How Someone was Viewed with Aspergers back in the 60s

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This is just something I wanted to share.
Over the holiday weekend, the Syfy channel was running a Twilight Zone marathon. One episode in particular I found interesting showed how someone was viewed with Aspergers in the 60s. The main character was (a very young) Robert Duval. It showed him getting fired from his job because he was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. His boss told him he saw him as being very intelligent but he just didn't fit in with his co-workers.
He played a 30YO man who still lived with his mother.
He became obsessed with a character in a doll house. He broke the glass enclosure surrounding the doll house and as a result was sent to a sanitarium and was convinced by a psychologist he was just hallucinating.
It showed him on a date his sister fixed him up with and the date getting frustated with him and telling he needed a doctor.
The show never mentioned Autism although that is what the main character displayed. He is a man who realizes he never will be like other people and goes to live with the woman in the doll house.

do you know what the name of the episode is?

No, I didn't get the name of the episode.

The episode was called "Miniature".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature ... light_Zone)

It is on Youtube

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I did watch it and was shocked when the psych said "we do not use the word normal" and attributed Charlie's breakdown to others trying to force him be like them. Charlie masked himself and "pretended to be normal" to fool everybody so he would be released from the institution. This reminded me of many WP posts but it wasn't, it was a episode that first aired in 1963. Another reminder of how innovative "The Twilight Zone" was.

But reminders it was 1963 many of the charactors smoked, and for the most part the guard let Charlie do his thing. When the police were called one policeman, family and the psych searched for Charlie. Today the anti terrorist unit would come in guns a blazin.

Wow, I need to see that episode! I used to watch Twilight Zone reruns when I was in junior high and high school, but I don't remember that one.

This makes me realize how fortunate I was that I was "classically" autistic when very young in the early 60s.

Otherwise, I might not have gotten the interventions I needed.

This man seemed like a classic case of a man who "fell through the cracks.

At least you had people, even then, who had an instinctual grasp of his particular situation, like my mother had.

Did they do this on purpose or was this a coincidence they happen to make a aspie like character not even realizing there are people out there like that?

I would think aspies would be more accepted then because social awkwardness was just eccentric than an impairment because that is what I have read and today they would be considered disabled because of times have changed and what is considered normal. I am sure there have always been people out there who wanted everyone in a square peg.

I saw helicopter parenting go on in the show and Charley stops her. Good for him.Also I liked when he told his mother he can take off his own shoes. I felt his mother was babying him. She seemed over protective of him. But I could also tell she wanted him to be normal.

I thought the same thing when I first saw this episode. I also thought the man in "Time Enough at Last" could have AS. And "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" and "Eye of the Beholder" seem like metaphors for what Autism Speaks sque groups try to promote.

Interesting.

Robert Duvall played Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Both Boo Radley and Dill Harris have heavily autistic traits. Just google this and there are tons of people discussing it. Dill Harris was supposed to be based off of Harper Lee's friend, Truman Capote, who may have been on the autism spectrum in real life.

Duvall was also in this modern film called The Judge which seems to have an autistic main character. This is the first I've heard about it.

So maybe he is on the spectrum himself or has an autistic family member? His performances are too spot on to not have a close tie, I would think.

His daughter, Shelley Duvall, was in the news recently suffering from mental illness (and being exploited for ratings by TV "Doctor" Phil.)