4. A Man, a Woman, and a Light Switch
The classic model for understanding what it means to lose the
ability to mind-read is the condition of autism. When someone
is autistic, he or she is, in the words of the British psychologist
Simon Baron-Cohen, “mind-blind.” People with autism find it
difficult, if not impossible, to do all of the things that I’ve been
describing so far as natural and automatic human processes.
They have difficulty interpreting nonverbal cues, such as
gestures and facial expressions or putting themselves inside
someone else’s head or drawing understanding from anything
other than the literal meaning of words. Their first-impression
apparatus is fundamentally disabled, and the way that people
with autism see the world gives us a very good sense of what
happens when our mind-reading faculties fail.
One of the country’s leading experts on autism is a man
named Ami Klin. Klin teaches at Yale University’s Child Study
Center in New Haven, where he has a patient whom he has
been studying for many years whom I’ll call Peter. Peter is in
his forties. He is highly educated and works and lives
independently. “This is a very high-functioning individual. We
meet weekly, and we talk,” Klin explains. “He’s very articulate,