Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Idiots Savants, Retarded Savants, Talented Aments, Mono-Savants, Autistic Savants, Just Plain Savants, People With Savant Syndrome, And Autistic People Who Are Good At Things: A View From Disability Studies, Joseph N. Straus

Publications and Research

People identified as idiot savants have long comprised an identifiable group (a high level of skill in the context of perceived mental deficiency) whose story has mostly been told by psychiatrists and psychologists within a medicalized model of disability that assumes deficiency and seeks remediation and normalization. More recently, people identified as savants have become common figures of literary and cinematic representation. Both of these narrative frames have enfreaked them as alien Others, whose gifts and disabilities place them outside the normal run of human intelligence and creativity. With a focus on music, this article tries to see through these …