while Spitzer’s eccentricities may have fallen short of meeting the criteria for Asperger’s syndrome, the DSM-III was the product of a mind that exhibited many classic qualities of autistic intelligence. These traits enabled Spitzer to get the job done with a minimum of fretting about offending various sectors of the profession. Calling him an “idiot savant of diagnosis,” Spitzer’s colleague Allen Frances, who went on to chair the task force that created the DSM-IV, observed, “He doesn’t understand people’s emotions. He knows he doesn’t. But that’s actually helpful in labeling symptoms. It
...more
