"The Reason I Jump" by Naoki Higashida: A Reconsideration of Autism, Empathy, and “Mind-Blindness”

The field of bioethics has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of how the medical and social assumptions that accompany diagnostic categories impact the people who have been diagnosed. In particular, autism has recently been characterized as being defined by an inherent lack of empathy and as a state of “mind-blindness,” or the failure to develop the “capacity to mindread in the normal way.”[1]Naoki Higashida’s book, The Reason I Jump, leads us to question the legitimacy of these assumptions as well as their impact on actual individuals in the world. In his introduction to the book, the novelist David Mitchell asserts: “Like all storytelling mammals, Naoki is anticipating his audience's emotions and manipulating them. That is empathy. The conclusion is that both emotional poverty and an aversion to company are not symptoms of autism but consequences of autism, its harsh lockdown on self-expression and society's near-pristine ignorance about what's happening inside autistic heads.”[2] This book shines a light on the dehumanizing current behind the scientific discourse on autism by laying bare the sheer humanity of a single person's struggle to communicate with the world around him. Naoki Higashida is a Japanese man who wrote this book when he was thirteen years old. Because of his trouble with verbal and independent written communication, his writing began in a unique manner: Higashida would form words by pointing to letters on an “alphabet grid,” and his mother would transcribe them. He later began to write directly on a computer. Mitchell and his wife, K. A. Yoshida, found the book to be a “revelatory godsend” because it helped them connect with their own son, also diagnosed with autism. The couple went on to translate it for an English-speaking audience.[3] The book is a combination of autobiography, short fiction, and a direct plea for understanding. Higashida does not describe a condition of emotional apathy; rather, he outlines a state of disconnect with his own body and with the world beyond. That the people around him mistake this disconnect for a wish to be alone is a profound driver of his suffering and loneliness. This book paints a portrait of a social world that rejects the person with autism over and over again, then blames him or her for the resulting isolation: “One of the biggest misunderstandings you have about us is your belief that our feelings aren't as subtle and complex as yours ... But of course, we experience the s