Sherlock

Post Reply New Topic

In the opening episode of "Sherlock" Lestrade calls him a psychopath, and Holmes retorts "I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath." But he always looked to me like a classic Asperger's, making a career of being able to describe his pattern recognition in terms neurotypicals could understand.

Any views?

Since "Sherlock" is a fictional character portrayed by an actor, he could be anything, everything, or nothing at all.

I you read the original books, Holmes comes off as extremely ASD, even though the very concept was decades in the future. He was based on a real person, a Scottish physician if I'm not mistaken, so it's entirely possible that that man was ASD, and that when Conan Doyle wrote Holmes he carried over enough of the mannerisms to make it recognizable to the contemporary reader.

Regarding the recent British show, I believe there is a scene in a later episode where Watson and a police officer joke about Sherlock having Aspergers, but it's been a while since I've watched and I might be misremembering.

I agree, if Sherlock in the TV series comes off as ASD, that is a true reflection of the original stories.
In the stories, Holmes seems to have a huge number of Aspergers traits to me, such as his obsessional interests, attention to details, high intellect, reliance on narcotics, and inability or unwillingness to abide by social niceties.

The series at first did try hard to reflect the original characters. (Which made me very annoyed that they didn't do the same with Mycroft. He'd have been a far more interesting character as an antisocial recluse like the original, only moreso in this century, when he could work exclusively by telepresence and Watson would only know him as a face on a screen.)

So yes, I agree that Doyle's Holmes also comes over as very clearly ASD.

Did you read the books with an awareness of ASD, or are you recalling that from an earlier reading? I'd read them as a kid, but then randomly came across a complete collection at a used book shop a few years after I was diagnosed in my late 20s, and rereading them it practically leapt off the pages at me, Doyle couldn't have intentionally written a better representation of a high functioning ASD character than Sherlock Holmes if he'd had a DSM-V open in front of him as he wrote.

I agree. I suspect the Mycroft screen overdose is down to the ego of Mark Gatiss, who not only played the character but wrote the series...

Yes. I read a big thick Sherlock book when I was like eleven. In the introductory chapter I learned that he had hyperfocus. Was ignorant of stuff most folks know, and superknowlegable of stuff folks didnt know. Watson was shocked that he didnt know what the solar system is, but that he did know every kind of soil around London (and knew how to recognize the said soil on your shoe heel so he could tell instantly where you had been). So he was more aspie like than anything else.

I dont know where anyone would see sociopath in the character. At least not in the original Doyle version. Maybe in some recent hollywood distortions of distortions of distortions of the character.

A certain Polish expat novelist named Jerzy Kozinski (who was big in the Seventies) wrote novels with seemingly sociopathic protagonists.

The more recent UK TV show with Benedict Cumberbatch depicts him as very cold and manipulative, which could definitely give that impression.