Salvador Dali: Autism and the Painter Who Never Grew Up
McCann Brian, Michael Fitzgerald.
This commentary on Salvador Dali (1904-1989),) argues that his life history and artwork provide sufficient evidence of the presence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Such commentary affords a deeper understanding of his paintings and a novel perspective on rationale for his approach to his artistic expression. His features of autism included stereopathy with his stubbornness suggesting a preference for sameness, narrow special interests and atypical social relationships. His condition was characterized firstly, by deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, secondly, deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors as used in social interactions and thirdly, expressions and nonverbal communication. These characteristics can reliably explain his deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships. Individuals with autism vary in the intensity of their challenges in the domains of social communication and stereotypical behaviours. Paintings by Dali reflect this intensity in his compulsion to shock. Through the pioneering impact of his paintings, he attempted to discover and circumscribe the metaphysical delimitations of his own ingenious creativity. He found expression within an irenic lacuna in which to paint. His early family life illuminates evidence as to why his behaviour would later grow increasingly challenging. He was emotionally strained by his father who overtly distanced himself from his son. Dali would ensue with wrenching himself from any bonding with both his mother and sister. While still a child, nascent symptoms of personality disorders began to incarnate. He exhibited impulsivity and a fervent challenge to all forms of authority. With hypersensitive visuality, he reacted against any external hyper stimulation and physically, he struggled with motor control. This challenged him and engendered deep stress in him as a painter. From an early age, social skills lay on the weak end of the spectrum while he depended on the comfort and predictive skill offered by every behavioural repetition available to him. With a gnarled sense of ontological proportions, he derived perverse pleasure from advertently misguiding others towards a state of anarchy. To boot, his writing displayed typicalities of autism with its sententially disjointed narratives. His immaturity remained throughout his life, never having fully invested himself in the social world of empathizing, a world he resisted on even a tactile level.
He filled his life with a bloated sense of entitlement, attention-seeking and narcissism. As a child he had acted mendaciously and would explode into unpredictable tantrums. He exhibited disturbing pathological, non-verbal and stereotypic patterns of behaviour.
