John Elder Robison is the author of the autobiography, Look Me in the Eye; My Life with Asperger’s (2008).  He describes some of his early experiences with social skills in these excerpts from his book.

“Look me in the eye, young Man!”

   I cannot tell you how many times I heard that shrill, whining refrain.  It started about the time I got to first grade.  I heard it from parents, relatives, teachers, principals, and all manner of other people. 

     Everyone thought they understood my behavior.  They thought it was simple:  I was just no good.

   “Nobody trusts a man who won’t look them in the eye.”

   “You look like a criminal.”

   “You’re up to something.  I know it!”

Most of the time, I wasn’t.  I didn’t know why they were getting agitated.  I didn’t even understand what looking someone in the eye meant.  And yet I felt ashamed, because people expected me to do it, and I knew it, and yet I didn’t.  So what was wrong with me?

“Sociopath” and “psycho” were two of the most common field diagnoses for my look and expression.  I heard it all the time:  “I’ve read about people like you.  They have no expression because they have no feeling.  Some of the worst murderers in history were sociopaths.”

  I came to believe what people said about me, because so many said the same thing, and the realization that I was defective hurt.  I became shyer, more withdrawn.  I began to read about deviant personalities and wonder if I would one day “go bad.”  Would I grow up to be a killer?  I had read that they were shifty and didn’t look people in the eyes.

     I was well into my teenage years before I figured out that I wasn’t a killer, or worse.  To this day, when I speak, I find visual input to be distracting.  When I was younger, if I saw something interesting I might begin to watch it and stop speaking entirely.  As a grown-up, I don’t usually come to a complete stop, but I may still pause if something catches my eye.  That’s why I usually look somewhere neutral – at the ground or off into the distance – when I’m talking to someone. 

John was raised in the fifties and sixties, when psychiatrists viewed autism as a form of childhood schizophrenia.  It wasn’t until the seventies that autism was understood to stem from biological differences in brain development.

This video shows the man he has turned out to be.