51 pages • 1 hour read
John Elder RobisonLook Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
In the brief Prologue, John Elder Robison provides a few highlights of his misunderstood childhood. His inability to follow common social conventions (like looking at someone when talking to them) creates conflict with his parents and peers. He finds eye contact distracting, and his father’s constant demands that Robison look him “in the eye” only make him anxious. Consequently, he is labeled a deviant and a sociopath. His behavioral eccentricities are misinterpreted by his parents and teachers as bad or asocial. His lack of outward emotional expression is even equated to “some of the worst murderers in history” (2). Over time, his father lapses into alcoholism and beats him.
His condition, Asperger’s syndrome, was first identified by Austrian psychiatrist Hans Asperger in 1938. He wrote about children who are above average verbally and creatively, but “who exhibited a number of behaviors common to people with autism” (3). Asperger’s syndrome was not officially codified until 1981; in 1984 it was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Until then the condition was often attributed to depression or schizophrenia. Robison mentions that, despite “Aspergians’” considerable gifts (musical talent, uncanny insight), their lack of social skills can make growing up extremely difficult.
Chapter 1 Summary: “A Little Misfit”
Robison details his experiences with his first playmate, Doug. He has a very specific way of playing (using all the same color blocks, for example), and when Doug varies the routine (mixing red blocks with blue), Robison hits him. In Robison’s mind, Doug isn’t doing it the “right” way. Doug is his only friend, but his family moves to Montana not long after, and Robison finds out later that Doug drowned in an irrigation ditch on an Indian reservation there. At his new nursery school, he tries to befriend a girl named Chuckie, but he is unable to read her social cues. He pets her and pokes her with a stick because that’s how he interacts with dogs, and he doesn’t understand the difference. He can’t imagine why Chuckie wouldn’t want to be poked with a stick or listen to a one-sided conversation about dinosaurs. As a result, other children ridicule him.
As a coping mechanism, he prefers the company of adults, although he realizes later that adults’ acceptance of his behavior makes it worse. Because the adults in his life don’t want to call attention to his quirks, he never learns that they are contrary to social convention. He loves to build things because he is “in charge” and inanimate objects don’t make fun of him.
His parents fight, partly due to his father’s affair with a coworker. As his parents’ marriage unravels, his father gets angrier and more abusive. Robison takes a trip to Georgia with his mother, and when they return, the pet dog Poodle is missing. He suspects his father has done something to the dog.
His father, who has been in school up to this point, graduates and takes a job in Seattle. Robison plays in the woods behind their apartment, and his father teaches him “woodsman” skills. He becomes friends with Jeff, another boy in the apartment complex. Jeff is two years younger and sees Robison as a mentor. Robison realizes the mentor/protégé relationship gives him self-confidence. The following year his family moves to Pittsburgh.
Chapter 2 Summary: “A Permanent Playmate”
After trying and failing to make friends, Robison realizes he’s different from other kids, referring to himself as “defective.” However, he learns from his mistakes, and he gradually begins to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. At 9, he finally begins to contextualize conversations—his response corresponds to what he’s just heard rather than him simply just saying whatever is on his mind. He makes friends in the neighborhood. Together, they play and explore without adult supervision. For the first time in his life, he feels free, like a “big kid.”
Then his mother announces she’s pregnant. She gives birth to a boy, Christopher Richter Robison. Robison refuses to call his brother by his given name, preferring “Snort” instead (“Snort” later becomes “Varmint”). He admits he has a hard time with names unless he chooses them himself. His father, meanwhile, looks for a permanent teaching position after a succession of temporary ones. His parents’ fighting worsens, and his father becomes more abusive. Robison avoids him altogether.
His father eventually accepts a job in Amherst, Massachusetts, and they move to an old farmhouse six miles away. Again, he is able to make friends, and he even rides the school bus for the first time. He is fascinated by his younger brother. He tries to teach him to walk in the squash field adjacent to the house, but he doesn’t understand why Christopher can’t do it on command. He drags him through the dirt or steps on his back if he doesn’t do it right. He suggests that Christopher may also be defective.
He admits that his feelings of loneliness are less frequent, but he is still aware that his life is somehow not as happy as other kids’, though he doesn’t understand why. His father and teachers tell him he won’t amount to anything because he doesn’t “apply himself.” He resolves to prove them wrong.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Empathy”
In Chapter 3 Robison articulates his definition of “empathy.” He explains how his brain distinguishes between true (emotional) empathy and empathy that he feels is largely a social contrivance, or logical empathy. As a child, he doesn’t understand the difference, and consequently, therapists claim he has trouble with “inappropriate expressions” (29). Therapy only makes things worse. He once overhears his mother and her friend Betsy discussing the death of a boy they know; Robison’s response is to smile. Betsy’s shocked response surprises him. In his mind, it makes perfect sense. He is happy that neither he nor anyone he knows has died, so he smiles.
True empathy, he argues, is a response when tragedy befalls someone close to you, a family member or a friend. He doesn’t understand empathy as a social distinction; he finds it false and hypocritical. He cites the example of when his father is in a car accident. Robison’s physical response is one of true empathy: “I immediately felt anxious, almost nauseous. I was worried. I was frantic. Would he die?” (31). He contrasts that with the news of a plane crash. His verbal response is the same (“That’s terrible”), but he feels none of the same emotions he feels for his father because those plane passengers are all strangers to him. People, he claims, cannot feel true empathy for every tragedy they hear about because they can’t cope with the emotional overload.
Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis
In the first three chapters Robison details both his early years growing up with Asperger’s syndrome and the thought processes that make him different. Because of his inability read social cues, his responses are frequently “off,” and he is immediately labeled a social misfit, a troublemaker, or a sociopath. Growing up before the psychiatric profession understood his condition, Robison suffers all the scorn and isolation of being different. Some kids wear their differences proudly, as a social or political statement. In many communities differences are celebrated, but Robison doesn’t have that advantage or that network of support. “Different” in the 1960s meant being ostracized and demeaned not only by peers but also by adults. Society depends on conformity, and the counterculture movement notwithstanding, the ’60s in many cities and suburbs were an extension of the conservative ’50s. Conformity is considered a social adhesive, and difference is aberrant. Without the therapeutic tools to deal with these differences, therapists resorted to outdated diagnoses and placed an official stamp on intolerance.
Robison also clarifies the cognitive processes that account for his behavioral differences. For any parent who has ever tried to understand a child whose behavior seems wanton and unfathomable, Robison provides a lucid explanation of what might be happening in that child’s brain. Part of the difficulty in understanding these kinds of behavioral responses is how much we take for granted. Most people learn social conventions very early by observing parents and peers, but that learning process doesn’t happen the same way with “Aspergians.” For example, if another kid says to Robison, “Look at my Tonka truck,” his response might be:
A) “I have a helicopter.”
B) “I want some cookies.”
C) “My mom is mad at me today.”
D) “I rode a horse at the fair” (20).
His response is simply whatever passes through his mind at the moment. It doesn’t occur to him what most people intuitively understand: Conversations are exchanges of similar ideas. By breaking down his thought process in such minute detail, he illuminates for non-Aspergians why he responds the way he does; in doing so, he sheds light on how poorly society understands these kinds of neurological differences.
