I immediately thought of this, and you beat me to it. Honestly it seems to be a very nuanced account of autism. It’s certainly unusual but bro got great joy from watching ships and people only found it a bit odd.
Comment on ancient hyperfixations
Hawke@lemmy.world 2 days ago
See also:
chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
Its still so upsetting that they send him to thz doctor who was like, “that thing that makes you happy and does not hurt anyone”, lets help you stop doing that.
eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
He might have been neglecting other responsibilities.
But yeah he hopefully could have kept it as a hobby!
GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world 2 days ago
But was he actually cured, or did he instead just get better at hiding his compulsion?
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That “in this way he was cured of his illness” is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there. I’d bet that the method used could also be described as torture until he agreed to stop or acted like he no longer wanted to.
I wonder how much faith in doctors came from vague references like this that only talk about the outcome and skips over the fucked up shit they called “treatment” back in the day. Makes me wonder if many people at the time saw doctors for the “knows a few things about some herbs and setting broken bones but otherwise is just a scam artist that might kill or maim you for no benefit” they were.
And the sad thing is that a lot of doctors these days are still like that; their body of knowledge is better than back in the plague doctor days, but if a patient strays into unknown territory, they often keep up the “I’m an expert in this” front while talking out of their ass (often an indirect accusation of just trying to get the pain meds they used to push, or some other brush off).