Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury on February 12, 1809, the fifth chilod of a wealthy family. He studied at Edinburgh and Cambridge, and in 1831, was recommended as an unpaid naturalist on the HMS Beagle, which was about to embark on a surveying expedition to South America. His studies on this voyage formed the basis for much of his later work on evolution and natural selection.
Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839. They had 10 children, 3 of whom died in infancy. He lived in Kent, studying flora and fauna, and in 1859 published his magnum opus, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. He continued his studies despite ill health, and published many other works. He died on April 19, 1882, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
This chapter explores the question: Did Darwin meet the criteria for Asperger Syndrome (Gillberg, 1991) or schizoid personality, or, indeed, was he simply a loner? (Wolff, 1995).
Family and Childhood
Darwin's paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a well-known intellectual who was “as gifted in the field of literature as he was in science ... the archetypal gentleman polymath of his era.” Darwin’s maternal grandfather was the pottery magnate Josiah Wedgwood; both grandfathers were members of the Lunar Society, “a collection of wealthy men interested in machines and mechanical devices who met monthly at the time of the full moon’ (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 4).
Charles’ father, Robert, was born in 1766. A “larger-than-life character,” he had a large medical practice in Shrewsbury, and was “in turns kindly and severe” (White & Gribbin, 1995, pp. 5, 6). He married Susannah Wedgwood in 1796.
As a young boy Charles became a “great hoarder, collecting anything that captured his interest, from shells to rocks, insects to birds’ eggs” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 6) and liked to go on long solitary walks (on one of which he was so deep in thought that he fell into a ditch) (Desmond & Moore, 1992).
His early childhood was a lonely time. On one occasion he beat a puppy because of the “sense of power it gave him” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 7). The death of his mother in 1817, when he was 8 years old, disturbed him greatly. His father became depressed and decreed that Susannah’s death not be mentioned, so Charles had no opportunity to express his emotions on the matter.
One of Darwin’s daughters, Elizabeth, may have shown signs of Asperger Syndrome. According to White and Gribbin (1995), “She never married and was content to live at home and to do odd jobs around the house and garden. A quiet and retiring child, she grew into a taciturn and reserved adult” (p. 237).
Social Behavior
As a child, Charles played solitary games in the vast family home. He was always something of a loner, and was noted to have an isolated, introspective nature. Young Charles detested the regimented learning of school; he would dash off afterwards and spend the evening at home, in his own room, although this was not allowed and he would have to run the mile back to school before locking-up time. His classmates regarded him as “old before his time and a very serious fellow” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 9).
Around his 30th birthday he considered marriage. “In his usual analytical fashion he drew up a list of pros and cons to assess the situation.” He was concerned that “marriage would stifle him, prevent him from travelling if he decided he wanted to, that it would hinder his work by occupying too much of his time and that children might disturb his peace. It was an entirely selfish list of good and bad points, with scant concern for love or emotion; a purely scientific, pre-experimental treatment” (White & Gribbin, 1995, pp. 112-113). Despite his shyness and gentlemanly demeanor, he began to form a relationship with his cousin Emma Wedgwood, whom he had known since childhood.
Darwin was a great thinker, but had very little self-confidence. He was “a very humble man, totally dedicated to his studies, a scientist who worked meticulously and in solitude” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 2).
Narrow Interests/Obsessiveness
Throughout his life, Darwin was prone to obsession with particular living creatures. These included, at various times, orchids, beetles, barnacles, and earthworms. Science fascinated him from the age of 10. On holiday in 1819, he “spent most of each morning wandering off on his own to watch birds or to hunt for insects. Hours later he would return with specimens and spend the rest of the afternoon and early evening bent over his finds, devising methods of cataloguing them and trying to ascertain the species to which the various creatures belonged” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 10). He also spent hours poring over books about natural history in his father’s library. After he and his brother Erasmus set up a science laboratory at their home, Charles was given the nickname “Gas” at school. He spent most of his allowance on buying the latest gadgetry and chemicals for his hobby, and continued with his experiments alone after Erasmus left for Cambridge. The brothers kept up a correspondence that was “full of chemical chat ... leaving little room for comment on family matters” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 11).
In his teenage years, Charles “displayed an insatiable desire to kill birds of any variety ... It was a peculiar obsession,” according to White and Gribbin (1995, p. 12). He also liked to slaughter small animals, even though he was squeamish as a medical student and hated dissection. His father commented that he “cared for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching” and that he would “be a disgrace to himself and all his family” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 13). At Edinburgh University, he spent an inordinate amount of time reading the latest scientific, medical, and political literature. He frequently went off into the country from Edinburgh to collect specimens, neglecting his medical studies to follow his obsession. When he found a genuine interest, he would pursue it with an unmatched intensity.
At Edinburgh, Darwin began his life-long fascination with geology; while studying at Cambridge, he developed a “new obsessive fascination with entomology, and in particular, beetles” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 21). He then became very interested in botany. On the Beagle expedition, he studied the wildlife of the Brazilian jungle and was particularly fascinated with the beetles and other insects living on the jungle floor. He began collecting fossil remains, made “detailed observations of flora and fauna and when he was not collecting wildlife, he doggedly hammered away at rock faces” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 62). The voyage lasted more than four years.
In 1846, Darwin started to study the barnacle, “a task which occupied almost all of his time for the next eight years” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 144). Although his health was bad, he had deliberately chosen to cut himself off from the world to concentrate on this arduous, tedious work, which involved using a microscope for hours at a time — each of his “beloved barnacles” was the size of a pinhead. He published four volumes on them, two describing living species and two describing fossil species. In the 1870s, he turned his attention to earthworms and the way they affect the environment, keeping thousands of them in jars in his study and greenhouse, and conducting experiment after experiment on them. He published a book and 15 scientific papers on earthworms.
In his autobiography, Darwin stated, “I think that I am superior to the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully”; he also stated, “My habits are methodical” and referred to his “unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject — industry in observing and collecting facts” (White & Gribbin, 1995, pp. 300-301).
Routines/Control
Darwin led his life in a highly organized fashion, rarely altering his routine. As the children began to leave home and Charles and Emma grew older, the pattern of their lives became even more mechanical and regulated.
During middle and old age, Darwin walked the same path almost every day on a strip of land near his house, surrounded by a gravel path. When he first formed the habit, he used to count the number of times he completed the circuit, kicking a flint onto the path at the end of each lap. It was on these walks that Darwin did most of his thinking: “Counting the laps and kicking the markers was all part of the mantra guiding the pattern of his thoughts” (White & Gribbin, 1995, pp. 259-260). Every night after dinner, Darwin played two games of backgammon with Emma. They kept a running score: At one point he was able to report that he had won 2,795 games while she had won only 2,490.
Darwin’s extremely thorough and methodical cataloguing of his specimens might suggest an urge to establish control over the chaotic diversity of nature.
Language/Humor
There is no evidence that Darwin had problems in these areas. His writings are of a very high standard.
Lack of Empathy
Darwin's clinical views on the meaning of human existence and the primacy of “truth,” as he saw it, made it difficult for him to be flexible or to compromise, even where the feelings of others were concerned. For example, he took a casual attitude to his own wedding. He appears to have regarded the ceremony as rather silly, showing little regard for the feelings of Emma or the two families. There was no proper reception; instead, he “whisked Emma off to the railway station with almost indecent haste and in so doing antagonized a number of relatives” (White & Gribbin, 1995, pp. 115-116).
Darwin “always had the habit of reducing everything to its fundamentals, of parrying all arguments with cold scientific logic” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 114). This made it difficult for Emma to explain her views on religion to him: She had to resort to writing him letters, in which she could pour her heart out and describe her feelings without clashing over meaning. In 1873, his method of writing to Huxley over some money that Huxley needed was more than a little clumsy, in Emma’s opinion — further evidence of a lack of empathy.
Naivety/Childishness
Darwin was extremely slow to publish his theory of evolution and was unnecessarily cautious. While he delayed, the Welsh naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace came up with a similar theory. Darwin had been warned repeatedly that this could happen if he did not publish but apparently failed to perceive the danger.
Motor Skills
There is no evidence that Darwin had any difficulty in this area.
General Health
Darwin suffered from depression, especially after the death of his daughter Annie in 1851; he wrote to his colleague Joseph Hooker in 1875 expressing a “semi-serious desire to commit suicide” (White & Gribbin, 1995, p. 270). He was plagued by a succession of illnesses throughout the second half of his life: It was suggested that he suffered from multiple allergies and was hypersensitive to heat.
Conclusion
As far as Gillberg’s (1996) criteria for Asperger Syndrome are concerned, Darwin does not meet the speech and language or the motor clumsiness criteria. However, according to Gillberg, motor clumsinessmay may be less a feature of high-IQ persons with Asperger Syndrome.
Neither abnormalities of speech and language nor motor clumsiness are necessary for a diagnosis of Asperger disorder under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) classification; therefore, Darwin meets the criteria for Asperger disorder, which is broader in its definition than Gillberg’s criteria.
Did Darwin have schizoid personality disorder? Though he had a detachment from social relationships, it was not pervasive, and he was a family man. Certainly, he chose solitary activities and took pleasure in these activities. He was not indifferent to criticism and did not show emotional coldness. Therefore, he did not meet the criteria for schizoid personality disorder, as defined by DSM-IV.
Did he meet the criteria for “loner” (schizoid personality) as defined by Wolff (1995, 1998)? He did demonstrate the following relevant features: social isolation and idiosyncratic behavior, high IQ, empathy problems, increased sensitivity, and single-minded pursuit of special interest. Ssucharewa (1926) noted that such persons tend to come from gifted families; Darwin’s family was certainly gifted.
Regarding schizoid personality in childhood, Wolff (1998) noted that such children’s special patterns were often sophisticated, quite unlike the simple, repetitive, stereotyped behaviors and utterances of autistic children. This applies to Darwin. Indeed, when Wolff followed up her loners, she found that two exceptionally gifted children — a musician and an astrophysicist — were able to transform their special interests into useful contributions to society, like Charles Darwin.
Family history studies are necessary to elucidate the link between Asperger disorder and schizoid personality. It is possible that great creative achievement, such as that of Darwin, is a much more difficult task without a capacity for solitariness and extraordinary focus on a specialized topic.
- Michael Fitzgerald, Former Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry