Sacks

"Autism is a complex developmental disability...and is the result of a neurological disorder that effects the normal functioning of the brain, impacting development in the areas of social interaction and communication skills."-Autism Society of America.

In the book An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks describes his encounter with Stephen Wiltshire, a man with autism. Stephen was considered one of the top child artists in Britain, and supposedly his autism helped him, giving him the ability to remember things exactly the way they are. Whatever Stephen sees he is able to recreate, almost perfectly, in a drawing. He is a genius in mimicry but is unfortunately deficient in symbolism and the meaning of things.

Sacks explains a time when Stephen and himself traveled to Moscow along with Margaret, Stephen's literary agent. Margaret and Oliver took Stephen to the History Museum then, afterwards, had asked him to draw the museum exactly from memory. But what Stephen drew was quite different from the museum. Stephen had drawn too many onion domes that were not there. His rendition was completely off. Sacks then asked Stephen to draw St. Basil's, and within a few minutes Stephen's version was quite accurate. Sacks and Margaret had decided that the reason Stephen wasn't able to copy the History Museum was before he was distracted by police that were there at the time, which made him nervous, and because Stephen was only able to copy something he found interesting.

Sacks goes on to tell more stories of Stephen and his able to mimic whatever he sees or hears. When Sacks says that Stephen has a genius in mimicry this is exactly what he is talking about, Stephen's ability to copy. But Stephen lacks the capacity to understand the meaning of something, or as Sacks explains, the "thisness". Which means that Stephen can copy whatever, but have no clue what it stands for or the meaning behind it. Like, if Stephen were to sing a song, he could sing it perfectly, hitting every note, but not understand what the song is about.

Stephen's ability to copy what he has seen from memory shows his brilliance in mimicry. His talent for replication in uncanny, Stephen, however, is unable to understand the meaning of what he has created. An example is when they had traveled to Arizona.

Sacks and Stephen had taken a trip to Arizona and spent and afternoon at the Canyon de Chelly. Stephen had spent time with a Navajo artist, who had showed Stephen special techniques in drawing he had learned from his tribe. Stephen had not seemed to care very much what the artist was telling him, going about in his nonchalant way. The artist and Stephen had both drawn the desert and the Navajo's sacred ground. While drawing Stephen seemed to be distracted, constantly looking around. the artist, on the other hand, had hardly moved, content on what he was drawing, trying to capture the sacredness of the grounds. "Stephen's drawing was manifestly the better and seemed (even to the Navajo artist) to communicate the strange mystery and sacredness of the place. Stephen himself seemed almost devoid of any spiritual feeling; nonetheless he had caught, with his infallible eye and hand, the physical expression of what we, the rest of us, call the 'sacred'." (Sacks 232).

Stephen's drawing of the Canyon de Chelly, shows once again, his mysterious capability to reproduce whatever he sees, but it also proves his inability to understand meaning. When listening to the Navajo artist, Stephen seemed completely uninterested. In