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professionals (and lonely mates) may label these interpersonally distant, engineering rocket science people, “high functioning” sufferers of Asperger’s autistic spectrum disorder. Things going on inside get most of the attention, having more impelling importance than those on the outside involving other people. A recent study by Cambridge University’s Autism Research Center compares the empathizing (E) versus systemizing (S) ability of normal controls and adults with Asperger Syndrome and find the quasi-autistic adults are deficient in E and superior in S. They call it the E-S theory of autistic spectrum diseases. Psychotherapists of these autistic spectrum personality types, patients who characteristically do not seek therapy but are forced into the office by marital or family conflict, speak of their long, patient and mighty struggles to make intimate contact with these clients. A more philosophical question involves issues of what are acceptable individual differences and why it is that these high functioning, highly paid and successful professionals have any diagnosis at all.
It is not surprising that the highest paid members of corporations producing technical products and services such as IBM and Oracle are those rare individuals in technical sales that are able to combine the skills and insights of introverted scientists and technicians with those of the gregariously successful salespersons. In business schools such a blend is seen in people who combine talents in both marketing and finance. In architecture this combination might take the form of a graphic-design artist with computational mechanical engineering skills. Recruiters know that it is difficult to find people for what is called engineering sales.
From all over the United States, professional instrumental musicians that began to experience severe technical difficulties that defied their teachers as well as more extended practice time came to see Chicago’s music guru, Carl Boardstadt. He was a nationally known consultant to classical and jazz professionals in the 1920’s and 30’s. His particular specialty involved those who had “hit the wall,” those whose progress toward advanced musical mastery and accession into the higher echelons of the business had been truncated. His recommendations were often eccentric indeed. For the wind musician with breadth control problems, it might be blowing uniform bubbles through a long tube held at increasing depths of a filled

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