Relational Autism?

Right-brained in a left-brained world?

Throughout the essays on this Substack, I’ve explored several causes of “autism”, primarily focussing on early brain development and nurture and nutrition.

Loosely — because I don’t believe “autism spectrum disorder” is one condition but instead an umbrella term which obscures the various causes of the behaviours associated with the diagnosis — I’ve been using a definition of “autism” based on

Iain McGilchrist

’s books and Christopher Badcock’s books. According to McGilchrist, “autism” is a cluster of behaviours associated with right hemisphere dysfunction and hypo-function and left hemisphere dominance, while Badcock similarly — but with key differences — defines it as a condition of hypo-mentalism, or underdeveloped or dysfunctional mentalistic cognition, associated with gene imprinting that skews toward paternal imprinted genes over maternal ones.¹

While processing and interacting with some of the reactions to my most recent essays, something occurred to me that I hadn’t thought of before.

For the sake of argument, let’s set aside the quarter of autism diagnoses which are severe and include significant intellectual disability.² I’m only talking about “high functioning” experiences of “autism” here, and in particular, those people who have come to identify as “autistic” (or “ADHD”) at an older age after being an odd, socially awkward “gifted” child.³

For the rest of this essay I will use the word autistic in a non-clinical sense, and “autism spectrum disorder” when speaking of clinical diagnoses. All terms are used loosely, and I’m going to grossly oversimplify the science and theories I reference to keep this short. I expand on several points in the footnotes, and recommend you read this on your browser instead of in your email.

If McGilchrist and Badcock are correct that the “West” has become lopsided cognitively in favour of the left hemisphere over the right hemisphere, and mechanistic cognition over mentalistic cognition — then, presumably, most of us in the West are at least sub-clinically autistic using the definition above.

But the experience of autism — as people use the term colloquially — is in part relational.

In other words, people identify their social experiences as “autistic” in relation to their environment, culture, and family. The feeling of being “alien”, of seeing the world differently, of picking up on things that others seem not to, of not understanding the social “code”.⁴

And so, what are the experiences of right-brained people in a society dominated by the left hemisphere?

If almost everyone around you is mechanistic and left-brained and you are more mentalistic and right-brained, then you would feel like the strange one. The alien.

Which raises the question — are some people identifying with an autistic experience not because they are disconnected from the right hemisphere, but because they are some of the only ones in our society who aren’t?⁵

Typical stock image of the left versus right hemispheres — not entirely accurate (high comprehension of mathematics and physics requires much of the right hemisphere, and many aspiring artists create primarily from the fantasy-prone left hemisphere), but let’s not quibble here. Source: Shutterstock.

Now, I’m spitballing more than usual with this piece — I’m not sure whether this is happening or not, it’s just something I suspect because it would explain why a minority of people describing high-functioning autism appear to believe that “autism spectrum disorder” is associated with being right-brained instead of left-brained.

From

Peggy Magilen

’s website “Heart Centred Minds”:

“More and more individuals are being born with learning differences due to a Heart/Right Brain Orientation. My experience as a teacher convinced me this is a “connective learning difference” rather than what we have misunderstood as an Autism Spectrum Disorder or related Deficit. […]

These individuals are here with a Connective Intelligence: sensitive, inspired, empathic, visionary and in some way, large or small, creative. But, lacking a left-brain filter, they can also easily be overwhelmed by linear input, sensory overload, and chemicals. […]

What I saw while teaching were heart/right-brain connective individuals struggling and reacting to a left-brain-driven world of information and separation.”

I’ve gotten into a handful of disagreements with Magilen in the comments on this Substack, as her definition of “autism spectrum disorder” is essentially the opposite of how it’s defined and described in McGilchrist’s, Badcock’s, Kanner’s, Asperger’s, and many others’ books and papers.

I’ve noticed similar (mis)characterizations of “autism spectrum disorder” on social media, usually by self-diagnosed young women who run influencer accounts about their “autistic” experience.

In the past, I was quick — and perhaps unfair — to dismiss their descriptions as examples of the anosognosia (lack of awareness of deficits) associated with left-hemisphere dominance and right hemisphere hypo-function or dysfunction.⁶ However, it is possible — assuming I’m on to something here — that some of these people are describing a real experience of being right-brained in a left-brained world.

This ties into my arguments in the “Refrigerator Mother” theory essay — if “Complex PTSD” from low nurture and social isolation mimics many of the symptoms associated with autism, it can be inferred that children who are epigenetically more right-brained — who are more connected to their intuition, sense of meaning-making, spirituality, sense of story, creativity, non-verbal communication cues, and to nature and their own bodies — would be far more sensitive to our “cold” sub-clinically autistic Western society.

What we would have in these cases is not right hemisphere hypo-function or hypo-mentalism but instead a traumatized right hemisphere in individuals who intuitively feel that something is “off” in our left-brained world.

“Trauma”, loosely speaking, lateralizes to the relational right hemisphere.⁷ While many mental illnesses are characterized by left-hemisphere dominance and right hemisphere dysfunction or hypo-function, a notable exception is depression, which is associated with the right hemisphere (and with the default mode network associated with mentalistic cognition).

All of this is complicated by the possibility that people who rely more on the right hemisphere — and who, perhaps, do not have as strong of a left hemisphere as many high-functioning, high IQ autistic people do — would theoretically also be more vulnerable to environmental and pharmaceutical toxins and poor nutrition, in particular when exposed prenatally or in the first three years of life when the right hemisphere is disproportionately developing.

To borrow McGilchrist’s metaphor, people with a more powerful emissary (the analytical, logical left hemisphere) are better equipped to function without the guidance of a healthy master (the more intuitive right hemisphere).⁸

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Orchid and Indigo Children

In The Orchid and the Dandelion (2020), W. Thomas Boyce describes a spectrum of sensitivity from “dandelion” (low sensitivity, high resilience) to “orchid” (high sensitivity, low resilience) in children.

Nancy Ann Tappe coined the term “Indigo Child” sometime in the 1970s, referring to children who supposedly were more spiritual, intuitive, headstrong, and resistant to authority. This is generally dismissed as a pseudoscientific “New Age” concept — or as undiagnosed ADHD — but there is some overlap between Indigo children and the idea of “orchid” children proposed decades later. Both are also loosely similar to “highly sensitive people” or HSPs.

Dandelion children tend to do fairly well regardless of circumstance — they are more resilient to dysfunction, neglect, and abuse. Orchid children, on the other hand, thrive in healthy, nurturing environments, but wither and become physically and/or mentally ill under adverse conditions. Orchid children, depending on their circumstances, disproportionately are among the healthiest and sickest children in studied samples. Like most concepts in psychiatry, this is a spectrum, likely involving hundreds of genes, and most people fall somewhere between the extremes of “dandelion” and “orchid”.

Boyce’s theory has come under some scrutiny for being overly simplistic, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

What it highlights, however, is that many of the genes that are known to be associated with autism and various mental illnesses and personality disorders may be mostly genes that increase sensitivity, and appear to be adaptive in a healthy environment (e.g. they may increase neuroplasticity and general intelligence).

By sensitivity, I am referring to an increased responsiveness to the influences of an environment, not to increased “sensitivity” to the thoughts and feelings of other people — if anything, many of the “orchid” genes might be associated with lower amounts of cognitive and affective empathy, at least in combination with stressful or traumatic childhood experiences.⁹

This is an argument raised several times by Gabor Maté in The Myth of Normal (2022). As well, in Chicken Little: The Sky Isn’t Falling (2021), Erica Komisar notes that children born with one or two short alleles on their serotonin transporter gene are “more susceptible and more reactive to stress, as well as more vulnerable to mental health issues like depression and anxiety,”¹⁰ and is also associated with increased aggression, higher suicide risk, and traits associated with “ADHD”. These “orchid” alleles can also lead to greater positive outcomes in supportive environments — and the emotional responsiveness goes both ways, with some studies finding that people with short alleles are more likely to have heightened “happy” responses to positive stimuli.

Other potential “orchid” genes include MTHFR at rs1801133 and COMT at rs4818¹¹, as well as the infamous “warrior gene” (low activity at MAO-A). Both MTHFR rs1801133 and COMT rs4818 are also associated with an increased likelihood of a person being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, while the “warrior gene” is associated with a higher likelihood of aggressive and impulsive behaviours and is linked to higher severity of some autistic symptoms.

Robert Sapolsky discusses the importance of the interactions between genes and environment in his 2017 book Behave:

“Having the low-activity version of MAO-A tripled the likelihood [of antisocial behaviour{ … but only in people with a history of severe childhood abuse. And if there was no such history, the variant was not predictive of anything. […] In a similar vein, the low-activity variant of the serotonin transporter gene was reported to be associated with adult aggressiveness … but only when coupled with childhood adversity.”¹²

In addition their association with autism, many of these “orchid” genes are also associated with psychopathy.¹³ Autism and psychopathy share some traits, but are distinct from each other in how they affect empathy — autistic people have deficits in cognitive empathy (theory of mind skills), associated with the right hemisphere. Psychopathic individuals have reduced or abnormal affective empathy, or the ability to “feel” what other people are feeling. The two spectrums are somewhat co-morbid with each other.

In James H. Fallon’s The Psychopath Inside (2013), Fallon — a neuroscientist who discovered he had the brain of a psychopath — acknowledges that while he had always dismissed the concept of “Indigo” and “orchid” children as “woo-woo”, when he looked into it, he realized that he actually fit the descriptions of both quite well.

Fallon, who died in 2023, was what he described as a “pro-social” non-violent psychopath, whose subclinical psychopathic traits contributed to him achieving an incredible amount of success in his career as a scientist.¹⁴ Fallon notes that adverse childhood experiences are extremely common among violent psychopathic offenders in prison and attributes his positive outcomes — despite sharing brain and genetic similarities to many violent criminals — to his loving, nurturing childhood.

Fallon had his DNA analyzed and found that he had many of the gene variants previously mentioned, including the “warrior gene”.¹⁵ He also speculates in his book that he has a mild case of Bipolar II.

It’s possible that many “orchid” genes increase neuroplasticity. This would provide some advantages to general intelligence, but the downside would be a vulnerability to addictions (including screen addictions), and, arguably to ideology. Maybe higher neuroplasticity — an ability to rewire your brain quickly and adapt — is one of the reasons for the observation that people with higher intelligence are more vulnerable to being sucked into cults.

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Are We Getting More “Sensitive”?

It’s possible that many of these “sensitivity” genes are becoming more common. Erica Komisar writes:

“For reasons that scientists still do not understand, an increasing number of babies are being born with a genetic sensitivity to anxiety and depression. This tendency can be mitigated in the first three years of a child’s life by sensitive and empathic nurturing, and the consistent emotional and physical presence of their primary caregiver or mother.”¹⁶

Komisar didn’t include a citation so I’m not sure what studies she’s referring to and I can’t verify this — but if true, this would partially explain the frequent observation that younger generations appear to be less and less resilient.¹⁷

I can only guess at reasons why this might be occurring (higher rates of maternal stress? changes to our diet? marriage patterns? higher child survival rates?) — if anyone has any theories, please drop them in the comments!

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Right Hemisphere Trauma

As I previously mentioned, “trauma” seems to disproportionately affect the right hemisphere of the brain — the right hemisphere is more sensitive to environmental influences than the left hemisphere. Similarly, Badcock argues that what he calls mentalistic cognition is more sensitive to environmental influences throughout development. The default mode network is part of mentalistic cognition, and is known to be disrupted in many mental illnesses and cognitive differences, including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, psychopathy, autism, schizophrenia, and several personality disorders.

Given that many of the “orchid” genes increase sensitivity to the environment, is it possible that they are associated with increased right hemisphere activity and strength and with increased mentalistic cognition, i.e. gene imprinting in favour of maternal gene expression?

(Yes, yes, I know I’m deviating from scientific terms, but bear with me).

Left-hemisphere dominance appears to the brain in survival mode. Perhaps, when the sensitive right hemisphere is traumatized, the left hemisphere stops listening to it to numb out its pain.

I was chatting about this essay with my friend

Sai Ψ

, and learned — as I frequently do with her — that she had been thinking along similar lines.

“I am quite convinced that autism is a hyper-developed/active right hemisphere after it is “broken” and reformed to perform in a left-brained system.”¹⁸

A couple of years ago, I had a conversation with my uncle, a criminologist, about the history of “poisonous pedagogies” in parenting books.

He cautioned me not to advise people to “trust their instincts.”

“Sometimes, their instincts are bad.”

What are “instincts” anyway? I tend to believe they largely come from the gut microbiome, and from early childhood experiences (e.g. repetition compulsion).

Perhaps when the brain-gut is disrupted — due to poor diet, heavy metal accumulation, or anything else — and/or right hemisphere development and attachment is disrupted by early childhood stress, our right hemispheres send unhealthy “gut reactions”, unhealthy instincts, to the left hemisphere to act on.

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Are “Orchid” Children Autistic?

Some no doubt are, due to the mix of “sensitive” genes and environmental, pharmaceutical, and nurture factors. But, generally speaking, if someone doesn’t have significant impairments in mentalistic cognition and right-hemisphere social functions — in theory of mind skills and non-verbal communication — and is considered to be highly intuitive and creative, then I do not think “autism” is the best description for them, even if they have some of the other traits associated with it.

Christopher Badcock¹⁹ defines autism as being characterized by hypo-mentalism or low mentalistic cognition. However, many high functioning autistic people are also hyper-mechanistic. I’ve observed that on social media, descriptions of autistic traits include some hypo-mentalistic ones and some hyper-mechanistic ones — loosely, the former are traits that are deficient in autistic people that most people have (e.g. theory of mind skills, the ability to read facial expressions, default mode network functioning), while the latter are traits that are more pronounced in hyper-mechanistic people (e.g. semantic memory, spatial skills, logic, attention to detail, sensory sensitivities).

Hyper-mechanism, without mentalistic deficits, is not autism, by this definition.

Complex PTSD is a better diagnosis, if we need to use one — or, as I proposed in a previous essay, “Broken Mirror Syndrome”. While I personally wince at this one because it’s the label I was stuck with as a kid, “gifted child” — by Alice Miller’s definition — may also be appropriate.

If you prefer a diagnosis in the DSM, bipolar disorder or ADHD are probably closer fits, depending on the person.

Or you can reject diagnostic labels, and instead think of yourself as one of the mistaken zygotes — intuitive, creative people born into families or subcultures which fail to nurture the right hemisphere.²⁰

At the same time, if almost everyone around you is “masking” and presenting a “false self”, it makes a lot of sense that many people would struggle with non-verbal communication cues and theory of mind skills — not because they lack the wiring to learn them, but because the cues they are exposed to are not authentic.

“Orchid” genes are not “bad” genes — almost all, if not all, serve some sort of adaptive purpose — even genes like the “warrior gene” which are associated with aggression and psychopathic traits. High sensitivity can be a good thing — it keeps many people away from harmful stuff like polyester clothing.

The genes are good — the environment is the problem.

Western society has become increasingly fragmented, individualistic, narcissistic, autistic, left-brained. Many of us have lost the ability to authentically connect to others, including our own family members and children.

If almost everyone around you is speaking in scripts and wearing a mask, following rules without thinking, relational autism — the feeling of being alone and “different” and of not being able to connect — is inevitable.

Most of us here have probably experienced it.

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Final Thoughts

I was talking to a therapist at a party recently and she asked what I was writing about. I described this essay and the theory that the West has become cognitively lopsided in favour of mechanistic cognition and the left hemisphere.

She noted that while she had many clients who fit my description, she also had many deeply spiritual, mentalistic, right-brained clients — the problem with both groups, she said, is that they went to the extreme in either direction. The hemispheres are not integrated, not working together, not listening to each other.

I think most people realize that the West needs some sort of collective healing and at least a slight change of course — to heal the brain-gut, the right hemisphere, to reconnect to each other, to our own bodies, to nature, and to Spirit, while still staying grounded in science and logic and law and other left-hemisphere strengths.

Top-down thinking (right hemisphere) needs to meet bottom-up thinking (left hemisphere) — mosaic thinking?

I’ve argued this before, but I suspect that a necessary precondition to healing most mental health issues is to first heal the gut microbiome and any chronic neuro-inflammation.

And if more children are being born with these “sensitive” genes, then the West needs to dramatically alter how we approach childrearing and family life — and nutrition and pharmaceuticals.

As always, I encourage discussion in the comments section. This was more speculative than most of my work, so any criticisms in particular are welcome so I can revise, hone, and adjust these ideas.

Wirh thanks to

Sai Ψ

for talking me through this, and to

Skye Sclera

for the inspiration for this piece in a conversation we had over in Notes.

1. Not the same theory as Simon Baron-Cohen’s “extreme male brain” theory of autism. Evidence indicates that “autism” is associated more with androgyny in both sexes, not “extreme male brain”.

2. For a thorough exploration of the different causes of what is called “autism”, from genetics to vaccines and everything in between, please see my essay “What Causes Autism?”

3. Again, to clarify, I’m not talking about all cases of childhood giftedness and autism/ADHD in combination here. A lot of formerly “gifted” children are, indeed, what we might call “autistic” according to McGilchrist’s and Badcock’s descriptions and my working definition. I explore this topic in detail in “The Drama of the Gifted Children”. Generally speaking, I think most people who are being diagnosed with or self-diagnosing with “autism spectrum disorder” are indeed autistic — an obsession with categorical diagnostic labels is typical of left-brained thinking.

4. Christopher Badcock provides an example of what I’m getting at in his description of how visiting or moving to a foreign country where you don’t know the language or culture mimics the autistic experience (The Diametric Mind, page 147):

“Outsiders to a group or society are always somewhat “autistic” in the sense that they inevitably have deficits in the local language skills and in understanding local conventions […] Like autistics, ethnic outsiders often have difficulties with reading the minds and intentions of the natives and appreciating the finer points of their culture. And like autistics, outsiders can all too easily off end the locals with some to-them-seemingly-innocuous remark, look, or behaviour. […] also like the typical autistic, the stranger in a foreign society can feel isolated, excluded, and anxious, and may even become the victim of bullying, discrimination, or stigmatization.”

In this example, the foreigner would not (necessarily) have autism spectrum disorder (i.e. would not have deficits in mentalistic cognition and right hemisphere hypo-function) but nonetheless would have an autistic experience.

5. This is illustrated in the anecdote I shared in my previous essay, “Does Laplace’s Demon Understand Love?”. I was the odd one out in that classroom, the alien, the person who seemed to not get the memo on how we all were “supposed” to think. But this was because I was making a right-brained argument in a classroom full of people who were primarily thinking with their left hemispheres.

6. Anosognosia is common in autism spectrum disorder, and particularly seems to apply to the theory of mind (cognitive empathy) deficits associated with the DSM condition. Many of these influencers claim to have hyper-empathy or to be “empaths”, to have near-telepathic abilities to “know” what other people are thinking etc. I sincerely doubt they do in the majority of cases, as this can be explained by theory of mind deficits impairing their ability to observe empathy in other people and by projection (attributing one’s own thoughts, feelings, or impulses to another) and mind-reading (an inaccurate assumption that they understand others’ thoughts and feelings — typically associated with narcissism).

7. “Our scans clearly showed that images of past trauma activate the right hemisphere of the brain and deactivate the left […] When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present.” — Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keep the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014), pages 44-45.

“[The right hemisphere] is more able to assimilate information from the environment, without automatically responding to it, and, possibly as a result, the developing right hemisphere is more sensitive to environmental influences.” — Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (2009), page 56.

8. From The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (2009) by Iain McGilchrist.

9. This is illustrated in the Hans Christian Andersen version of The Princess and the Pea — the princess is so touch-sensitive that she feels the pea hidden under the pile of mattresses, but so inconsiderate of her hosts’ feelings she also complains about it (how many readers, if they were taken in from a rainstorm and fed and given a bed by strangers would complain about the bed being too uncomfortable?). In Andersen’s version, the princess is rewarded for this behaviour, a narrative decision that may have reflected some of Andersen’s own inclinations. Andersen is now thought to have been autistic and highly sensitive, and the princess in the story represents his fantasies of being recognized and included among the elites of his time, as he identified high sensitivity with the aristocracy. However, he was also so difficult to be around he once was famously tossed out of Charles Dickens’ home and probably died a virgin after being repeatedly rejected by both men and women he was interested in.

10. Erica Komisar, Chicken Little: The Sky Isn’t Falling (2021), pages 9-10.

11. The MTHFR mutation is associated with an increased sensitivity to environmental toxins due to an impaired ability to detox; it is also associated with slower folate and folic acid synthesis and an increased vulnerability to adverse outcomes associated with folic acid accumulation. Both the MTHFR and COMT mutations are associated with higher rates of male homosexuality but in particular when there is a history of child abuse or neglect. COMT rs4818 is also associated with higher rates and severity of narcissism.

12. Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017), pages 254-255

13. “Psychopathy” is not in the DSM, and I am using the term in a non-clinical sense to refer to people with low affective empathy (or the ability to turn affective empathy off and on), high impulsivity and recklessness, hyper-competitiveness, and a high need for stimulation.

14. While Fallon acknowledged deficiencies in his affective empathy, he also claimed to have a high amount of sympathy or compassionate empathy — the desire to act on behalf of others. High compassionate empathy also appears to be associated with autism.

15. Fallon also described himself as having gene variants and brain differences associated with both a greater memory and a higher risk of anxiety. It’s worth noting that Fallon, with his odd combination of genes resulting in subclinical psychopathy, also had an IQ over 150.

16. Erica Komisar, Chicken Little: The Sky Isn’t Falling (2021), page 10.

17. The low resilience of young people is typically attributed to stuff like “gentle” parenting, participation trophies, trigger warnings, the proliferation of therapy-speak in the mainstream, pill-for-every-ill psychiatric drugs, smart phones, and social media. While no doubt relevant, I tend to think the issue is mostly dietary — brains starved of nutrients because of diets high in refined sugar, processed foods, and synthetic vitamins are significantly less resilient to stress and more prone to mental illness.

18. My essay “The Drama of the Gifted Children” discusses how “hothouse” parenting — pushing left-hemisphere cognitive tasks prematurely on a baby or toddler to try to create a high-achiever or prodigy — can lead to autism or ADHD.

19. The Imprinted Brain (2009) and The Diametric Mind (2019)

20. See Clarissa Pinkola Estes, The Women Who Run With The Wolves. I highly recommend the audiobook version to anyone who relates to this essay — I also recommend her audiobook Warming the Stone Child.