Notes on the Astrological Diagnosis of Autism

I recently completed an Addendum to my first paper on autism.  The original, titled Developmental Astrology:  The Message in Autism, Five Autistic Children, was written in October of 2000.  It can be found at http://www.angelfire.com/sd/binah/autism1.html.  It contains descriptions of autism, identifies its astrological significators, and tells why they were chosen. 

The Addendum adds another 7 autistic children to the group. 

Here, following a brief discussion, I will cover just a little about what those papers reveal. 

All autistic children are not the same.  Some are fairly quiet and peaceful.  They are beautiful little non-communicating angels.  The terror of their beauty only shows itself when it becomes evident that they are toddlers who are not developing.  Some autistic children show considerable fear and anxiety.  Others demonstrate some really difficult and trying behavior.  Descriptions like this cover a wide range of behavioral forms.  Behaviorally, at least, it appears autistic children are children who may be autistic and most certainly are challenged in ways other than autism. 

For instance, some autistic children are actually diagnosed as autistic and schizophrenic.  Indeed, when it first started appearing as a disease, some professionals diagnosed autism as childhood schizophrenia. 

Autism, from my point of view, is not schizophrenia, not even childhood schizophrenia.  Schizophrenia is a distinct astrological disorder, specifically spelled out in my paper on that disorder (see Paranoid Schizophrenia and John Hinckley, Jr." on the Home Page, same site as above.).  Schizophrenic types of insanity were further sorted and elucidated in my Woolf paper (same site).  That paper included the astrology for insanity of four individuals--Virginia Woolf, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent Van Gogh, and Vaslav Nijinsky.  Each was examined for his predisposition to his disorder as well as its timing (when it occurred).

I have a relatively large file on schizophrenia.  Hinckley's schizophrenia, it turned out, was more an event than a condition.  Though it was somewhat implied, it did not exist in his birth chart.  It developed and was strongest at the time he tried to assassinate President Reagan.  Astrologically, Hinckley does not have a strong disposition toward schizophrenia--he was subject to it because he of his weak ego identity.

Schizophrenia involves the astrological indicators neptune (or Pisces) in the harmonic chart for the 3^rd house (representing the mind).  Paranoid schizophrenia involves neptune (or Pisces) plus mars.  Mars/neptune is always toxic to the subject area (chart) it modifies.  For instance, if it occurs forefront in a 5^th chart (sexuality), the subject can be sexually hyper-excitable, or may attract really odd (crazy) partners.  Or it can represent a sexually based cancer like cervical cancer.  In a 6^th chart (health and service), mars/neptune represents "crazy" (toxic) health conditions, cancer being one of them.  Cancer is "crazy" because with cancer the individual's cell physiology has gone "mad."

Present literature on autism also brings mental retardation into some definitions of autism.   My paper on mental retardation (see Mental Retardation and Astrology's Ancient Malefics, Mars and Saturn)  is also on the same site as noted above.  An autistic child could be mentally retarded.  A mentally retarded child might also be autistic.  Astrologically, however, the two conditions are separable and quite distinct.

Retardation involves the astrological indicators mars and saturn in the harmonic chart for the 3^rd house.

The children in the autistic group also share a common astrological pattern.  Each has saturn and pluto in the same set (aspect) and predominant in one or both of two charts, their harmonic charts for their 1^st and 3^rd houses. 

Their predominance in the 1^st chart in particular implies an influence that starts very early in life (chart for 1^st house).  Saturn/pluto there, as a set of specifications, "tells" the incarnating individual to turn around and remain at the threshold of incarnation, at saturn, at the place where the individual first splits off from soul in order to become a human being.  Having already started incarnating, he is then suspended between being a soul and being a human.  He does not identify with (or recognize) either world.

In his 3^rd chart his saturn/pluto influence is doing essentially the same thing.  Rather than it binding his early identity (as shown in the 1^st chart), saturn/pluto in his 3^rd are binding his thinking (chart for 3^rd house).  For humans in particular, our thinking is intricately involved in our identity.  Same result--he does not recognize either world.  Or rather, he recognizes only the most essential and abstract aspects (saturn) of this world.  Because pluto is involved he is quietly, deeply obsessed (pluto) with that "place."

To see what this influence does to individuals already grown, read the paper The Disappearing Priest: One Man's Odyssey, same site   (http://www.angelfire.com/sd/binah/hermit.html.  His saturn/pluto influence showed itself most strongly in his 7^th chart well after he had become a man.

With or without the diagnosis actually including it, autism, for some reason, suffers a frequent admixture of the other mental dysfunctions.  It is autism "with complications." It is hard to tell.  Are we truly in an epidemic of autism?  Or is autism (saturn/pluto) so dominant that it overshadows the less popular diagnoses?  We had schizophrenia and retardation--even manic depression--for a long time as single diagnoses.  Along came autism, and the diagnosis was no longer single.  Or, sometimes it was single, but it should have been multiple.

Their astrology shows that children diagnosed autistic often really are mentally challenged by other mental problems. 

Among this second group of seven autistic children, several showed schizoid tendencies (light/neptune/3^rd ) or paranoid schizoid tendencies (light/mars/neptune/3^rd).  One appeared retarded (light/mars/saturn/3^rd).   One had moon conjunct uranus in Pisces in the 3^rd chart representing a special form of mental problem for which I have no label.  Whoever diagnosed the child called it schizophrenia.  I see it as a psychosis, but not necessarily schizophrenia.  It earlier days it might have been called idiocy.

We can see the latter at work in the charts of Nietzsche and Nijinsky (paper cited above).  Their insanity occurred well into adulthood.  They did not just have schizophrenic episodes.  They went insane and stayed insane. 

Loosely, retardation represents choppy and painful, broken down, mind dysfunction; schizophrenia, toxic mind dysfunction; autism, obsession with pre-incarnational abstractness that precludes ego identification<b>;</b> and finally, moon/uranus/Pisces, an almost complete incapacity mentally to pull together any ego identity. 

From my point of view as an astrologer, one thing is becoming clear.  Whether it is prescriptive, or only tentatively prescriptive based on interaction with other factors like hereditary, soil, diet, or pollution, autism has distinct significators.  They are lighted saturn/pluto forefront in either the 1^st or 3^rd chart.  These are the significators all 12 autistic children shared.  So, astrologically, these two planets describe autism, and they also tend to prescribe it.  Why they describe it is covered in that first paper, link cited in the first paragraph of this blog.