'Asperger's Syndrome & Tolkien's Works'

[davem]

Like the rest of you, I wouldn't diagnose Bilbo, Frodo (or Tolkien himself) with AS, or any other syndrome - as I said, I haven't studied AS. I read a lot of Jung when I was much younger , but hardly remember anything but the basics.

As to the article itself, I wasn't convinced by the theory. but I was struck by the way Tolkien & two of his major characters are such outsiders, so atypical, & Tolkien seems to imply that this is the major reason they are chosen for their tasks. He states somewhere, if I remember rightly, that neither married because they had some sense of having a task to complete (sorry, I may have dreamt that!).

One reason I started this thread was that I wanted to get reactions to the article, without having to wait two months for the next issue of Amon Hen. All the above said, though, Frodo & Bilbo do not form strong, intimate relationships. They do not, & have no apparent desire to, marry, which is totally abnormal in Hobbit society. They are 'outsiders', in that while they love the land of the Shire, they have increasingly little love for the society. Saruman tells Frodo he has 'grown', but he has actually outgrown his 'hobbit' nature. What is Tolkien telling us about his own attitude to the kind of small minded parochailism of the Shire world? It is to be outgrown. But the world Frodo 'grows' into is the world of the Elves, a super-natural world. Niggle's Parish is 'the best introduction to the Mountains'.

Tolkien's focus, all along, is to get the central character out of their 'front door' & into the 'Road' - however much Bilbo may warn of the dangers of such a course! But the Road leads away from the everyday world, & can never lead you back to it - 'There is no real going back'. So, Tolkien is trying to do as Gandalf did with Bilbo, Push him out of his door, & make him grow up, but he will grow too big for his old life & have to leave it. Is this down to Tolkien's own sense of 'detatchment' from the world around him, his feelings of isolation & loss. Being 'orphaned' from his parents, & then from the old world ('Kortirion among the Trees') by WW1 & industrialisation, he is isolated, or isolates himself from the world, & steps into the Lost Road, & is swept off. But Tolkien's sympathies seem exclusively to lie with others who are swept, willingly or no, onto that road. Like Bilbo & Frodo, he is drawn to those few who are also walking that Road, or attempting to walk it - if they can find it.

As others have said, this is not AS, or any other syndrome, so I feel the writer of the article has missed the point. The problem with psychology is that it denies the existence of such a 'Lost Road' - & it denies even more vehemently the existence of the place that Lost Road is said to lead to. Anything not measurable or provable by scientific instruments or psychological tests is a fantasy & belief in it is due to a 'syndrome'. A psychologist will inevitably resort to a label, call it a syndrome, otherwise they wouldn't be a psychologist, but a philosopher, or a theologian. I see from the responses to this thread that I am among philosophers & 'theologians', not psychologists.