Great Thurnberg says her autism is a superpower — why?

Whenever anybody claims that autism is a straight cut intellectual disability, I’m always a little inclined to fall back to Albert Einstein. As a card to play in favour of neurodivergence theory , its a little hard to beat. Einstein may have been a Nobel prize winner and the greatest scientist of the 20th century, but he was non-verbal until four years old. It’s a formality that he would have been diagnosed with a significant learning disability had there been a suitable label. What is also a formality was that Einstein didn’t formulate his equations via genius-level intelligence, but non linear thought output combined with very high-level maths prowess. A lot of mathematicians could write the equations he did, but few could conceptualise them via a first person view of a light wave from a clock tower.

Neurodiverse people may also possess the capacity for superior attention to detail — as demonstrated most acutely by Sir Anthony Hopkins in his acting work. He has stated he reads his lines 200 to 250 times to get a feel for items such as the character, the intentions of the author and the flow of the scene. In the production of Hannibal (for which he won the Oscar in 1992) he made a point of only ever being in character around Jodie Foster while on set — she even said years later she’d never even met the real Anthony Hopkins, only Dr. Lecter.

So we’ve already examined two neurodivergent individuals — where does Greta fit in the spectrum? I believe her superpower is adapting her outward…