problems; in others, they may prove to be advantageous.
One feature of ADHD increasingly being recognized is its strong relationship with aspects of temperament, most notably those related to seeking and exploring novel situations. Novelty-seeking is common among highly successful people. This suggests that ADHD may be advantageous in certain work settings, disadvantageous in others.
It’s time we began to view behavioral “disabilities” from a similar perspective, moving beyond a disease model of emotional and learning differences to a model of what might be called “neurodiversity.” If we recognize our neurodiversity as a facet of our humanness that makes us unique on some dimensions and similar on others, we can begin to see how such diversity is akin to a metaphorical garden in which variety, difference and spontaneity are celebrated.
Understanding how individuals see and process the world around them from varying points of view, including individuals diagnosed with emotional and learning disorders, will help us all to begin to embrace our neurodiversity — just as we have learned to embrace our gender, physical and cultural differences.
Smalley is a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior.
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