Why do we want autistic kids to have superpowers?

Charlie J. Anders

week saw the debut of Touch, Kiefer Sutherland’s show about a father whose non-neurotypical son turns out to be able to predict future events. This comes on the heels of Alphas, which also gave us Gary, another person who appears to be on the autism spectrum but who has the ability to see hidden energies. And the notion of autistic people as savants or special fixers has been around forever. Why do we create these fantasies about autistic people having superpowers? We talked to a few experts to try and ..