Burt Saxon
Psychology 111
27 July 2010
Autism vs. Rain Man
the word Autism can be define in many ways, but according to one definition, “Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized be impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before three years-old” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism). This paper will focus on how Dustin Hoffman symbolized what autism is and how it affects his daily lifestyle.
Introduction of Psychology, Coon describes the word Autism by focusing on autistics only focus on music, drawing, prime numbers, license plates, TV commercials and etc. Dustin Hoffman's role in the movie Rain Man does fit the description of autistic persons. In the movie Rain Man, the things that affected For example, when Raymond heard loud sounds, he starts banging his head with his hands because he doesn't like it because it gets him scared and he doesn't know how to calm down. Another one is he doesn't like going on airplanes, both because he read about so many airplanes crashes and if he might go on an airplane he would be scared that it would happen to him.
It was hard for Rain Man (Dustin Hoffman) to understand humor in daily life because this is another obstacle autistic people go through because it is not easy trying to each an autistic person humor because they can't laugh at you when you're saying a joke to them. However in the movie, Rain Man kept saying something about first base and second base in baseball. Charlie Babbitt was his brother and he told him “you will never find who's on First base it's just a joke” the response that Rain Main said to Charlie Babbitt was I will find it he said. It was difficult trying to laugh with Rain Man because he wasn't a humor type of guy so it was hard to get a joke out of him rather than laughing with a normal person who doesn't have autism and know what a joke is when they hear it.
In Rain Man's case he had